by Fred Krone

Created on: December 02, 2008

Rule one: Always kill the assassin first.

There's a scene early in the latest James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, where our hero is ready to interrogate a prisoner. He's in the room with M, his boss, M's bodyguard Mitchell, and a token extra guy standing off to the side. Suddenly, it turns out Mitchell is a double. He pulls a gun and shoots neither Bond, nor M, but the poor guy standing idly in the corner, who is probably just a few days from retirement. Don't these double agents know to always kill the unstoppable assassin, 007, the most dangerous guy in any movie this year, first?

I guess not. The guy who didn't kill Bond winds up dead, hanging from a rope. He did his best to elude our hero, but Bond now runs on white hot rage after the death of his love, Vespa (see: Casino Royle). He throws himself through the movie with reckless abandon. My favorite scene in the previous movie was when Bond, chasing another soon-to-be-dead man all over a construction site, bashes his way through a wall as a shortcut, rather than using a nearby door. That feeling sifts throughout Solace with Bond, played by Daniel Craig, battering himself against walls, through skylights, over motorcycles, and onto boats, and out of planes. He collides with everything. He cares almost as little for himself as he does for everyone else

In the midst of the chaos is a plot about a clever business man named Dominick Greene who causes water shortages and then profits on the situation. That's right, there are no city melting lasers in this Bond movie, just scrupulous water thieves. But for a nominal fee they'll also topple your nation's government for you. This organization, Quantum, wrapped in the guise of an environmentally friendly utility company, is a sort of pervasive secret society, on par with something from a Dan Brown novel. That's who our friend Mitchell was working for, you see. They have eyes and ears everywhere and yet no one has ever heard of them. But if you don't kill Bond when you have the chance, Mitchell's fatal error, you'd better be able to run like
Usain Bolt ahead of a pack of wild dogs, because there's no second chance. When Bond is done chasing you and dispatching you, he'll unravel your whole organization. As luck would have it, one of the members of Quantum was even involved in the Vespa affair. Be assured, Bond tracks him down as well.

The new Bond movies have taken on a kind of Bourne-esque quality, as that franchise has become the new gold standard in the flowering assassin

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