Quantum of Solace, however, goes further than earlier Bond movies. It not only examines a contemporary environmental issues, whether or not water is a resource to share or to sell but also individualizes that issue, connecting it explicitly to an actual event, the Bolivian Water Wars that began less than a decade before the release of the film.
Many reviewers highlight the film’s topical nature, but they fail to connect water rights with the particular water war that sparks the film’s narrative. Roger Ebert scoffs at the film’s villain, a “fiend [who] desires to corner the water supply of … Bolivia.” Stephanie Zacharek describes Greene as “a baddie who poses as an environmentalist so he can pull off crazy schemes, like causing drought that will allow him to barter a deal with a creepy exiled South American general.” And Anthony Lane describes Bond’s role as “fussing about with water supplies at the back end of Bolivia.” These reviewers, like most others, either laud or lampoon Bond’s changing character, as well.
Joshua Clover, however, documents in detail Quantum’s connection with the Bolivian Water Wars, declaring that in the film, “Bechtel returns as Greene Planet, ecopolitics merging with corporate cynicism” (8).
Clover explains the water war and its source well:
In 1999, Cochabamba … privatized its water supply—as a condition of receiving a loan continuation from the World Bank. The Aguas del Tunari consortium, as it was called, was an international combine including a couple of local corporations but led by International Water Ltd., a subsidiary of Bechtel Corporation. Their pricing meant that the Bolivians were paying in some cases a quarter of their income for water. (8)
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