Bond moment

Quantum of Solace broke UK box office records on it’s opening weekend.  It is testament to the renewed strength of the 007 brand that, in the cinema on Sunday, I had three 15-year old girls sitting behind me.  This is an occurrence that the film studio could only have dreamt about in the dying days of Brosnan’s Bond, when the appeal of the agent had waned to a point lower than a hoof.

Casino Royale, with its fresh, realistic approach and a man under 40 in his pants (plus some clever marketing), captured a new audience for the franchise.  This latest instalment doesn’t disappoint, delivering some breathtaking fight scenes and a glance at Gemma Arterton’s back. 

However, unlike in Casino Royale, Bond’s brutality is not tempered by a fully developed romantic thread to the story and there is none of the agent’s trademark comic relief.  Although the final Brosnan instalment was bloated beyond comprehension, with overused catchphrases and gadgets that would have fitted better into a Harry Potter film (that invisible Aston…), I think Quantum of Solace may have gone a step too far in the other direction.

Those 15-year old girls were attracted by the complete package offered by Casino Royale and - unless Sony Pictures is responsible for permanently altering the female mind – they won’t stick around just to watch men blowing each other’s heads off.

So, the point’s been proven: Bond is back and he’s bloody mental.  But the next instalment needs to reintroduce some of the elements that made him so appealing in the first place.

Too big to be allowed

I don’t know what the weather is like outside; I’m not sure I even know what day it is. I am poised at an unnatural angle, with my head and neck craned to try and gasp clean air. But all the air is sweet and dusty and it makes me feel sick. Pressing against me from both sides are the foul bodies of men and women I have never seen before and will never see again.

I try to take my jumper off but my hands are held down against my thighs and I can’t lift them up. There is a bottle of water in my bag that no one else knows about. Even if I could reach it I don’t think I could tip my head far enough back to take a sip. Time seems to have slowed, and if I don’t escape soon I think I will die here; die here alone with these men and women who, it seems, are already only half-human.

Ah, I hate the tube. People only put up with the brutal conditions because, as a means of transport, the tube is so bloody brilliant. Imagine being whisked across the metropolis in a matter of minutes – underground! There must be a catch. Indeed, sir. The snag of every excursion is that you are required to rub your freshly flannelled face into the grotesque, sweaty breasts of the world’s most unclean man.

They should have showers at the exits, although any such sensible move to try and improve conditions of hygiene and comfort might make each tube station seem rather too much like a voluntary extermination chamber, used only by people who hoped they hadn’t survived the journey because now they have to go to the office.

London, on the whole, is rather ridiculous and if you think about it too hard it makes you laugh nervously. It’s like a weird experiment that’s gone on for too long and now it can’t be stopped. It and its people will just get bigger and dirtier until the whole corpulent mass finally implodes when everyone decides that, really, it would be better to live in a normal town and get home from work before 9pm.

But Shelley said that Hell is a city much like London and, 200 years on, everyone’s still here. Shelley must think we’re idiots. And Shelley didn’t even have to get the tube.