Stars:
***
Rating: PG-13 for
violence, language and adult themes
Run
Time: 1
hour, 45 minutes
Daniel Craig continues his smoldering
run as takes-a-lickin’-and-keeps-on-tickin’ British super agent James Bond.
“Quantum” is a
true sequel, picking up where the more stylish “Casino Royale” left off, with Bond
so blinded by inconsolable rage (over the death of favorite femme fatale Vesper
Lynd) that he’s laying waste to his nemeses with reckless abandon.
Kicking off
with a classic car chase pitting Aston Martin against Alfa Romeo on the hairpin
turns of Italy’s majestic mountain roads, the action
unspools at breakneck pace. Bond works his passport like a frequent flyer
fanatic – Austria, Russia, Bolivia, Haiti – circling the globe to uncover the
dark minds behind QUANTUM, the uber-secret international organization that
blackmailed Vesper.
Based on hunches and innuendo Bond
goes rogue in order to avenge Vesper’s death, much to the consternation of
unflappable M16 head M (a pitch-perfect Judi Dench) who wants his kinetic
energies focused on Mr. Greene (Mathieu Almaric of “Diving Bell and the
Butterfly” fame), a spiteful bad-boy ostensibly rejuvenating the earth while
secretly gaining personal control of global natural resources by negotiating
illegal pipelines with foreign dictators.
It wouldn’t be
Bond without coups, cacophonic crashes and a daunting collection of corpses.
Ditto the ubiquitous Bond girl, in this case a sultry beauty named Camille (Ukrainian
model Olga Kurylenko) who has her own family score to settle. An avant-garde
opera scene combines the elegant grace of Tosca with two-stepping quick-cuts
and the chance to ogle Craig in a tux (hot hot hot!); a fiery airplane crash
tests the limits of class and credibility (and bears more than a passing
resemblance to the dim-witted Pierce Brosnan days of yore).
Director
Marc Forster and screenwriter Paul Haggis (“Crash”) seem bent on packaging
every conceivable disaster, rendering the whole more Bourne than Bond.
Technology is slick and the bullet ballet superbly designed but I confess to
some conspiracy-meets-conflict confusion.
And then
there’s Craig, so cool, so deliciously bad-ass it hurts. His steely blues and
live wire physicality are eminently watchable, subtly masking intense fury and
unfathomable depth. Despite the fact that “Quantum” lacks a certain
je-ne-sais-quoi Craig brings a fierce edge to his iconic super secret agent
around which an entire franchise can be built.