Last week came around and I was frankly hopping with excitement, the first week of November 2008 was always going to be a highly anticipated moment. An adventure was about to begin, the consolidation of a new era, the emergence of a new personality to lead us forward. Yes, the second installment of James Bond with Daniel Craig in the driving seat (and there’s a broad array of things for him to drive).

Friday brought the much-anticipated (by me at least) release of Marc Foster’s Quantum of Solace the follow-up in the Bond franchise to Martin Campbell’s 2006 Casino Royale which saw the first transition of Her Majesty’s finest from scrawny dark-haired smoothy to blonde muscular hard man.

Thankfully, Craig can somehow cope with the incredible amount of apparent pain that his body is put through during the course of the adventures and act at the same time. Yes, they’ve upped the stakes, changed the pace, modified the style, brought Bond back in time but fast forwarded him into the future too.

And I’m not going to go into plot points or story because frankly, that’s never been the point and the variation from caper to caper is all but cosmetic. Suffice it to say there are fantastic chase scenes (on foot: base jumping over roofs in Siena, Italy; by car: Aston Martins speeding round Lake Garda, gun’s blazing, doors being ripped off; by boat: speedboats ramming each other and even by plane: an amazing aerial dog-fight with Bond flying an ancient cargo plane).

So yes, chase sequences, violent, snappy and sharply edited, there are beautiful women (Olga Kurylenko is particularly convincing), there are witty one-liners and a healthy disregard for tradition (“what are you drinking?” a character asks Bond, “dunno, what the hell am I drinking?” says Bond, rather than the classic “Vodka Martini, shaken etc…”)

But there are things lacking too: the silly British jokes, the terrible innuendo, the moral compromises, and above all the toys, the gadgets! No Q, no quaint little lab with faceless MI6 employees fiddling with wildly powerful computers that turn into cars, or fountain pens that transmit radio signals while also transforming into swords, no special breathing apparatus, or corrosive secreters, or laser beam emitters.

Is Bond in danger of taking itself too seriously? We have Bourne for that (think Matt Damon dementedly repeating his own name in the South Park guys’ Team America) and a host of other competent tough-guy action sub categories.

The silliness is key to the British experience, and it really doesn’t need to stand in the way of a well-cut suit, solid old-fashioned values or a particularly brutal killing.

TM – tobias@icelandreview.com