The Bond girl, Olga Kurylenko, needed just that to shatter a stereotype about Ukrainian models-turned-actresses in the film industry.

“Quantum of Solace,” the 22nd sequel in the Bond saga, hit London last week and is ready to grip Kyiv starting Nov. 6. It departs from the usual spy-romance, padded with daring chase, treason and location glamour.

Ukrainian model Kurylenko plays a chica Latina, Camille, contrasting delightfully English Daniel Craig as James Bond. Foreign tabloids anticipate that her “violent, sick-makingly stunning, and mercurial beauty” will tame Hollywood at the speed of light. It was about time to go beyond Ukrainian born Milla Jovovich and finally discover “the sixth element” – Kurylenko.

While Kurylenko is no staple catch in the West, in Ukraine she is a quintessential Slavic woman. Looking naturally attractive without much make-up, she graced Kyiv two weeks ago to present the film.

“I am like Camille in real life,” she said with calm confidence. “If you want something, you must go out and do it. This is what I am. I achieved everything on my own.” In the movie, Camille seeks to avenge the killing of her family, which happened before her eyes when she was a child.

Rumor has it that filmmakers picked her out of 400 women. Perhaps, the way her eyes skillfully hide emotion had something to do with it. “It is not hard to find a beautiful actress,” said Craig, reflecting on the selection process. “But we needed a stand-alone character detached from James Bond, someone on her own mission.”

Kurylenko lived up to the description. Like many Ukrainian women, she has an unspeakable solitude pertinent to Camille’s role in the film.

“Quantum” picks up from where “Casino Royale,” the 2006 film, left off.  Bond’s beloved Vesper Lynd, played by enchanting Eva Green, betrayed him and eventually died in a flooded building. With a crushed heart, Bond seeks revenge chasing villains through the scenic landscapes of Italian Lakes. In historic Siena, Italy, he spares little of the medieval architecture trying to uncover the Quantum, a murky crime syndicate.

Bond then heads to Haiti where he meets Camille, the Russian Bolivian, who wants to kill the same guy he is after.

Wearing a little black skirt and an orange top, Kurylenko looks more like an icy tomboy than an international woman of mystery. Together with Bond, they seek revenge for their own personal reasons while trying to avert a coup d’etat in Bolivia planned to take control of drinking water supplies. They go globe trotting through Italy, Haiti, Austria, Bolivia, England and Russia drenching everything with blood on the way.

At one point, 007’s boss M, played by Judi Dench, says: “Bond, if you could avoid killing every lead there is, that would be appreciated.” Things get so bad that M revokes his license to kill. As a result, it gets hard to track who is duping whom and where it all began.

Many critics have complained that the film has too many action scenes and lacks the wit and the seductive appeal of the other Bond hits. For the first time, the iconic phrase, “Bond, James Bond” did not make it on screen leaving it short of comic relief.

Film director, Mark Foster, said he wanted to bring an emotional component into the movie. Last time, the franchise took a risk replacing the traditional dark Bond with blond Craig in Casino Royal. This time they slashed traditional womanizing and humor. The agent is a boiling pot of rage after Vesper let him down so – logically – there is little place for romance. This is supposed to find reflection in the movie’s name, the “Quantum of Solace.”

Film makers took the name from Ian Fleming’s story “For Your Eyes Only.” The author wrote that the quantum of solace is “a precise figure defining the comfort, humanity, fellow feeling required between any pair of people for love to survive. If the quantum of solace is 0, then love is dead.” One can see this feeling in Camille and Bond. Some agree with it; others do not.

“I was disappointed there was so little dialogue, flirtation and characterization in this Bond [movie]: Forster and his writers…clearly thought this sort of sissy nonsense has to be cut out in favor of explosions,” said Peter Bradshaw in his review for the Guardian.

James Christopher from the Times, however, found Bond “right for our times… [and] no longer a work in progress. He is now the cruel, finished article.”

Along with her “hard as nails beauty”, Kurylenko’s performance had a warm reception.

In Kyiv, it seemed as if she was still getting used to the spotlight. A recent newcomer to the acting scene, she quickly became a media babe for her rags-to-riches story. Born in the Soviet Union, she saw the demise of the great state with ensuing poverty in the small coastal town of Berdyansk. She dabbled in ballet and a little theater at school without thinking much of a career on stage. While on holiday in Moscow, however, a modeling scout recruited her for what next turned into a catwalk in France.  After a few supporting roles in French movies, she played a vampire with Elijah Wood in “Paris, I Love You.” Then came “Hitman” and the “Quantum of Solace.”

In the Bond film, she insisted on doing most of the stunts herself. “I was practicing martial arts four times a day, learned how to fall, shoot, and skydive,” said Kurylenko, noticeably eager to talk on the subject. The Bond film killed her fear of heights and now she is “addicted to flight simulations in London.”

In Kyiv, she looked plain in her small black jacket and talked plainly as if asking to reciprocate.

Her Russian skills left much to be desired; she was mixing it with English and French. Questions in Ukrainian she could not make out at all. Unlike many Ukrainian celebrities, she opted to keep her private life in complete privacy and politely refused to comment.

At the age of 28, Kurylenko has been married and divorced twice. Having catwalked the world for more than 10 years now, she said she will not return to modeling. Her next big challenge is to keep the stakes high and move beyond the 22nd Bond girl with that unspeakable icy mystery and charm.

“Quantum of Solace”.

Premieres Nov. 6

In movie theaters everywhere