motivated by duty, motherfucker.
Nov. 15th, 2008 08:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quigonejinnQUANTUM OF SOLACE: NOT AS SMOOTH AS CASINO ROYALE, BUT PRETTY FUCKING AWESOME. AND POSSIBLY THE GREATER MOVIE.
Dude, if Tobias Menzies had continued that bit role as Villiers, I think I would have shit myself with glee.
In fact, on more sober reflection, I'm pretty sure that QoS is, in fact, he deeper, truer movie. It was easy for CR to hit the emotional high points because, hello, it's an origin story, and hello, it has the big booms and life-shifting events. QoS, on the other hand, is about living through all that still space after something awful happens, about moving past it and through it, and Craig really, really shines at giving Bond depth. And Dench is fearsomely good as M. There were false notes, yeah, but there is this bit with M and Bond in the London apartment of her bodyguard? Man, Bond and M. I love them. And I love the subtle, wonderful way this movie builds the sense of their relationship, and how deeply-seated it is. I mean, really, in a way, the movie is about how M is the only woman with a steady presence in Bond's life: he has developing friendship with Leiter, yes, but that moment at the hotel when he comes back and says to M that they're going to see this through?
I THOUGHT THEY WERE GOING TO GO ADVENTURING TOGETHER. CRAZY AND NON-STANDARD BOND AS IT WOULD HAVE BEEN, A WILD LITTLE BUBBLE OF JOY ROSE IN MY HEART AT THE PROSPECT.
Also, I enjoyed both the girls in this. Intensely. Amazingly. I want Strawberry Fields fic, man, about how excited she is to finally get to do something in the field and use the field school training she has. And that bit where Bond grates out that she showed true courage -- because yeah, she leaves the party, knowing that she is being followed all the way back to the hotel. Maybe the plan is that she is going to go to the hotel, leave a message for Bond, and then run for the MI-6 station safe house. She writes that message, knowing they're two steps behind her, and hands it over to the desk clerk. And then they show up, put a gun to her back, and tell her, softly, in the ear that she should go upstairs now. And she goes because she is young and inexperienced and terrified and not James Bond she lets herself be taken upstairs. Ormaybe, they grab her on the way out of the party, and they take her back to the hotel. She knows they're going to kill her at the hotel, as a message to Bond, so she asks if she can leave a message to him -- they aren't interested in killing him, just warning him off. And they're going to get her body to warn him off either way, so what does it matter if she does?
And then she goes up those stairs.
Notice how she isn't wearing any clothes, at least as far as we can see through the motor oil? And there isn't really any oil in the white room afterwards. They have to have put down plastic and/or taken her to the bathroom. Told her to take off her clothes, and she's terrified because she thinks it means they're going to rape her -- maybe they do -- and then, afterwards, they start coating her with the motor oil.
(The really awful theory is that the Americans killed her. *_* I'd like to think that the rules of the game would , but yeah, maybe that's why Leiter is so grim? Or they knew that she was going to be killed by Greene and his boys. And M knows it, too, and doesn't tell Bond because she knows how close he'll come to flying off the handle, but.Yeah. Yeah.)
And Bond's progression -- how he uses more and more mindfuckery. The Tosca bit (and how Mr. White keeps his nerve?). The way he leaves Greene to either kill himself or dangle in the wind. And.
And Camille. *_* Cammilllllllllllllllle. *__*
I mean, I'm a little sad that she couldn't kill the dude and get out of there herself, but man, man, she was so. So. *_* I love the way her story spools out, really, and that moment when you see her in the Converses and the tank top and shirt and the. With Bond talking to her about how to do it because it's personal this time? I was wondering when, exactly, he acquired so much knowledge about killing personally, because he never got to kill Mr. White (!!!!!!!!!). But. Yeah. Thoughts? Am I totally missing something huge?
Dude, if Tobias Menzies had continued that bit role as Villiers, I think I would have shit myself with glee.
In fact, on more sober reflection, I'm pretty sure that QoS is, in fact, he deeper, truer movie. It was easy for CR to hit the emotional high points because, hello, it's an origin story, and hello, it has the big booms and life-shifting events. QoS, on the other hand, is about living through all that still space after something awful happens, about moving past it and through it, and Craig really, really shines at giving Bond depth. And Dench is fearsomely good as M. There were false notes, yeah, but there is this bit with M and Bond in the London apartment of her bodyguard? Man, Bond and M. I love them. And I love the subtle, wonderful way this movie builds the sense of their relationship, and how deeply-seated it is. I mean, really, in a way, the movie is about how M is the only woman with a steady presence in Bond's life: he has developing friendship with Leiter, yes, but that moment at the hotel when he comes back and says to M that they're going to see this through?
I THOUGHT THEY WERE GOING TO GO ADVENTURING TOGETHER. CRAZY AND NON-STANDARD BOND AS IT WOULD HAVE BEEN, A WILD LITTLE BUBBLE OF JOY ROSE IN MY HEART AT THE PROSPECT.
Also, I enjoyed both the girls in this. Intensely. Amazingly. I want Strawberry Fields fic, man, about how excited she is to finally get to do something in the field and use the field school training she has. And that bit where Bond grates out that she showed true courage -- because yeah, she leaves the party, knowing that she is being followed all the way back to the hotel. Maybe the plan is that she is going to go to the hotel, leave a message for Bond, and then run for the MI-6 station safe house. She writes that message, knowing they're two steps behind her, and hands it over to the desk clerk. And then they show up, put a gun to her back, and tell her, softly, in the ear that she should go upstairs now. And she goes because she is young and inexperienced and terrified and not James Bond she lets herself be taken upstairs. Ormaybe, they grab her on the way out of the party, and they take her back to the hotel. She knows they're going to kill her at the hotel, as a message to Bond, so she asks if she can leave a message to him -- they aren't interested in killing him, just warning him off. And they're going to get her body to warn him off either way, so what does it matter if she does?
And then she goes up those stairs.
Notice how she isn't wearing any clothes, at least as far as we can see through the motor oil? And there isn't really any oil in the white room afterwards. They have to have put down plastic and/or taken her to the bathroom. Told her to take off her clothes, and she's terrified because she thinks it means they're going to rape her -- maybe they do -- and then, afterwards, they start coating her with the motor oil.
(The really awful theory is that the Americans killed her. *_* I'd like to think that the rules of the game would , but yeah, maybe that's why Leiter is so grim? Or they knew that she was going to be killed by Greene and his boys. And M knows it, too, and doesn't tell Bond because she knows how close he'll come to flying off the handle, but.Yeah. Yeah.)
And Bond's progression -- how he uses more and more mindfuckery. The Tosca bit (and how Mr. White keeps his nerve?). The way he leaves Greene to either kill himself or dangle in the wind. And.
And Camille. *_* Cammilllllllllllllllle. *__*
I mean, I'm a little sad that she couldn't kill the dude and get out of there herself, but man, man, she was so. So. *_* I love the way her story spools out, really, and that moment when you see her in the Converses and the tank top and shirt and the. With Bond talking to her about how to do it because it's personal this time? I was wondering when, exactly, he acquired so much knowledge about killing personally, because he never got to kill Mr. White (!!!!!!!!!). But. Yeah. Thoughts? Am I totally missing something huge?
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-15 04:23 pm (UTC)I loved that the plot was about the corporate take over and control of water, because hello, that's very, very topical and very ignored in the American press. And how they can do it while putting forth a fake "green" agenda as cover.
I felt they earned Bond's rescue of Camille at the end, because a)they'd set up that she witnessed a horrific act and had the house burn down around her earlier, so her fear was justified, not some hysterical woman act and b)they let her have agency in both the revenge and in asking Bond to kill her because she didn't want to die by burning.
And notice that Bond finds a way to save the girl this time, where he couldn't with Vesper, and that the means of death was the exact opposite of Vesper's - fire. So I think saving her was important character wise for Bond - because he really could care less who dies for most of the film, and sacrificed Fields in the same way he sacrificed that first woman in CR (forgot her name). And this time he saved a woman who he didn't have a romantic attachment to and didn't expect one. He saved her for the same reason he would have saved M or Felix or Mathes in a similar position - he saw her as an equal.
And Bond sitting holding Mathes (oh, as well as Bond wrapping himself around Camille) was such an echo of Bond sitting and holding Vesper in the shower. This Bond seems to only be able to really show his humanity in physical gestures like that, which I love about him because it's so right for the character.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-17 01:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-19 07:26 am (UTC)The whisper of collateral damage throughout the entire film kills me, just kills me. Maybe I'm reading way too much into this but augh. Loved all those points with children or dogs, someone (who?) shot in Palio, a broken box of cherries. There were parts of the movie that could have been tighter, directed or edited with a defter hand, but man did I ever love that aspect.
And Camille. And Fields. And M. And just. I am so inarticulate at this precise moment, but I have to say I loved how... okay, non-sexual isn't the right word (this is a Bond movie, hello), but it was almost hyper-sexual without it meaning anything whatsoever. A friend of mine commented that there was a surprising lack of sexy tiem, but I really appreciate how it was just Field's bare back and one kiss, Bond and Camille, tasting of grit and desert, perfunctory and needy and sad and tired and lonely and the look in his eye that says he doesn't know where she's going, but at least he knows she's going somewhere.