Quantum of Silence

The other night I took my lovely wife out to a movie that I was personally not all that thrilled about seeing. She was very excited about seeing the movie and had asked several of her friends and co-workers about the movie in anticipation of seeing the movie. The movie was not Bride Wars, Doubt or Seven Pounds. The movie was Quantum of Solace.

As much as I love going to the movies, I just could not get excited about another James Bond film. I saw Casino Royale in Hawaii and was OK with where the story was going until they displayed forty-five minutes of poker playing. I think there was actually less card playing in that Eric Bana/Drew Barrymore movie Lucky You (which I have flipped past on HBO but never watched for more than a few minutes). I thought Daniel Craig’s portrayal of Bond in Casino Royale was different than anything I had previously seen (I am partial to Roger Moore) and the action was certainly spectacular but I washed my hands of that film once the card playing started. Plus, you know there can’t be a high roller card game without a 120 pound white guy in a DC straight billed hat with the size sticker predominantly displayed, sporting a black hoody, oversized sunglasses and listening to gangster rap on an Ipod.

The movie started out fairly promising. There is a cool car chase to start the movie that involves tunnels, hairpin turns and lots of shooting. The action was so fast and furious I could not even tell who was shooting at whom. Of course, I have to admit I am something of a skeptic when it comes to car scenes. As a member of the Nichols family I was born with something of a curse. That curse is the inability to purchase a reliable car and/or have any chance of maintaining it at a reasonable cost (I encourage you to contact your Legislator and ask that we mandate more federal funding for early detection of this terrible curse). So, when I was watching this spectacular chase scene I kept thinking about how these cars were crashing into each other and into walls and being shot with hundreds of bullets and speeding around hairpin turns and stopping on dimes…and I can’t get my car to drive without sputtering on a wide open freeway at fifty-five miles an hour. The Bond car can take fifty rounds to the engine and tires without switching out of cruise control and my car can’t go a mile if my gas cap is loose.

After the initial chase scene, the movie progressed into a sequel to a movie I could not remember. Other than the aforementioned forty-five minutes of card playing I have no recollection of the plot points of Casino Royale. If I would have known that it was necessary to remember the story line and characters from that movie I might have brushed up prior to Quantum of Solace (emphasis on might). For most of the movie I had no idea who had done what to whom and why everyone was mad at each other. Some movies kind of fill you in as you go along as a refresher (The Jason Bourne movies do this well), but not this movie. This movie didn’t have a chance to fill you in on important plot building points because there was absolutely no dialogue. This movie had less dialogue than any Jason Statham movie you can name. In fact, this movie may have had the least amount of dialogue in history of talking pictures. About half way through this movie I was looking around the theater hoping that someone had brought their Mighty Wurlitzer along and could mix in some 20’s era dramatic escape tunes.

One of the more interesting scenes in this movie involves James Bond’s attendance at a giant outdoor play that sort of looked like the joining of the Shepard of the Hills and a Yanni Concert. I have no idea what this play was supposed to be about but I am fairly sure that at the end some caged prisoners got killed to the delight of the crowd. As I sit here contemplating the meaning of this scene my best guess is that the bad guys who were attending this play to discuss their plans to take over the world had their enemies killed as part of the show. However, wouldn’t this fuel at least some questions from the cast of the show? At least in theory, the killing of the prisoners scene must have been in the script (actors don’t like last minute re-writes). So, there must have been a set of prisoners that were casted initially, probably for their ability to act desperate and scared while being caged and preparing for death. But then on this particular show night the regulars were scrubbed for these actual prisoners (I wonder if the Evil Playbill listed all of the understudy names of the prisoners). Wouldn’t at least one cast member say, “how come we are replacing the original cast of the prisoners?” Do you think the Assistant Director of the show went to the principal actors that night and said “let’s really make it look real tonight. No matter how much the prisoners complain or resist really ruff them up good and shoot them in the head!”

One other thought about this scene is that James Bond identifies the bad guys attending the show by using what can only be described as the best digital camera ever made. I know that James Bond movies are known for introducing and displaying cool current and future technology but the camera he had was just unbelievable. It was hard to tell exactly how far away James Bond was when he was taking photos with this fancy camera (it looked like your run-of-the-mill Nikon) but I am guessing he was perched about 10 stories up and looking down at the audience about 100-150 yards away (as the crow flies). This camera was taking clear head shots without the use of a flash (the show was being performed outside at night) that were being sent back to 007 Headquarters in London, England for the facial recognition software to read. I don’t know about you, but I can’t get a photo of me next to the Christmas tree to come out correctly and I have every lamp in my house pointed at the tree and the camera flash engaged!

Anyway, the rest of the movie hums along with various running, jumping, driving, flying, crashing, shooting, punching, kicking, sleeping at the nicest hotel in Haiti (who knew the Haitians were so opulent), visiting a sweet one hundred room hotel in the middle of the desert (where there were no maids on staff yet spotless rooms…think about that one), and revenge (best served cold). All the while, James Bond said pretty much nothing.

So to wrap this one up, let me just say that this movie was action packed (I think the Director at some point said, “we need to come in under two hours, we just don’t have time for all of this plot development and talking”) but if I have to remember characters and story lines from both Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace for the next installment (my sources say the working title is Conundrum of Uranus), I may sit it out.

Warren