`Quantum of Solace` 10-minute preview screening reviewed (spoilers)
11-Oct-2008 • Quantum Of Solace
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Warning: The 'review' of the previews contains spoilers.
MI6 Note: The order of the footage reviewed by AICN is not the order it appears in the final film. For instance, the scene with Vesper's ex-lover Yusef in his love nest in Russia takes place near the end of the movie.
I'm not 100 percent certain what footage we saw can be considered spoiler material and what isn't, but let's wrap a big blanket SPOILER WARNING around this whole report, okay? I won't give too much away, but the footage opens quietly, with a young attractive couple entering a room. Bond is waiting for them, gun in hand and angrily tells them to "Sit down!" He asks the woman her name, and she say "Corrine." He dismisses her by saying to tell "your people" to checks their seals, they have a leak. Then says that he and her male friend have some unfinished business to attend to (this line is in the new trailer).
The scene quickly transitions to a car chase, guns a-blazing, through a series of tunnels. A title card then tells us the action is moving to Siena, Italy, where Bond, M, and a couple of other agents are interrogating Mr. White, the man Bond captured at the end of CASINO ROYALE. He looks like he's been a tad bit tortured. This is similar to the sequence in the trailer. He's laughing at them and saying that the first thing Bond needs to realize is that "we have people everywhere." What we don't see in the trailer is the next line Mr. White delivers to one of the unknown figures in the room: "Am I right?" Suddenly a gun battle erupts and seems to lead Bond and whoever is shooting at him into a foot chase in a sewer system.
A great deal of the footage we saw was extended out from what we see in the newest trailer. But many of the action sequences (I think I counted six or seven such sequences represented in the 10 minutes; and remember the film is only about 100 to 105 minutes long) were new to me. There's a brutal knife vs. glass shard fight between Bond and a mystery man, which leads to the moment in the trailer where Bond meets Camille (Olga Kurylenko), who believes Bond is the man he's just disposed of. As they drive away, Bond opens the case to reveal a gun and a photo of Camille. This sequence is also in the trailer when Bond casually makes mention to Camille that it would appear someone wants her dead. Someone she gets Bond out of the car and she arrives at the lair of Dominic Greene (the great French actor Mathieu Amalric), who is clearly surprised to see her still alive.
There's plenty of M (Judy Dench) footage as well, as she tries fruitlessly to reign in Bond, rather than allow him to seek revenge on the people responsible for the death of his one true love. We also see a few other familiar faces in the trailer, including René Mathis (Giancarlo Giannini) from CASINO ROYALE and Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright), which shouldn't come as any surprise since this film begins 10 minutes after CASINO ROYALE ends.
A bit of the old Bond sexiness reappears when a woman from the consulate appears to take him back to London on the next available flight, which happens to be the following morning. "Well, then we have all night," he says to the sexy redhead (or should I say bed head?), played by Gemma Arterton. Greene and Bond seem to keep getting thrown in with each other on a couple of occasions. The best line from the trailer?
Greene: "My friends call me Dominic."
Bond: "I'm sure they do."
Zing! Greene seems way too familiar with Bond's personal and professional history. "Everything he touches withers and dies," he says to Camille.
There's one sequence in which Bond prepares Camille to take a life that is so loaded with tension that it seems out of place in the action-heavy film. He talks about the listening to the adrenaline versus remembering your training, and it's such a great speech that it reminds you we are dealing with the single greatest pure actor to ever play James Bond.
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