Am I the only one who noticed how good it is for 007 to have real friends?

I’m half-playing here, but only by half, because a subtext of QOS is friendships and teammates. Witness the dialogue, including (and I’m quoting for memory so bear with me):

M to Bond: Knowing who your friends are is everything…
Camille and Bond: Friend of yours? I don’t have any friends…
Bond to Colonel of Police: You and I have a mutual friend!
Bond to Corinne Venneau: I have one that is similar, it belonged to a friend.

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An hour after CR ends, Bond is flying in his replacement Aston Martin. It is presumed he nabbed Mr. White before White’s guards left the villa to pursue Bond.

White’s Quantum (or whoever runs Quantum, it could be Greene if Greene’s death was faked as was Kabira’s death, but it could be White or none of the above) is extensive in its scope. Even a trusted guard of M’s is a Quantum plant but is killed before he can talk.

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with kind of a British Dirty Harry heartless assassin. But even Dirty Harry is likable, Bond in this film, not so much. Bond has a line in Casino Royale, when he’s talking to Vesper about his ‘armor’, ‘what ever I am, you’ve stripped it from me.’ I have to say that when I saw Casino Royale, I did enjoy it and thought it was a very Bond film. Well it seems the producers have ‘stripped’ Bond of all the things that made him Bond—even though most of those elements were also missing from Casino Royale. I appreciated the fact that they made Bond more dangerous.

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And, ultimately, Quantum of Solace fails.

Broccoli and Wilson would do well to abide by the old adage: “Cobbler, stick to your last!”

And listen to the public.

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