Die Another Day Review
by Tim Wick
It was the best of Bonds, it was the worst of Bonds.
Ultimately, it was a Bond film gone wrong. A movie that began with the best of intentions and one of the more original conceptual twists on the traditional Bond storyline steered dutifully back on course. Then, once we had been treated to all the scenes we expect from a Bond film, the movie got stupid. Much as I wish I could like the film on the strength of it's extremely solid first hour, I can't because the second hour left me feeling cheated.
Now how much can we reasonably expect from a Bond film? We can expect car chases, fights, a villain bent on mass destruction, several pretty girls with whom Mr. Bond will have a chance to sleep and at least one amusing scene with Q. Now certainly if that is all we expect, Die Another Day delivers. But the same can be said of Bond turkeys A View to a Kill, Octopussy and The World is not Enough. So if the formula remains the same, why does the film come up lacking?
The primary culprit is the film's own first act. By setting up a Bond story that is "different" from other Bond stories, you need to carry it through. In License to Kill, Bond is set up as a rogue agent. The film sticks with this formula until the end of the film. In For Your Eyes Only, the movie is a far more intimate story that is not focused on world domination as much as it's focused on a story of international espionage. When a Bond film decides to skirt outside the standard Bond archetypes just a little, it needs to stay there.
On the other hand, if you are going to make a Bond film with big explosions and fast cars, don't make the big explosions and fast cars STUPID. The final escape sequence (I trust I'm not giving away anything by letting the reader know that Bond does indeed save the day) is about as stupid as they come. We expect over the top action from Bond but we don't expect the action to be so far removed from reality that it becomes strangely comic.
We also expect Bond to be as smart as we are. I've always felt that if I know who the double agent is, so should Bond. Does that mean he or she can't get the drop on him? No - it just means that it shouldn't be because he didn't know they were the double agent. Hell, I give Judy Dench's M more credit for smarts than Bond and yet she has been played for a dupe in two consecutive Bond films. Frankly, if you have an actress that looks as smart as Judy Dench, you shouldn't make her character stupid.
I like Pierce Brosnan as Bond and I'm constantly disappointed at the poor scripts he is asked to work with. I think that Goldeneye is pretty good, Tomorrow Never Dies is really good and The World is Not Enough is terrible. Brosnan's performance as Bond has been a constant in all these films and he maintains that level of intensity and commitment here. Despite the fact that I'm one of those crazy few who really likes Timothy Dalton's Bond, I think Brosnan is probably the best Bond since Connery. If only someone would write him well.
Spoiler Warning - Plot points about to be revealed
What depresses me so is the fact that they seem to have TRIED. The film opens with Bond being captured and tortured for 14 months. He has been compromised, he has been abandoned by his country. He is content to spend the rest of his days in captivity because that's the job. Then he is released.
This is a Bond we haven't seen. One who is compromised. He is not an asset to his country, he is a liability. Did he talk in those 14 months? He may know something that the rest of the intelligence community does not, but no-one wants to listen to him. He is on his own - much like License to Kill - but in this case the stakes are much more dire.
I loved this concept. Stupid Bond moments aside (like his escape plan), it was a new twist to a tired franchise. Bond was the outsider who knew something was going on. He could have been fighting his own people as well as the nasty evil bad guy. That would have been cool.
But it almost seemed like someone read the script halfway through production and cried "we can't have any of this!" Rather than haulting production, there was a major re-write in which the film seemed to say "yeah, that first hour was interesting but now you can have your REAL Bond film."
Parts of the transition worked. John Cleese does a fine job as the new Q, filling the too recently vacated shoes of Desmond Llewellyn. His scene with Bond is enjoyable not only for the character banter but also for the array of props pulled from former Bond outings. It is not only an homage to the fact that Die Another Day is the 20th "official" Bond film, it is also an homage to the man who introduced all those props. I really enjoyed that scene.
But then the film got silly. The villain built a huge ice palace that looked to be the housing for a classic closing Bond sequence with scores of agents firing machine guns at each other. We haven't really seen anything quite so spectacular since "You Only Live Twice."
Alas, such a conclusion was not to be. Instead, the ice palace was used as a rather idiotic death trap for Jinx (Halle Berry), the latest in a long line of competent Bond girls that still need his help as soon as the bad guys show up.
Then the film moved to the skies for a finale that defies even the stretched realm of Bond logic. When the audience laughs at something serious, it's not a good sign.
I did really like the Jinx character. She was cast in the same vein as Michelle Yeoh's character in Tomorrow Never Dies but lost some of her edge when James kept having to rescue her. Berry plays the role well and certainly has the looks to carry the role off but the reliance on James as the primary good guy weakens the role considerably.
Die Another Day started out as one of the better Bond installments in years and ended as one of the worst. It is sad when the best Bond movies I've seen this year were called The Bourne Identity and XXX.
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