I dragged myself out on a totally frigid, snowy night to see the new James Bond film, Quantum of Solace. I haven’t missed seeing a Bond film since Live and Let Die had me wallowing in laughter and popcorn back in the 1970’s.
I always make a point to recognize the “specialness” of the Bond films by seeing them on the big screen at the theatre. At ten dollars a head, I reserve this honor for relatively few movies, mostly because the deteriorating conditions of our local theatre are now easily eclipsed by the average TV set in the average home. But some things still need to be seen on the biggest screen you can find. As I watched the movie, here is the question that chiseled its way into my brain: where, oh where, was James Bond?
James seems to have traded in his personality for the Unlimited Edition of his License to Kill. Perhaps too many flying fists and knives and guns have sliced off his charm. Clearly, this was an action film that has fallen into the froth of maximum overdrive. It made Mad Max look like a sissy. Every single character got smacked or shot or knifed, usually with a sprinkling of each. This tended to occur in multiple ways and in multiple exotic locations. Some of them survived it, but most were left like turfed litter on the floor of a hamster cage. During the course of the film, Bond’s License to Kill actually had to be reloaded more often than his gun.
Of even more concern - Bond was so engaged in fisticuffs and dodging broken glass that his sense of humor was completely lacking. He even failed to concoct any of his usual double entendres. The James Bond who quipped "I am now aiming precisely at your groin. So speak now or forever hold your piece" in The Man with a Golden Gun was a no-show. I guess it could happen to anyone. I know that personally, the more people I beat to a pulp on the average day, the less funny I am. It bothers me to the point that I’ve cut back to decking less than a dozen people a day. It’s helped me regain the balance I need in my life. I also try to duck a lot – too much head pounding can put me in a mental fog. I become like a man with a hammer: every problem starts to look like a nail. Maybe that’s what has happened to Bond - one blow too many to the head. It’s rendered him desperately serious. He’s left his personality behind in the hotel safety deposit box, where it’s languishing in his wrinkle-free Armani tux and charming the panties off the safety deposit box next door.
James is now so jaded and shopworn by endless adventures in the spy world that he has almost nothing left for the ladies. Or did his supply of Viagra fail to arrive from that dodgy internet source? Instead of wooing the ladies, oh wait, make that lady since there was only one this time, he merely nodded his head, in a you-know-the-drill kind of gesture. No champagne, no titillating gambling, no white dinner jacket. I don’t know if she even bothered to murmur the customary “Oh James!” Even Moneypenny got better treatment than that! The only woman lucky enough to receive the Bond Treatment in this film had the boringly chaste name of Strawberry Fields, clearly a downgrade from the daring Pussy Galore of yesteryear.
And where was the indomitable Q or facsimile? While actor Desmond Llewelyn was impossible to replace, leaving a pandering John Cleese as a mere husk of a Q in the last few films, they both still made us laugh. Now in order to jam in more brawling, they’ve left out the whole spy toy reveal scene. I suppose MI6 now gets their kinky guns and laser beam watches over the internet like the rest of us, cutting out the middle man, and avoiding those huge liability insurance bills for their test lab. We didn’t need those laughs anyway, and it allowed them to punch in yet another action scene that was so tightly shot, I couldn’t really tell what was going on. Mostly, it was just more bashing, gun grabbing, and environmental ruination. To up the ante, the action took place on slippery roof tops and frail scaffolds. Lots of glass broke, but not in the elegant and regretful way it did in the antique glass museum in Moonraker. It didn’t make me want to charge in with my broom and my dustpan and my glass blowing repair kit.
Even the villain was kind of watered down, although not nearly as much as he would have liked by the end of the movie. He wasn’t so much evil as annoyingly snotty. His plan wasn’t the usual lofty goal of world domination or destruction, it was, well, stealing the water from a small poor country and selling it back to their corrupt goverment at a high price. Gee. Doesn’t this happen in the real world just about every other day? Water, oil, pantyhose manufacturing – isn’t it constantly wrestled for in the global marketplace where people use stocks as their weapon of choice instead of loaded guns?
So, I guess like so many other franchises that have lasted for decades, Bond has gotten tired of it all – the dead lovers to be avenged, the brain-teasing intricate spy plots, the megalomaniac bad guys, the humiliation of reporting to a woman, the lack of stimulating new spy toys sporting miniature saws and blow torches that come in handy in those everyday hopeless situations involving ropes and sharks. He’s had enough. Every molecule of suave sophistication has been sucked out of him. Like the rest of us grinding away in routine jobs, James Bond has become burned out. Perhaps it’s time for him to fill out the papers for his MI6 Spy Division Pension and kick back at the casino with his own cash. It’s time for him to settle down with one (or two, or three) women and sort out his collection of cravats. Maybe then his charm will resurface with a few of those one-liners to keep the hotel maitre-d’ chuckling.
As for me, I too am retiring. I probably won’t go to see any more Bond films until they can give me a character once again, not a robot attached to a pair of murderous fists. When Bond needs a personality transplant from The Terminator, it’s time for me to throw in my Official Glow in the Dark MI6 Spy Watch. The Bond franchise has melded with all the other soulless action films and forfeited its uniqueness. If they left all the brutality on the cutting room floor, you would miss the entire movie while carting your over-priced tub of popcorn back from the snack bar. So, the next time there is a Bond offering, stay out of the cold winter night and out of the theatre. That way, you won’t feel the need to punish yourself for wasting your time and money by sticking your tongue on an icy fire hydrant on the way back to your car! Keeping your ten dollars in your pocket may fail to provide you with a whole quantum of solace, but it should at least give you a cup full.
