When Quantum of Solace hit theaters this past November, it was met with a fierce critical drubbing for being too frenetic, too downbeat, too un-Bond. All salient points that deserve attention; in many ways it feels like an indie Bond made on the quick to let out some aggression in between grander, more satisfying efforts. And I concede that the first twenty minutes borders on the unwatchable with enough incomprehensible action to suggest that Bond is the progeny rather than the progenitor of Bourne. But I choose to turn a blind eye on its flaws because Quantum of Solace and its superior brethren Casino Royale do something that no other Bond films do: engage me both viscerally and cerebrally.
For me, the movie begins when Bond is picked up by Olga Kurykov’s Camille who notices a tail and asks sarcastically, "Friend of yours?" Bond responds, "I don't have friends." In any other iteration of Bond, the line would be merely a quip but with Daniel Craig's Bond, it's an insight into his personality. From that scene on the film can be viewed as a meditation on friendship: Can it exist within business / politics? Can you have an enemy if you're not capable of having a friend? What’s the difference between a friend and a lover? I couldn't believe how many times the word friend or friendship is uttered throughout the film: Mathis, Felix, M, Camille, Vesper's Ex, etc. I haven't heard the term friend used with such frequency since I saw River's Edge.
In the film’s penultimate scene, Bond interrogates Vesper's ex and when he notices a woman wearing the same necklace Vesper had worn he states, "I have one just like it… He gave it to a friend of mine, someone very close to me.” In a sense, the film begins with Bond rejecting the notion of friendship and ends with him accepting not only the possibility but the existence of a friend. Of course, this is certainly not a healthy understanding of friendship, as the friend in question is now deceased and their relationship was built upon duplicity.
Perhaps a cold war nut can find just as satisfying an analysis of For Your Eyes Only or a sci-fi guru can gleefully dissect the intricacies of Moonraker but for my money, Quantum of Solace is the most thought provoking Bond entry yet. Does that make it the first Bond movie to play better in the classroom than on the big screen?
