Bond is Bourne-again

OKAY, I have to admit it, nothing in the mainstream reviews of Quantum of Solace, the latest installment in the James Bond series, prepared me for the fact that I liked this movie.

I was planning on not seeing it at all and casually dismissed even talking about going to see it when it opened two weeks ago, but I'm glad I changed my mind. After all, if a film is this popular, there has to be something to it. Right? I wanted to see it for myself to figure out why it was so popular given that many important film critics, such as Roger Ebert, hated it.

Since its release, the enigmatically titled Quantum of Solace has made a huge amount of money--nearly $110 million and climbing. The popularity of film is partly due to the "new Bond" Daniel Craig, who made his debut in the 2006 version of Casino Royale. Much more importantly, however, is that the latest Bond films are clearly influenced by the Jason Bourne series starring Matt Damon.

Last year, Damon famously contrasted the character of Bourne with the old James Bond. "Bond is fundamentally different from Bourne," said Damon. "Bond is an establishment guy. He is a misogynist, an imperialist; he's all the things that Bourne isn't. He kills people then drinks a Martini."

There's no arguing that Bond kills a lot of people in Quantum without much conscience, but, at least, in this film Bond's loyalty to the intelligence establishment and Anglo-American imperialism is under serious strain.

Bond is Bourne-again and it makes for a more interesting movie. This is not just because the Bond series has adopted the Hong Kong film style of martial arts--that the Bourne series still does much better--but they have added a dose of reality to the plot that appeals to an audience that has lived through the disastrous Bush era.

Quantum leaves off where Casino Royale ended. He pursues and captures Mr. White, the man the responsible for the death of his lover Vesper Lynd. Bond turns him over to M, but both are nearly killed by an act of betrayal by one of her bodyguards and White escapes. White is a mid-level operative in a mysterious, high-tech sounding, crime organization called Quantum, which has replaced SPECTRE as Bond's main nemesis.

One of the leading figures in Quantum is Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), the head of Greene Planet, a phony philanthropic outfit that scours the planet buying up endangered landscape ostensibly to protect the environment from corporate plunder, but really to foster corporate plunder of oil and other valuable natural resources.

Bond's search for Quantum leads him straight into the real-life "water wars" of Bolivia and a direct clash with the CIA. Quantum is buying up land in the high desert of Bolivia, telling the CIA that oil is there for the Americans. They need the CIA's help to overthrow the Bolivian government and install right-wing General Medrano in power.

The real money-making natural resource, however, that lies underneath the Bolivia's high desert is water, which Medrano has agreed to give to Quantum at dirt-cheap prices. Quantum's goal is to resell the water back to Bolivia after the coup at extortion rates. Bond thwarts the plot with help of Bolivian secret service agent Camille (Olga Kurylenko), whose family was murdered by Medrano in a previous coup attempt.

NOT THE kind of plot you expect in a Bond film, and it's a refreshing change.

A lot of this is due to a generational change in those making the Bond films. Barbara Broccoli and her brother Michael Wilson are the producers of the Bond series; their father Cubby was the longtime Bond producer until his death in 1996.

They hired Marc Foster, who previously directed Monster's Ball, Stranger than Fiction and the Kite Runner, to direct Quantum. Paul Haggis, who directed and wrote Crash, contributed to the screenplay. Haggis is also co-founder of Artists for Peace and Justice and the Environmental Media Association. He also donated $2,100 to the Dennis Kucinich campaign for president, the most liberal of all candidates in the Democratic primaries.

Clearly, liberal politics is creeping into the Bond films. What this will mean for Bond films during the Obama era will be interesting to see.

The Bourne-again Bond may be popular with audiences but not with the dean of American film critics, Roger Ebert. Your can feel his spit and venom flying off the page when you read his column. "Never again," declared Ebert. "Don't ever let this happen again to James Bond."

His first gripe is that he doesn't like Bond being turned into an "action hero," but I remember there being a lot of action in all the Bond films. So I don't get it. Then he really reveals himself. "We fondly remember the immortal names of Pussy Galore, Xenia Onatopp and Plenty O'Toole, who I have always suspected was a drag queen. In this film, who do we get? Are you ready for this? Camille. That's it. Camille. Not even Camille Squeal. Or Cammy Miami. Or Miss O'Toole's friend Cam Shaft." This could be dismissed as juvenile, if it wasn't so nauseating.

Finally, it's that dose of reality in Quantum's plot that really irks Ebert. He writes:

In pursuit of a global villain, whose name is not Goldfinger, Scaramanga, Drax or Le Chiffre, but... Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric). What is Dominic's demented scheme to control the globe? As a start, the fiend desires to corner the water supply of...Bolivia. Ohooo! Nooo!

Maybe control of a Latin American country's water supply as a story isn't a sexy enough story for Ebert. But for the vast majority of us who have witnessed so many catastrophes over the last decade, it's a refreshing change.

How long will Bond be Bourne-again? I'm not sure, but it is a good sign of the times that even a popular fictional character like James Bond has had travel from being a misogynist pig and an enthusiast for Anglo-American power to fighting the CIA and corporate destruction of the planet to keep the audiences coming into the theaters.