"Quantum of Solace": Backstories

The new Bond flick is 3 parts Awesome, 2 parts Senseless, 1 part Dumb. I liked it a lot.

Quantum of Solace owes more to the Tom Cruise Mission: Impossible movies than earlier Bond incarnations. It’s got chase scenes that’ll make your perineum tingle, and minimal dialogue for its star. It's also an unabashed sequel that picks up right where its predecessor ended.

And you’ll have to ignore some powerful stupidity to enjoy it. For example, here’s the implied backstory for an important, climactic setting:

Hotelier: “So we’re building a luxury hotel in the middle of a remote, sun-blasted, high-elevation desert.  How should we power it?”

Engineer: “Solar, duh!”

Hotelier: “Yeeeeah…  I was thinking about something more luxurious, like explosive hydrogen canisters in every room.”

Engineer: “Ah. That makes more sense.”

***

Jon from the indispensible Adam Riff’s promotes this backstory: “Naw, it's cool if you abandon my corpse in a Bolivian dumpster. I don't care.”

Comments

[jjm]

I might jigger that mix to equal parts Awesome, Senseless and Dumb. It did make me think of some 70s-era Bond movies with equally random boat chase scenes - Live & Let Die, for example, through the Louisiana swamp. Good fun, but I never quite got why we were where we were.