007 is All Wet

I wasn't sure whether to blog Quantum of Solace, which I saw on Wednesday night, but late-breaking news of a James Blog-a-Thon tipped the scales, needy-blogger that I am.

QoS is a mess of a movie, with an even more meaningless than usual title, but WTF. I'm no Bondie (or whatever they call themselves) but I’m still not sure whether Mr Greene and his Quantum cohorts are the ones getting a little solace, or whether 007 gets a teeny bit of solace from doing in everybody associated with Vesper’s death. Nor do I really care, because my topic is eco-greenery and water.

BIG SPOILER ALERT.

So while the whole world seems to think that Greene is after oil, I honestly knew, in my waters, as it were, that the real money was in water. Heart-rending scenes of indigenous persons of Bolivia standing forlornly by as the last gobbets dripped portentously from the pipe confirmed it. Here was pure, unadulterated evil. The bastard had stolen their water and then forced the nasty dictator in waiting, a rapist in more ways than one, to sign a contract doubling the price for selling it back to them.

I know where the script-writers got the idea, but the logic is deeply, deeply flawed. Water simply cannot be delivered for free. It costs money to do so, and while the provision of a certain amount of water is definitely every person’s right, that amount still has to be paid for, preferably by the state. More than that? Price it properly, and the water will flow to where it will do the most good.¹

Other commentators seem to think that Bond has gone green. Not at all. Perhaps we’re supposed to imagine all eco-entrepreneurs are out to rob nature and humanity blind, but in my view Bond is being a lazy, unthinking, bleeding-heart, knee-jerk neo-liberal. But fun with it.

My rating: 3 out of 5