Six featurettes, “Another Way to Die” music video, “Crew Files”, theatrical and teaser trailers

You could say that “Quantum of Solace” was a Bourne…Jason Bourne film because of the influential tone of that spy film. “Quantum of Solace” had the burden of an awkward title and direct sequel to “Casino Royale”. It also became the Bond film that truly divided the fan base. Going for a more austere approach closer in tone to Ian Fleming’s original stories and novels, the film polarized a lot of fans and that was evident from the box office gross for the film—it was lower than the previous Bond film. Although technically stunning, “Quantum” abandoned almost all of the tricks and hallmarks of the previous Bond films. As with the previous film Daniel Craig plays Bond with a feral quality almost altogether missing since Sean Connery’s early performances in “Dr. No”, “Goldfinger” and “From Russia with Love” but incorporated the guilt and brooding nature of Bond that first appeared (and then rapidly disappeared) in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”. If “Quantum of Solace” is like any other Bond film in the series, it is most like “License to Kill” where Timothy Dalton went rogue to take out a Mexican drug lord who murdered the fiancé of his friend FBI agent Felix Lighter. There’s no “Q”, no truly fancy gadgets, only one female character with a pun based name (Strawberry Fields an operative who Bond must later “interact”), colorful and quirky villains but the director fails to even mention the characters full name to take advantage of the humor there. It’s almost as if director Marc Forster and writers Paul Haggis (“Crash”), Neal Purvis & Robert Wade (“Casino Royale”) were going out of their way to AVOID everything connected with the history of Bond as a character in films returning to the core of the character established in the original stories that so enamored JFK and other readers in the spy obsessed 1960’s. ***

When we last saw Bond he had captured an important figure in the organization Quantum that had blackmailed Bond’s girlfriend into serving their purpose forcing her to betray him and, ultimately, causing her suicide. Bond wants revenge and hauls the bad guy (in a stunning chase sequence that raises the bar established in opening of “Casino Royale”) to an interrogation with “M” (Judy Densch) Bond’s superior in MI6. This leads Bond to Dominic Greene (Oscar nominee Mathieu Amalric) one of Quantum’s architects. Bond also discovers an unexpected partner in the spirited Camile (Olga Kurylenko) Greene’s lover who has her own agenda in wanting to bring Greene and his organization to justice. ***

Make no mistake “Quantum of Solace” is a terrific Bond film something that was buried in the wake of disappointed generated by the fact that this Bond film is practically disconnected from everything the film series had previously established. Sure, this isn’t the Bond that you watched on TV (or if you’re old enough saw in theaters) as played by Sean Connery (in later Bond films not the early ones),Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan. The writers and director along with Craig are trying to reestablish the character and the series foot hold in “reality” as opposed to the strong fantasy element that dominated the Bond films beginning with the late 60’s early 70’s. *** If you set your expectations aside and give “Quantum of Solace” a chance, you’ll find a gripping Bond film that will involve you with a harsher edge clearly influenced by the Bourne films and the anti-Bond films. In reality, “Quantum of Solace” romances the audience with a different type of action fantasy film one that recalls Fleming’s original character, the tone of his stories but going even further back to the whole film noir detective genre that influence Fleming coupled with the strong suspense thriller elements that other spy thrillers used to distinguish themselves from the fantasy world of Bond. Ian Fleming would probably recognize this Bond more than the one that Roger Moore or even Pierce Brosnan played. I am surprised however that producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli who inherited the franchise went back to the template for the least successful Bond film (Dalton’s “License to Kill”)for this direct sequel (and this is the first Bond film to be a direct sequel to what went before)to “Casino Royale” but I have to give them kudos for being somewhat daring and playing with the formula. If you know that this doesn’t perfectly fit the predictable formula of other Bond films you’ll enjoy “Quantum of Solace” which is both something more and something less than it’s predecessors. ---

Image & Sound:

“Quantum of Solace” looks terrific in its Blu-ray transfer. Detail is strong and although I did see occasional bits of edge enhancement the movie has a nice film-like quality retaining film grain vs. being over processed. That’s a good thing. Audio sounds terrific with a robust 5.1 (why there isn’t a 7.1 is beyond me). Despite this shortcoming the 5.1 mix is more than up to the task for conveying all the thrilling audio detail particularly during the action sequences. ---

Did they hire somebody who hasn’t worked on extras for films a decade ago? That’s what it feels like with a group of special features that, well, aren’t all that special. This is the type of stuff we might have seen as the DVD format began to include “extras” for movies but what we have here is hopelessly out of date. Heck, there isn’t any BDLive material advertised with this disc. It’s as if MGM and Fox are living in the past and don’t feel the need to utilize the Blu-ray format to its best advantage. Taking the featurettes that played on the internet and adding them to the Blu-ray and/or DVD is cheap and the film deserves better. MGM needs to get its act together when it comes to this type of stuff. Fans are paying for the film and deserve better than this less than stellar collection of disappointing featurettes. ***

We get the “Another Way to Die” music video. I smell a double dip coming. Why? Because this is a single disc edition without any audio commentary tracks and while the extras are nice they are meager particularly when compared to the deluxe editions of “Casino Royale” and the older Bond films that were rolled out when this film premiered in theaters last year. ***

No big deal as far as I’m concerned since it’s probably one of the weaker Bond themes (nothing has come close to “Live and Let Die” or “Goldfinger” in the entire history of the series). Nothing against writer-performer Jack White (of The White Stripes) and Alicia Keyes but they are going to be measured against some of the most original and musically interesting themes for a film. It would be tough for anyone to measure up against the long tradition of strong Bond theme title theme songs. ***

“Bond on Location” is a standard featurette giving us behind-the-scenes footage and comments from cast and crew about the shooting of the film. *** “Olga Kurylenko and the Boat Chase” is another featurette showing how this thrilling sequence was put together. Again, it’s solid enough but you get the feeling that this is just an appitizer for a far more fulfilling meal. ***

“Director Marc Forster” focuses on the Forester’s approach to shooting the film and allows him to tell the audience what he hoped to achieve with this sequel to the pivotal film that rebooted the series. ***

“The Music” featurette is decent enough. We hear a bit about the score (one of the few post-John Barry scores that echo Barry’s work in a good way). ***

“Crew Files” cleverly uses the DVD and Blu-ray format by allowing you to hear and see a brief summary of what each person highlighted in this section did on the film. It’s probably the most innovative special feature here which goes to show you how disappointing the special features truly are. ***

We also get the theatrical teaser trailer and theatrical trailer. The good news is that the special features are in HD but the bad news is that they truly are “filler” and don’t amount to much running less than an hour combined.

Final Words: