After the events of Casino Royale, James Bond (Daniel Craig) drives from Lake Garda in Italy to Siena with Mr. White (Jasper Christensen) in his trunk. He is pursued but gets away in a spectacular chase and delivers the miscreant to his boss at MI-6, M (Judi Dench). He interrogates White about a group called Quantum. White says the operatives are everywhere and, as if to prove it, M’s bodyguard, Craig Mitchell (Glenn Forster) suddenly attacks M. He flees and Bond pursues him and eventually kills him. White disappears.
Searching Mitchell’s London flat, they discover that he had a contact named Edmund Slate (Neil Jackson) in Haiti. Slate is a hitman sent to kill Bolivian Camille Montes (Olga Kurylenko) at the request of her lover businessman/environmentalist Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric). Bond discovers that Greene is helping exiled Bolivian General Medrano (Joaquin Cosio), who had murdered Camille’s family in order to overthrow the government. Bond stops Camille from assassinating him but follows Greene to a performance of Tosca in Bregenz, Austria. The head of the CIA in South America, Gregg Beam (David Harbour) and CIA agent Felix Leiter (Jeffrey White) have to support a non-interference deal with Greene to get their hands on Bolivian oil. Bond infiltrates Quantum’s meeting at the opera and identifies the group’s board members. A gunfight begins and an advisor to the British Prime Minister is killed.
A bodyguard from Special Branch working for Quantum member Guy Haines (Paul Ritter), an advisor to the PM, refuses to answer Bond’s questions and Bond throws him off the roof. He lands on Greene’s car and is shot by one of Greene’s men. M orders Bond back to MI-6 for debriefing. He disobeys and she revokes his passports and credit cards. He goes to Talamone and convinces his old friend René Mathis (Giancarlo Giannini) to accompany him to Bolivia. They meet Strawberry Fields (Gemma Arterton) from MI-6 and Bond seduces her. They attend a fundraising party held by Greene. Bond rescues Camille again from Greene.. The police stop the car, find Mathis unconscious in the trunk, and shoot him. Bond kills the police. Dying in Bond’s arms, Mathis urges him to forgive Vesper, his turncoat love from Casino Royale.
The next day, Bond and Camille survey Quantum’s land acquisition and their plane is damaged by a Bolivian fighter. They escape by skydiving into a sinkhole and find that Quantum is damming Bolivia’s water supply to gain a monopoly. Back in La Paz, Bond meets M and learns that Quantum killed Strawberry Fields, drowning her in crude oil. He meets Leiter, who tells him that Medrano will meet at Hotel La Perla de las Dunas in the Atacama Desert. Leiter warns him the CIA’s Special Activities Division is coming for him and he escapes.
Bond and Camille infiltrate the hotel. Greene blackmails Medrano into signing a contract to make Medrano the leader of Bolivia in exchange for land-rights, making Greene the sole provider of water in Bolivia. Bond kills the Police Chief, and the Security Detail, and confronts Greene. Camille kills Medrano, avenging her family. The hotel catches fire. Bond leaves Greene stranded in the desert to die with only crude oil to drink, in revenge for Fields. Bond and Camille share a kiss. Bond finds Vesper Lynd’s former lover Yusef Kabira (Simon Kassianides), who was responsible for her death. He saves a Canadian intelligence operator named Corrine (Stana Katic) from Kabira and has him arrested by MI-6. Greene is found dead in the desert, his stomach full of crude oil. M calls Bond back to the fold and he says he never left.
The film was directed by Marc Forster and written by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Paul Haggis. The title is from a 1959 short story by Ian Fleming. In the story a Quantum of Solace is the smallest particle of happiness in your life, but they called the enemy gang Quantum to make it easier for us. The film received mixed reviews, considered a letdown from Casino Royale. Daniel Craig made sure he was more fit than he was in the first film, because it had been exhausting. It was a revenge story and not a love story. Olga Kurylenko trained intensely for the action scenes and learned to speak with a Spanish accent, not her native Ukranian one. Gemma Arterton admired Diana Rigg and Honor Blackman as Bond characters. Stana Katic, who plays the Canadian agent, is a Canadian actress who played the tough-as-nails cop Kate Beckett in the interesting TV series Castle with Nathan Fillion.
Bond’s suits were by Tom Ford and the women’s gowns by Prada. Jack White and Alicia Keyes did the song. The Atacama Desert is the driest place on Earth. Most of it has never seen a drop of rain. Gal Gadot tried out for the role of Camille but did not get it. But it made her want to be an actor, so she got a role in Fast and Furious (2009). The pre-credits chase in Italy involved forty stuntmen, six doubles for Daniel Craig, seven Aston Martin DBSs, and eight Alpha Romeo 159s. It was the only Bond film to have a foot-chase, a car-chase, a plane-chase, and a boat-chase to help make up for a problematic script rushed to avoid a Screen Actors’ Guild strike. But the main problem was that it came in between the brilliant Casino Royale and the brilliant Skyfall. The action scenes were sharply cut and a bit hard to follow, but very exciting. It was emotionally deeper than usual, with a touch of film-noir. I quite liked it, actually.