The Something of Boris

I recently downloaded and watched through Quantum of Solace. It's not necessarily a bad film, but it's laden with hundreds of minor flaws and annoyances. I've tried to catalogue them all, chronologically, which was the easiest way.

I swear this is the last of my long posts.

The Short Version

• Most of the colours are shades of white, grey, black, brown, yellowy-brown, or beige
• Everybody wears suits, in the above colours
• The suit dress-code makes identifying and differentiating between certain characters difficult
  
• There are too many background characters given too much screen time and personality
• There are too many foreign locales given too much screen time
  
• There is too much product placement
• The dialogue is divided into:

- Exposition, which is confusing (60%)
- Witty banter, which is boring (20%)
- People talking about Bond's emotional strife, which is unconvincing (20%)

• Despite all the talk of emotions, nobody ever expresses any
  
• At times, the film assumes the audience remembers every detail of the previous film, while at other times it treats them like idiots
• There are vast tracts of action that don't need to be there
  
• The director then tries to hide as much of this action as possible, either by having shots that are too fast for the human eye to pick up, bad camera angles, shaky camera-work, or constantly cutting away to something else
• There are too many setpieces that feel exactly like what they are
  

The Very Short Version

"Rurr rurr rurr rurr. I'm Marc Forster. I'm a fucking dick."

The Very Long Version
(Note: It's probably not worth reading this unless you're watching Quantum of Solace and really bored)

00:59 - An admittedly exciting (loud) opening, but one which sets the tone for the rest of the film (i.e. it's a chase, and it looks like a car advert). First chase scene [car/car]

2:18 - Bond seamlessly drives from a mountain road to a quarry. Possible, but not overly likely. Setpiece. Reminiscent of the construction site scene from Casino Royale

3:10 - The third time in as many minutes that Bond has been heading towards a vehicle coming the other way down the road. He dodges out of the way again

4:00 - Intro song starts. It's debatable as to whether the vocals are weak and emotionless, but most of the lyrics sound like a shopping list ('A phone on a table'). Compare to Casino Royale's You Know My Name, which concisely forebodes the coming story

7:10 - Intro song ends. 3 minutes of graphics consisting mostly of Bond walking through a desert and occasionally firing poorly-rendered bullets at sand-dunes. Compare to Casino Royale's intro graphics, which consist of Bond shooting, knife-fighting, and punching a few dozen henchmen to death. Intro graphics appears to be set inside a spinning globe, which must have been scientifically designed to induce motion sickness

7:26 - "Hello Mitchell." Bond's address to what appears to be a faceless non-character raises a red flag. Admittedly I expected him to die soon

10:10 - Second chase scene [man/man] starts, 6 minutes after the last ended

10:34 - MI6 base of operations is apparently a medieval dungeon

10:42 - Chase scene inter-cut with scenes of non-related horse race, as if to reinforce the fact that this is a chase. This isn't necessary

11:40 - An anomalously-long shot of an old woman mourning the fact that the bad guy has just squashed her hanging crate of fruit and vegetables. What a nasty man he is

11:53 - Conveniently on a rooftop. Director seems determined to keep cutting back to the horse race

12:45 - Second chase scene ends. Excessive use of shakey cam, extremely brief shots, and the physical similarity between Bond and the man he's chasing has made the whole thing difficult to follow

16:25 - This different MI6 base of operations contrasts with the first in that it's set somewhere in the future. Magic table, the graphics of which were probably intended to complement the confusing and extensive exposition but instead distract from it. Somebody is in room 325... somewhere

18:00 - Bond in hotel room. Having seen the Bourne films, it's clear that a man is going to come bursting out of the glass panel to the right

18:14 - Confusing shaky-cam knife-fight

20:02 - A minor chase scene (barely counts)

21:31 - A very nice Sony Vaio hand-held device from the future

25:10 - A very nice Sony Erikson mobile phone, with future capabilities

28:00 - Third(?) chase scene [bike>boat/boat] starts

31:00 - Bond somehow uses an anchor to capsize an enemy's boat. The physics of this aren't made abundantly clear. If the anchor is attached to his own boat and to the enemy boat, it makes sense that both boats would be buggered

31:21 - Moody shot of Daniel Craig in a boat

31:26 - Slow-tilt over beautiful, exotic landscape, with appropriate exotic-landscape-music (violins)

31:58 - A very nice Sony Erikson mobile phone, with future capabilities

32:15 - Director continues to insist on showing the audience shot after shot of local/foreign people (i.e. slightly grotty people doing slightly unusual things). The constant one-word foreign exclamations in the background ('Osa!') are becoming annoying

32:25 - Magic MI6 wall of wonder. Why, in an Secret Intelligence Service, an organization that surely values Secret Intelligence over all else, would you display vital information on glass walls?

33:03 - Sony Erikson phone

33:08 - "I'm afraid there's a firewall around his other corporate holdings" Oh noes! If only we were some sort of Secret Intelligence Service specializing in acquiring hidden information.

33:25 - Introduction of Gregg Beam. He doesn't look suspicious at all.

Nope

34:14 - Is having the people back at MI6 standing around like turnips talking to a magic wall intended to illustrate the divide between the bureaucratic office-types and the practical Bond-types that actually get the work done? Because it just makes MI6 look like a bunch of fags

36:04 - Wow, a Sony Erikson flip phone. Pretty snazzy

37:14 - Sony Erikson etc

37:30 - I DON'T CARE ABOUT THE BACKGROUND ACTORS. THE BACKGROUND ACTORS ARE IN THE BACKGROUND FOR A GOOD REASON. BECAUSE I DON'T CARE ABOUT THEM. GTFO OF FOREGROUND

38:00 - This plinky-plonky, slow-violin music is really starting to get on my nerves

38:24 - Man, I thought that was naked torso'd Daniel Craig looking through those wardrobes. Was it bollocks. IT WAS A FRICKETY FRIG BACKGROUND ACTOR. GTFO

(I've lost impartiality and will take a break)

41:36 - Sony Erikson mobile phone saves the world from international terrorism with it's ultra high-definition camera and face recognition software

43:50 - Yet again the director feels it a good idea to constantly intercut action with shots of something he finds more important, in this case the opera Tosca, which nobody cares about. Nobody

45:58 - Tilt over beautiful, exotic landscape, with appropriate exotic-landscape-music (violins)

46:00 - Moody shot of Daniel Craig in a boat

46:06 - Pan over beautiful, exotic landscape, with appropriate exotic-landscape-music (violins)

46:10 - Moody shot of Daniel Craig in boat

46:14 - Tilt-and-pan over beautiful exotic landscape, with appropriate exotic-landscape-music (violins)

46:55 - "And since you were innocent, they bought you this villa." Not just exposition, needless expostion

48:00 - While watching this part, it became evident that the entire film is rendered in sun-bleached, washed-out, pastel colours and that I was developing snow blindness

49:00 - My second favourite section of dialogue in the entire film

*Bond and Mathis at a bar on a plane*
Bartender: May I fix you a drink, sir?
Mathis: (To Bond) What are you drinking?
Bond: I dunno. (To bartender) What am I drinking?
Bartender (In one of the twattiest voices, ham-handedly delivers the following): Three measures of Gordon's gin, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet, which is not vermouth! Shaken well until it is ice cold and served with a large, thin slice of lemon peel.
*the camera then cuts to the bartender, who has a punchable face and a big Vigin Airlines badge on his shirt*

50:35 - A woman who can't even act being an emotionless prude

51:10 - Lets all look at the silly foreign people. Everywhere is so crammed with so many background actors it's no wonder they're spilling over into the foreground

52:36 - There are only two types of building in this film - modern, sparsely decorated ones painted in white, black and beige, and grotty foreign ones chiseled out of beige sandstone. Just had the latter, so now we have the former. At least the woman has red hair, which brings a bit of colour

53:24 - Despite spending the last 52 minutes, 24 seconds moping and whining and carrying on over how much he mourns the loss of Vesper, Bond suddenly decides to have sex with prudish red-hair woman. Despite being only characterised as a emotionless prude, prudish woman decides to have sex with Bond

53:30 - The naked Daniel Craig torso shot that 38:24 wasn't

54:12 - Background actors. "Señor!" That one's even Spanish

54:38 - A building combining haughty, sparsely-decorated, beige modernness and grotty, foreign dilapidatism

58:17 - Henchman takes Home Alone-esque tumble down stairs. And he's wearing a toupee! Ha ha! This film is actually a lighthearted comedy

59:52 - Did James Bond just use Mathis, the only character I've found the least bit likable, as a meat shield?

1:01:30 - And then dumped him in a bin?

1:02:11 - Long pan of desert landscape, with appropriate desert-landscape-music (panpipes). Heave a weary, weary sigh

1:02:33 - "I would like to buy a vintage plane from you, as it's the only way of traversing desert terrain."

1:02:56 - It's been half an hour without a chase and the audience is starting to drift off. Quickly, get the music playing

1:05:00 - Fourth and final chase scene, and probably the director's favourite, as it also incorporates long shots of beige desert landscape and unnecessary foreign chatter

1:08:06 - Bond is a strong guy, yes, but I'm quite sure the amount of force just sent through his arms would have caused a dislocation or two. Unfortunately, the blurry, shaky, misplaced camera makes it difficult to accurately tell how Bond distributed the force of the sudden deceleration

1:08:09 - Glorious reds

1:08:23 - And blues

1:08:26 - And greens

1:08:27 - "What's today's excuse, that Bond is legally blind?" It's not even that the dialogue's attempts at wit fall flat, it's like they're not even trying. The whole film is like this

1:10:00 - Looks like a set out of Stargate Atlantis

1:13:20 - "Nada! Nada! Nada!" Just in case the audience is unclear that there is no water from the repeated image of a dripping tap

1:14:10 - A badly-acted toff couple look in disgust at Bond and Woman's disheveled appearance. What is this director's obsession with everybody except the main characters?

1:15:00 - Let's all talk about our emotions

1:16:19 - Blows to the legs and torso don't cause unconsciousness so efficiently

1:17:50 - Background actors, stealing a television. They live such rich and full lives

1:18:19 - Grottiest grott-hole yet. Is that prostitute on the steps texting? Why is she doing that? Does it have any relevance to the story?

1:18:39 - Foreign people, grotty foreign hovel, background actors washing dishes, playing cards and smoking cigars

1:20:02 - Automatic weapons are entirely non-threatening. With a pistol there's the possibility Bond might take a non-fatal wound; semi-automatics just make sparks and broken glass all over the place

1:21:00 - Thankfully, the final, overly-modern hotel of the film. Which gets blown-up, which is something

1:21:03 - My favourite section of dialogue:

*Generals on balcony of future hotel. A humming noise starts up.*
*General#1 looks around in curiousity*
General#2: It's just the fuel cells. The whole compound runs on them.
General#1: Sounds highly unstable. . .
*A few seconds of pause to let that sink in*

Not just unstable, highly unstable. Because South American dictator are experts on this kind of thing. My radiator hums; I don't tip-toe around it in fear that it's going to explode.

1:26:24 - There go those highly unstable fuel cells

1:29:30 - Woman goes from being strong female character who just avenged her family to a crying ball in matter of seconds. Bond to the rescue, with hugs

1:30:48 - Bond shoots gas-tank from inside a room to blow out a wall. Surely the wall would focus most of the explosion back into the room, instantly killing Bond and Woman

1:34:26 - Nice to see Bond actually express an emotion

1:37:30 - The end of an very, very long 97 minutes.