New bonding

The burn mark on Camille (a fetching Olga Kurylenko) underlines the change. The world's longest running spy-film franchise, now, comes with a grim real-worldness. Suckers for the old, happy swagger can make do with Sean Connery re-runs. Casino Royale had famously effected the bleak drift for double-o-seven. Quantum of Solace -- the 22nd film instalment featuring Ian Fleming's debonair agent -- takes the mode forward.

James Bond (Daniel Craig) is nursing wounds of betrayal by a woman. That's a sort of first for the super-stolid agent who has his girls and work all sorted out, as smooth as his Martini stir-ons. The heady chases and action set-pieces -- erected on a pan-global sprawl, from Haiti to Siena to Kazan -- work well within the franchise's trademarked template. But it's hard not to pit Craig's bare-knuckle rage against the cocksure poise of Connery. The spy who could kiss his women with all the heart and move on with baffling detachment is, now, someone who forgets the hard way. A killer, bloodied and not done.

The shift in Bond's bearings also, in parts, reflects his new beat. He's on the trail of Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric, flashing moments of edgy evil) who eyes potential in the business of water, in the drylands of Bolivia. Bond has had a rather interesting assortment of antagonists: from metal-mouthed hitmen to egomaniacal media czars. It was, perhaps, also a given that the MI6 agent would have a sham environment crusader like Greene to battle in these days of meltdowns; of the glaciers and otherwise.

Quantum of Solace is, often, a patently snappy Bond vehicle. But what really powers it is the clever, yet intriguing positioning of its protagonist. It's a choice of the maker (Marc Forster from Monster's Ball and Finding Neverland) and his writers (Paul Haggis, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade) who sift through the darker half of their lead player, that may put the formula-seeking purist off. But it's a supremely engaging detour that deserves a look-in not blinded by endorsement of the cult, as against the film. The name's still Bond. Only, he's getting real.