Source: Globe and Mail


LONDON -- Perhaps Friday the 13th isn't the most sensible day to be on the set of Quantum of Solace, especially considering that the British media have spent months dubbing it "The Cursed James Bond Movie." Numerous accidents and production mishaps have led superstitious minds to blame the film's Halloween release date in Britain as the cause.

The cast and crew are downplaying the supposed jinx, but on this June day, there's an air of trepidation on the Pinewood Studios set, as it's the last day of principal photography, and also the most dangerous. "So far I've been lucky, but something could definitely happen today," jokes acclaimed French actor Mathieu Amalric (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), who plays Quantum's villain Dominic Greene. "In fact, even my mother called me this morning and said, 'Be careful today Mathieu - remember it's Friday the 13th!' "

Amalric has reason for concern, as does Daniel Craig. The enormous soundstage is engulfed in flames and ear-piercing pyrotechnic explosions for the climactic showdown between Greene and Bond, with the two engaged in a brutal and bloody axe-wielding battle while the villain's Bolivian lair - a colossal multistorey structure - collapses around them in a downpour of fiery wreckage. Greene swings wildly at Bond as the two grapple for the weapon along a dangling catwalk.

Finally director Marc Forster yells "Cut!" and sprints up to the catwalk to confer with Craig and Amalric, both actors dripping sweat and flame-retardant gel as they pause to catch their breath. The surrounding inferno is momentarily extinguished as they discuss the pivotal next sequence - whether Bond will allow Greene to live or die.

"History is moving pretty quickly these days and the heroes and villains keep on changing places," wrote Ian Fleming in his 1953 James Bond novel Casino Royale. That line echoes profoundly throughout Quantum of Solace as an embittered Bond struggles with his quest for vengeance over the betrayal and death of his true love Vesper Lynd (played by Eva Green in Casino Royale). It has transformed him into the same sort of merciless, cold-blooded killers he's fighting.

"There's a real internal conflict going on within him," explains Craig of Bond's self-destructive plight, "because he soon finds that everything he understood about the world has been turned upside down. What we set in motion in the last film escalates much further."

It's why Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson - daughter and stepson, respectively, of original Bond producer Cubby Broccoli - insisted on the film's enigmatic title, which some felt would leave filmgoers stumped and hinder the film's marketability. "It's an original Fleming title and it's very appropriate in telling the journey Bond is on in this film," Broccoli explains over afternoon tea in her Pinewood Studios office. "There was such a big brouhaha about using Quantum of Solace," she admits, rolling her eyes, "but everybody seems to have calmed down and accepted it."

Craig enthusiastically agrees with Broccoli. "Believe me, we had plenty of suggestions for snappy titles that would've looked good on the poster," he says, "but this title is meant to confuse a little, to make you wonder. Ian Fleming always has a very emotional line through his books, and Quantum of Solace is quite a moving story for him - it debates relationships and how they hurt."

"I think it comes from the way Fleming was feeling in his personal life at the time," adds Craig. "What he suggests is

"I mean, if you're going to make a commercial film, then why not do the crown jewel of them all, and that's James Bond."

that if you don't have that 'quantum of solace' in your relationship, you should give up. It's that level of comfort, and at the end of the last movie, Bond doesn't have that because the love of his life was taken away from him."

Picking up exactly 20 minutes from where Casino Royale left off, Quantum of Solace - which premieres Wednesday at the London Film Festival and opens across North America on Nov. 14 - is the first true sequel in the 22-film, 46-year history of the James Bond franchise. Discovering that the shadowy organization known as Quantum was behind the blackmailing of Vesper, Bond realizes that the nefarious organization's tentacles reach far and wide, with their double agents inserted deep within the British Government, MI6 and the CIA.

As Bond circumnavigates the globe, from Chile, Peru and Panama to Spain, Italy and Austria, he finally uncovers a pivotal link with the apparently benign, eco-friendly philanthropist Dominic Greene, who, as chairman of Greene Planet, is in fact secretly fronting Quantum's plans for a Bolivian coup to seize control of South America's water supply.

"The core of this movie is that today's world is so complicated that you don't know who the good guys or the bad guys are any more," Forster says as the crew busily prepares for the last scene of what has been a gruelling six-month shoot.

"Even the good guys, who first come into power and hope to change things for the better, always end up somehow corrupted," he explains. "And that's what I found fascinating about the character of Dominic Greene. He supposedly stands for the new green planet, but even when you look at the ads of big corporations, like Shell or Esso, they're all pretending to be green, but it's all really in the interest of capitalism. And I find that duplicity well worth exploring. Because even with Bond, you don't know if he's a good guy or a bad guy - there's so much shady overlap."

For Craig, delving into those darker realms was necessary for this 21st-century evolution of the character. "We all know Bond has a real love for life's best, but he's also extremely ruthless," explains Craig, who says he went back and re-read all of Fleming's novels during production of Quantum of Solace. "So having those two aspects of Bond's personality knocking off each other is extremely interesting. The remorse that he has - and doesn't have - about certain things I think is quite fascinating, so I've really tried to inject more of that into this film."

It's the same moral ambiguity that Amalric found refreshing in Greene. "The idea that the villain doesn't seem to be a villain to the rest of the world is far more frightening," he says. When Broccoli and Wilson gambled their family legacy and the trademark fantasy formula by reinventing Bond with Daniel Craig for the darker and grittier Casino Royale, the uproar from the media and Bond purists was ferocious. But the payoff turned out to be a $600-million jackpot and Casino Royale is now one of the most revered films of the entire series.

Their latest risk was hiring Marc Forster to helm Quantum of Solace. Better known for his low-budget, intimate character dramas like the critically-acclaimed Finding Neverland, The Kite Runner, and Monster's Ball, Forster admits he was surprised when he was approached to direct the $200-million Bond epic.

He says he originally turned down the offer, but was won over by the creative control offered to him by Broccoli and Wilson. "They said they really wanted to push the series even further with a real storyteller, and they wanted my vision," explains the soft-spoken, German-born filmmaker. "And being able to also explore the fascinating psychology of the beginnings of James Bond was a real plus, as well as working with Daniel, who is such an interesting actor." While the film delves into Bond's tortured psyche, its actions scenes are, if anything, even more intense and frenetic than those of Casino Royale, complete with surprise "winks" paying homage to the Bond legacy.

Before Forster is summoned back to the set, he recalls what finally persuaded him to make the big leap: "I remembered reading a quote from Orson Welles who said his biggest regret in life was that he never got to make a commercial film. And to be quite honest, that's finally what pushed me over the edge.

"I mean, if you're going to make a commercial film, then why not do the crown jewel of them all," chuckles Forster. "And that's James Bond."