Die Another Day
I only ever saw this film once, back in 2003 on a red eye flight to the UK. I didn't remember much of anything about it, except I didn't care for it. Watching it again, I now understand why I blotted so much of it from memory.
Die Another Day is the Superman IV of Bond movies. Right from the opening gunbarrell -- where they've added a silly animated bullet that flies toward the audience -- this film is a cheesy, over-the-top, gimmick-ridden mess, which makes The Man With The Golden Gun look like Goldfinger.
The harsh, gritty sequence where Bond is tortured for months by the North Koreans gives one the impression this will be a more serious chapter in Brosnan's tenure as 007. The subsequent Hong Kong sequence is slick, but also serious, the way it addresses how things have changed since the city was returned to the Chinese. But soon the film does a complete 180º turn, and begins a quick decent into utter goofiness that at times rivals a Matt Helm movie.
Eventually we find ourselves in London, where we are introduced to Toby Stephens's Gustav Graves -- a thrill-seeking, Richard Branson-like billionaire who has developed a new kind satellite "death ray" (which is basically just the laser satellite from Diamonds Are Forever). But no, he's
really North Korea's Colonel Moon, who has undergone a genetic transplant surgery to make himself look European. He is closely guarded by his old crony Zao, a wanted terrorist who has bits of diamond lodged in his face (which any good dermatologist could easily remove, but I guess a Zao -- even though he is a wanted criminal who can't afford to stand-out in a crowd -- hasn't considered this option). If all this weren't silly enough, Bond is also equipped with an invisible car.
In fairness the cast are very good. As written, Jinx Johnson isn't an especially interesting Bond girl, but Halle Berry brings a nice effervescence to the role. In fact I liked Berry better in this than anything else she's done. Rosamond Pyke's Miranda Frost is also comely and initially appealing (though her duplicity is fairly obvious some time before she is exposed). Judi Dench is still great, and I consider her as good an M as Bernard Lee (and much better than Robert Brown) ever was. I also want to acknowledge how much I like Colin Salmon as Bond's collegue Charles Robinson, and I wish the series had made more use of Robinson (quite honestly I think Salmon would have made an excellent James Bond himself).
However, to say I'm less than a fan of Madonna is a huge understatement, so this film loses a lot of points for subjecting the viewer to her, not only in the title sequence but also a brief "acting" appearance. (The title song by the way is also the worst of the entire series.)
Bond films are rightly famous for their death-defying stuntwork, so seeing an obvious CGI facsimile of Halle Berry dive off the cliff is a real letdown. Later, Bond's plummet over the glacier and subsequent attempt to surf the wave back to the hotel look laughably fake -- especially when 90 minutes earlier this very same film gave us
real stuntmen surfing
real waves.
The film also makes use of that annoying, gimmicky cliche "ramping" (i.e. the sudden -- and pointless -- acceleration of footage).
I did like the scene where Bond meets with Q and we see a lot of the gadgets from older films -- the attaché case, the crocodile suit, Rosa Klebb's boot, etc. -- but good moments are very few in this otherwise near-total misfire.
For much of the last half hour of I was dying for this movie to end. Jinx finds herself trapped in a rapidly-melting ice hotel, where she is in danger of drowning from the rising water. Ok...but if the hotel is melting, logically the walls and doors of the room she's been locked into would
also be melting -- making it easy to escape.
The fight on the jet is ridiculous and goes on much too long, as Graves tries to vanquish Bond with his stupid "Iron Man" suit. I think the reason I didn't remember much about my first screening of this film is because I probably turned it off (and given the paucity of entertainment choices on a transatlantic flight, that says a lot).
I do like Pierce Brosnan. He was never a
bad James Bond, but he is still the one I like the least. He didn't have the high-voltage testosterone of Connery (though who does?), or the suave brooding of Dalton or the comedic talent of Moore. Brosnan was such an effective villain in cloak and dagger capers like The 4th Protocol, The Tailor of Panama and The Ghost Writer, but he never channeled any such darkness into Bond. Maybe Eon Productions simply wanted him to remain Remmington Steele, I don't know. In any case, I will say he was solid in the role, and can claim two very good movies -- Tomorrow Never Does and The World Is Not Enough -- to his credit.
Looking forward to watching Casino Royale (the Craig one -- though either version is preferable to anything in Die Another Day).
