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The (Bow) Tie that Bonds

It's refreshing to finally see an action flick in which more bullets hit than miss – whizzing bullets, bloody fists and flaming cars.

The second chapter of the James Bond reboot, "Quantum of Solace," is also true to its mark. The 22nd film in the franchise follows a brooding Bond dead set on finding the bad man and the nefarious organization that cost him his love in "Casino Royale." And this installment is more about Daniel Craig establishing a new Bond character than developing plot twists, as the scattershot storyline is a modest yet frantically paced yarn.

Bond's one-liners are replaced by stoic stares. The flirty martini has been traded in for self-hating binge drinking. And even 007's bedroom shenanigans are condensed to a mere quickie, probably just to reassure us that super villain's pool of piranhas still hasn't found the bait.

When we last left Bond, he was agonizing the death of Vesper (Eva Green), who was technically a workplace crush. After getting blackmailed and double-crossing the Brits, Vesper met her maker in "Casino Royale," filling Bond with more angst and rage than a Weezer / Rage Against the Machine collaboration.

Now he's off chasing some of the baddies, who all happen to belong to a movie antagonist super group. One of main bad guys is the serendipitously named Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), who pretends to be annexing deserts and other land parcels around the world under the guise of some wishy washy environmentalism. But Bond and Al Gore know the truth, and together they tour Haiti, Austria and Russia with a PowerPoint presentation warning the world that the penguins will die! Wait…scratch that last sentence.

Bond hopes he's getting closer and closer to finding the dudes from the last movie who killed his chick, and along the way he makes a new sorta platonic friend named Camille (Olga Kurylenko), who's also tailing Greene with vengeance on her mind. Will these two attractive secret agents soothe their losses with a quick, meaningless tussle in a five-star hotel room? God I hope so.

Meanwhile, Bond plays the same old game with MI6 and boss M (Judi Dench), where at first he loses their trust, then they cancel his credit cards, and finally they're all smiles again. It's like a high school relationship with guns and GPS. OK, so it's like a "Hills" relationship with Spencer and Heidi…and guns and GPS. (Yes, I just went "there.") M actually carries the comedy in this go-around and does such a decent job that she could probably parlay this performance into some uber-cougar cameo in "Two and a Half Men" if this whole legit thespian thing doesn't work out.

All the side characters be damned, the real star in "Quantum of Solace" is the action. At times, the raw and ruggedly shot scenes are disorienting, but not too distracting. And they're actually a bit more subdued and relatively realistic. (Considering Grandpa Pierce Brosnan was sword-fighting in a crashing cargo jet, that's not saying much.) Like Christian Bale's new Batman – yes, I'll probably be the one millionth critic to make this obvious comparison – Craig takes Bond to a bad, bad place. And this 007 could scare the dyed whiskers off of Chuck Norris. As comic Greg Behrendt would say, Craig is "ripped like Jesus"…only much less apologetic. In fact, I think Bond kills people on three continents in 100 minutes.Take that, bird flu! Boo-ya.

Toward the end of "Quantum of Solace," the Camille character quips to Bond, "There is something horribly efficient about you." The same is true of the movie overall. No time is wasted in exposition, in lighting cigarettes or cracking borderline felonious double entendres.

In fact, I would have loved to have seen 20 more minutes added onto the flick as it did seem a bit rushed at times. No, not to simply kowtow to the tired, old Bond conventions, but just to remember what action thrillers looked like before over-the-top CGI and Jerry Bruckheimer.

"Quantum of Solace," 106 minutes, is rated PG-13 and is now playing nationwide. Mike gives "Quantum of Solace" 3.5 stars. 

Mike Ward is a Richmond-based freelance writer. Check him out at www.Underdogcopy.com