Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

With exemplary deftness, Anthony Lane dissects Quantum of Solace in the current New Yorker. Soul Survivor contains many insights, but none more telling than this: "There may be intakes of breath, in audiences here, when Bond says that American intelligence services 'will lie down with anybody,' and when even the temperate M blurts out, 'I don't give a shit about the C.I.A.,' but how can we seriously ascribe topicality to a thriller that pays no heed to actual foes, such as Al Qaeda, presumably for fear of denting the market overseas?"

Indeed. To understand the cowardice of director Marc Forster in not pitting Bond against Bin Laden, consider what Ian Fleming had 007 do in Quantum of Solace from the For Your Eyes Only (1960) short story collection. We are told that "Bond had been in the colony for a week and was leaving for Miami the next day. It had been a routine investigation job. Arms were getting to the Castro rebels in Cuba from all the neighbouring territories. They had been coming principally from Miami and the Gulf of Mexico, but when the US Coastguards had seized two big shipments, the Castro supporters had turned to Jamaica and the Bahamas as possible bases, and Bond had been sent out from London to put a stop to it."

Ian Fleming was not afraid to "ascribe topicality" to his creation. One doesn't have to agree with his views, but there's no avoiding the fact that he put Bond at the centre of the politics of the day. In comparison, Solace screenwriters Paul Haggis and Neal Purvis sacrificed the character's credibility for the sake of "the market overseas," as Anthony Lane put it. There can be no greater indictment of their veniality.