Thanks almost entirely to the skillful writing of Paul Haggis, the eternal super spy James Bond has morphed into something bigger and better than we've ever known.
The rest of the thanks goes to Daniel Craig, who, yes, is better than Sean Connery, and eats up every scene in the latest installment of the Bond series: "Quantum of Solace."
Haggis, who started out writing Heathcliff cartoons, has in a quarter of a century developed into one of the finest and most prolific screenwriters of our day. He continues to pen hit after hit, from Oscar winners "Million Dollar Baby" and "Crash" to "Letters from Iwo Jima" and "Casino Royale," the latter being the stellar 2006 remake of the Bond classic that introduced us to Craig.
His touch on Bond has reinvigorated the character, stripped it of its cartoonish veneer and adorned it with heaping helpings of reality: He is not a killing machine motivated by opportunities to score with as many women as possible. He's harder, tougher, a refined and highly trained assassin with a capacity for compassion. Yet he doesn't have to turn in his man card because of it. In a way, he is the Dark Knight in a tuxedo.
Bond's humanity, which allows us to relate just that much more to him, was illustrated with great clarity in "Casino Royale." It does so most effectively when we witness Bond overpowering and killing two bad guys in a hotel stairwell, a scene also witnessed by his love interest Vesper Lynd. Watching Bond at work puts Lynd in a state of shock. When Bond returns to her hotel room moments later, he hears the shower running and quietly walks toward the bathroom. As he enters he sees her sitting on the floor of the shower stall, still wearing her evening gown, letting the water run over her. Bond, still wearing his bloodied tuxedo, quietly steps into the shower and sits down beside her. The moment had no dialog, but it showed us the humanity that for 40 years, was seldom if ever seen in the character. It's a great direction to take albeit risky as the loyalty of old-school Bond fans will be tested.
In "Quantum of Solace," which continues where "Casino Royale" leaves off, Bond goes after a cloaked syndicate so powerful and vast that its endeavors are worldwide, propping up Third-World leaders and controlling water supply, and its members are embedded everywhere. That leaves nobody trusting anybody. Even M, played masterfully by Judi Dench, begins to doubt Bond's intentions.
The complexity of Haggis' storyline, however airtight, is a tad ho-hum. Not only are you asked to remember several names from "Casino" but add to that the quasi-faceted scheme of ultra-baddy Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric) that's akin to the juicer-assembly manual that was "Star Wars I" and you've got a recipe for a headache.
That said there are plenty of foot chases, car chases, fight scenes and shootouts, the latter interwoven with a performance of "Tosca." And of course, you're taken all over the world to see sweeping vistas of Italy, the Mediterranean Sea and the deserts of Bolivia.
And the opening theme by the White Stripes' Jack White and Alicia Keyes is the hippest title version to date.
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