Quantum of Solace, Blu-ray (2008)

by | Mar 26, 2009 | DVD & Blu-ray Video Reviews | 0 comments

Quantum of Solace, Blu-ray (2008)

Starring: Daniel Craig, Olga Kurylenko, Giancarlo Gianini, Judi Dench
Studio: Fox [Release date: Mar. 24, 09]
Video: 2.40:1 anamorphic/enhanced for 16:9, 1080p HD
Audio: English DS-HD Master Audio 5.1, Spanish/French/Portuguese DD 5.1
Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish, Cantonese, Portuguese, Korean, Mandarin
Extras: “Another Way to Die” music video, Bond On Location featurette, Start of Shooting featurette, On Location featurette, Olga Kurylenko and the Boat Chase featurette, Director Mark Forster featurette, The Music featurette, Crew Files/Behind the Scenes clips, Theatrical and teaser trailers
Length: 106 minutes
Rating: *****

The second James Bond film with Daniel Craig takes up right where the first one – Casino Royale – concluded.  Some of the known faces are back. He’s out to find the baddies that put his love in the first one up to double-crossing him (she drowned in Venice, remember?) and nothing will stop his quest.  Things get underway with a bang – well, many bangs – a wild car chase thru partially-open tunnels along a European lake. Bond meets Camille, who works for the Bolivian secret service, and she leads him to this Bond movie’s main villain, Dominic Greene – played by an actor who looks like the young Roman Polanski (but he doesn’t cut anybody’s nose).  Greene is pretending to run a charitable organization devoted to saving the worlds’ environment, when in fact he is taking control of the most important natural resource in the world.

The film hops and skips around the world to many exotic locations, as per most of the Bond films. Included are Bolivia, Haiti, Italy, Austria and Russia.  The extras reveal that a location in Panama served as stand in for some of the South American locations. One scene during a modern-dress performance of Tosca in Bergenz is terrific, with Bond breaking into a discussion during the opera among the various baddies using special earbuds, and then fighting with those dispatched to do in the guy who disrupted their secret meeting, intercut with Tosca stabbing Scarpia in Tosca.  There are also some great shots of a 700-year-old pageant in Sienna Italy involving horse racing. I think this is one of the best Bond films so far.  There are few totally implausible parts as some of the older efforts. The Blu-ray transfer seems to have no faults, and full use is made of the lossless DTS surround soundtrack.

 – John Sunier