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Lizards in Movies
 
Quantum of Solace (2008)
 
Spoiler Alert !

Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film.
 
Lizards in Movies Lizards in Movies Lizards in Movies Lizards in Movies
Lizards in Movies Lizards in Movies Lizards in Movies Lizards in Movies

This is the second film with Daniel Craig as James Bond. The action scenes are so blurry and cut so fast you can barely see what's happening. I blame that on the Jason Bourne movies of the same era. The movie is full of chases - a car chase, foot chases, a boat chase, an airplane chase, and they take place in a lot of locations, even for a Bond film, including an isolated location in the Bolivian desert where we see a large lizard.

Unfortunately, this one is not as much fun as most of the Bond flicks. Craig gets little chance to show the wit and sophistication we expect from Bond, but he makes up for that in the later movies. The phrase "quantum of solace" has something to do with getting revenge. This is a direct sequel to Casino Royale in which Bond lost a woman he loved, and he's looking to revenge her death. He meets up with Camille, (Olga Kurylenko) a Bolivian woman who's also looking for revenge, trying to kill the powerful Bolivian General who killed her family.

The lizard - it's just a brief cameo, not really worth bothering with, except that it's another additon to the list of herps in Bond films, so here it is.

Bond and Camille find their way to Bolivia. He's following a conspiracy involving a shadowy global organization of rich villains called Quantum who are planning a coup to install the same General who Camille wants to kill. In the city, Bond meets with a CIA agent who tells him the meeting is going down at a hotel called La Perla de Las Dunas in the desert. (An observatory in the Chilean desert was used to portray the hotel.) The hotel La Perla just happens to use extremely flammable fuel cells for power, which is a convenient set-up for the huge flaming explosions to come.

After Bond is chased (again) by the Bolivian police and escapes into the city, the scene cuts to the desert. We see a direct shot of the sun, then the camera moves down to show us a large lizard between some large rocks in a barren desert. The lizard moves a bit to the right, flicking its red tongue, then we see a shot of the villains in the hotel. That's a wrap for the lizard. He can go back to his trailer. We then see Bond and Camille hiding behind some boulders, preparing their assault on the hotel, which is reminiscent of the shot of the lizard.

I think the lizard is an Argentine Black-and-White Tegu, aka Salvator, a lizard native to South America, but not found in Bolivia or Chile, and not a desert species. Fortunately, nobody will ever mistake the Bond movies for nature documentaries.