heelers reviews the new bond film

The new James Bond film Quantum Of Solace opens with a trademark pre-credit action sequence, clearly intended, as is the tradition in the Bond series, to whet the audience's appetite for more.
The scene begins mundanely enough but quickly switches to maximum tempo.
We see the famous Agent 007 sitting boredly in his seat on a long haul flight from Australia.
He is enduring the typical flyer's nightmare.
The passenger in the seat beside him is a High Court Judge who insists on making the most insufferably monotonous conversation throughout the flight.
You can tell Bond thinks he's a crushing bore.
"In all the furore over Bush's War On Terror," the Judge opines, "we run the risk of forgetting altogether about human rights."
At this moment there is a great commotion in the back of the plane.
Shouts of "Allah U Akbar" ring out.
Five terrorists are running up the aisle towards the cockpit.
Bond leaps into action grappling with the lead terrorist.
The British secret agent is thrown backwards against the cockpit door.
The terrorist grabs the High Court Judge and puts a knife to his throat.
The other terrorists look on laughing.
Bond addresses the High Court Judge.
"Should I read them their rights?"
This is possibly the funniest line in any Bond film and it contains a subtle message for the viewers.
The Judge gurgles something incomprehensible.
Bond and the lead terrorist lock eyes.
The terrorist is laughing but there is a tinge of fear in his laughter.
"You know what?" sez Bond.
"What?" sneers the terrorist.
"Allah isn't really that Akbar," sez Bond.
He pulls his gun and shoots the five terrorists.
There's no clever manoeuvring. No more chit chat. He just shoots them.
With insolent skill.
A bullet for each.
Right between the eyes.
All five go down.
Bond sits back in his seat.
The Judge faints.
An adorable air hostess approaches.
"Meesthair Bont," she says breathlessly. "You are amazing. If there's anything I can get you. Anything..."
Bond says: "A dry martini on the rocks, shaken not stirred."
And the opening theme music kicks in.
The sequence sets the tone for the rest of the movie.
Political correctness and its attendant appeasement seem to have been set aside.
The theme music itself uses the classic James Bond riffs which we have become familiar with from other films in the series, overlaid with some excellent stylised synth rapping by an Irish group called Twenty Major.
Vocalist Joe Fagan sings without apparent irony:

"I'm double oh seven baby.
I don't mean maybe.
You wanna make jihad baby.
I'd advise you against.
Oh the price of liberty
Might be death baby,
But I'm telling you baby,
It's worth the expense.
Cos freedom baby,
Yeah freedom baby,
Freedom baby,
You know freedom makes sense.
And the price of an apple,
Yeah the price of an apple,
The price of an apple,
Is oh twenty cents.
Yeah the price of an apple baby,
Is oh twenty cents."

I liked this Bond theme. It had a certain random je ne sais quoi. A certain chutzpah. And it didn't care who knew it.
The film rolls along at breakneck speed.
Daniel Craig as Bond is more than adequate at conveying vengeful grittiness.
The main body of the plot concerns his discovery that the chief of Al Qaeda in London is working with the Iranians on a plan to detonate suitcase nuclear weapons in cities all over Britain and Ireland.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown, ably and seditiously played by Stephen Fry, tells the secret agent: "My hands are tied. Unless you have proof, I can't send Britain to war with the Islamic Republic of Iran. And even if you did have proof, I'm not sure what we could do."
Bond goes rogue.
Tracking down Islamic terror cells around the British isles and giving them the sort of justice they normally dish out to innocent civilians.
There's one great scene where Bond enters a Pakistani cafe in Houndslow.
His wire tap sources have tipped him off that a group of Al Qaeda operatives are meeting there.
We overhear some of the terrorists' conversation before Bond enters.
"We should bomb CNN," suggests a patched eyed Afghan psycho. "Let the decadent western media burn in the hell of their own imperialist lies."
"Are you mad?" replies an evil moustachioed Libyan caricature. "CNN, Sky News, the BBC, Channel Four, NBC, CBS, and ABC are our friends and allies. They are winning this war for us on the home front."
James Bond arrives and stands before them in his Savile Row suit, incongruously confident in the cafe's infernal interior. About ten of the most dangerous looking villains ever assembled on screen gather around him.
One of the terrorists says: "I theenk maybe you haff come into the wrong cafe infidel dog."
Bond says: "No. Actually. I like it here..."
Then there's a positive conflagration of shooting.
When the smoke clears all the terrorists are expiring.
Bond finishes the sentence he'd begun before the bullets started flying.
"...it's got that authentic Middle Eastern atmosphere."
He walks up to the counter.
A thuggish Al Qaeda tea boy looks at him with horror.
"Who are you?" hisses the tea boy. "What do you want with us?"
Bond sits at a table amid the carnage.
"I'll have a cafe latte," he murmurs drolly a la Roger Moore. "And don't spit in it or I'll shoot you in the balls."
The humour here is that the entire audience has seen Al Qaeda Junior licking his lips as he moved to the latte machine, and we just know he was thinking about it.
It's moments like this that ensure Quantum Of Solace will be remembered for a long time.
But the real fun is that for once we're getting an action film which has proper villains.
Could you imagine Bond films of the 1960's and 1970's without the Cold War Russians as the bad guys?
Yet even after Nine Eleven, neither Bond nor any other action hero went into battle against the Jihadi's.
No action film in the past seven years has featured a clear depiction of Muslim terrorists getting their come uppance. This is simply because modern film makers, unlike film makers during World War Two or the Cold War, don't want to risk endangering themselves by making a stand against our enemies.
They feel much safer making cheap anti American films than making something that might cause offence to Al Qaeda.
Thankfully, Quantum Of Solace rectifies this omission.
It was about time.
There are some rip roaring set piece action scenes as Bond, now an out and out rogue agent, careens around the British isles sending terrorists home to Allah. Meanwhile he is being pursured with equal fervour by British Intelligence and by Al Qaeda.
There's also a nice touch of irony as we see media reports accusing M15 of operating a shoot to kill policy every time Bond despatches a terrorist cell.
Of course the Al Qaeda terrorists as portrayed in this film are so obviously monstrous that you can be in no doubt they deserve every bullet the renegade British agent sends their way.
There is a high octane political sub plot as Bond almost inadvertently gets to the full truth about Iran's Al Qaeda connections.
I hope I'm not giving too much away if I tell you that he finds out Osama Bin Laden is hiding in the city of Isfahan, a personal guest of Iran's Qud's Force.
Bond comes in from the cold when he gets this information. He telephones Brit Intelligence and informs them they can find their rogue agent at Ten Downing Street where he'll willingly hand himself over.
He's not there really.
He's gone straight to the Prime Minister's country home for a personal confrontation.
Evading the security with ease Bond confronts Gordon Brown in his drawing room.
Again Stephen Fry exercises all his actorly, and indeed comedic, nous in conveying the moral dilemmas of Gordon Brown.
"I can't attack Iran," he tells Bond. "No one can. The Iranians have a secrete memorandum of understanding with Putin's Russia. We know Bin Laden is in Isfahan. But I tell you our hands our tied."
Now the film enters moderately controversial territory.
Bond eludes the security guards summoned by Gordon Brown.
He infiltrates Exeter Missile Base a la Milk Tray Man, and locks himself in the main control room.
He's looking at a real time satelite video image of Osama Bin Laden and his entourage fleeing Isfahan.
The Exeter security staff are hammering at the control room door.
Bond's finger is hovering over the firing button of a nuclear missile targeted on the satelite image which is playing out on the screen.
He'd stolen the launch codes as he fled Gordon Brown's office.
Even on the grainy satelite image the audience can see Bin Laden's grinning face and the adulation of those around him.
Bond fires the missile.
The security men burst in and shoot him.
It has to be the bleakest ending to any Bond film.
But Bond isn't dead.
The camera cuts to a tropical island.
Bond is there with his wounds bandaged.
He's okay.
The security men, with their typical British sense of fair play, only shot to wound him.
Bond is on the beach.
Recuperating.
The camera pans away and we behold the shrouded form of a woman creeping catlike towards him. Her body is shrouded because it has been entirely garbed in the head to toe covering known as a Burkha. This sort of clothing is characteristic of the more extreme forms of traditional Islam. We can't see much but we can tell she's catlike alright. And the smart money is on lithe and lissom.
We just know she's an Al Qaeda assassin.
She steps forward in front of Bond.
He looks up, caught completely off guard.
She allows the Burkha to fall to her feet.
She is now wearing a smile and a rather fetching array of Victoria's Secret lingerie.
Not since Ursula Andress stepped out of the sea in her leather bikini back in 1963, has the Bond film franchise created such an iconic moment of feminine pulchritude.
We realise she's the air hostess from the opening pre-credit sequence.
And of course we now know she's also a Muslim.
This is perhaps the film's only gesture towards political correctness and inclusivity.
As Bond and the girl commence a quite rumbunctious bout of cuddling, a video screen in the sand beside them comes to life.
The screen shows President George W Bush.
President Bush sees the two cuddling and canoodling enthusiastically in the sand.
He raises an eyebrow.
"Well Bond," he says with a Texan drawl, "I don't know what the hell took you so long."