As Bond movies go, it’s decent. Brosnan is enjoyable, as always, and this time, he’s got an adversary worthy of his talent. I really liked the first half of the movie, but for every clever and innovative scene there, the second half offered two moronic ones, and they felt more grating than usual because of that contrast. Director Lee Tamahori, who did the excellent Once Were Warriors and then nothing good since, offers a few intriguing tweaks to the formula but doesn’t go far enough with them. So here’s my take on the key ingredients:
Title song: Madonna’s “Die Another Day” is probably the worst Bond song ever, and yes, I remember Duran Duran and a-ha, and yes (to my brother and father) I am counting “Live and Let Die.” (To be fair, I don’t know or don’t remember most of the songs after “View to a Kill,” but clearly none of them was so arrestingly shitty that I can remember thinking it was the worst song ever.) Her negative contribution to the movie is topped (or bottomed) only by her cameo as a fencing instructor, in which, as one critic put it, she’s kind of a black hole that sucks all talent and interest out of the movie for as long as she’s on-screen.
Opening credits: Maybe the most effective (and gruesome) use of the swooping silhouetted women and guns ever (if scored to one of the worst and least relevant songs) – it actually has something to do with the action preceding it and adds to the story. Remarkable.
Gadgets: Three words: Ugly. Ass. Cars. What a dark day when Ford landed the product placement deal. Bond’s car’s main feature is just plain dumb, and it’s an insult to previous 007 Aston Martins. But it’s nice to see the bad guys have started to wise up and get their own cars with guns that pop out of hidden places. In fact, the bad guys have all the really cool cars; granted, their gadgety car is a Jaguar, but they also have gorgeous Porsches, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and other exotic sports cars. However, these beautiful cars meet violent, undignified ends, which made me very, very sad. Was that part of Ford’s contract, too? All the cars that look better than Fords – in other words, every other car in the movie – had to be destroyed?
Women: I’m irked that Halle Berry is being touted as a “breakthrough” as Bond women go, just because she theoretically can take care of herself (she is constantly being rescued by Bond, but I’m willing to take as a given for the series that even the competent women have to be in distress from time to time so Bond can save them). I mean, doesn’t anyone remember Michelle Yeoh? Not only could she kick Bond’s ass (which Berry certainly couldn’t do), she kept her pants on. Berry’s pretty unimpressive as NSA agent Jinx; she’s unconvincing as a cool, tough spy who’s meant to be Bond’s equal, and she and Brosnan have zero chemistry. Even their banter is flat and lifeless. (Although her absence provides a nice moment: after she and Bond fall into bed together minutes after meeting, he wakes up bewildered the next morning to find her gone, and you sense that, for just a moment, he knows what it feels like to be a “Bond girl.”) Although I feel like a dick for even putting Berry’s name in the same sentence as Madonna’s, in a way they handle their roles similarly: they’re incredibly self-conscious that they’re in a Bond movie, and they deliver every line, most of which are double entendres or ripostes, with such conspicuous archness that the not-so-bon mots sound even more forced than usual. (Of course, Berry has the advantage of being able to act, even if she doesn’t exercise it too well here, so she comes off a lot better than Madonna does.)
Villain: A couple of top-notch bad guys here. One, played by Rick Yune, is noteworthy mostly because he has diamonds embedded in his face, which looks really, really cool and beats the hell out of the usual minor facial disfigurements of previous Bond adversaries. The other, Gustav Graves, played by Toby Stephens, is just wicked cool all around. (He reminded me a little of Albert Brooks’ character in The Simpsons’ Bond spoof; you can imagine working for the guy in his legitimate business and thinking he’s a wonderful humanitarian and a great guy.) Stephens has that very British, aristocratic air, but his mouth seems to move independently of the rest of his face, which is unsettling, almost animalistic. He gets a couple of great close-ups where his face is controlled, if not calm, but the corners of his mouth jerk with the rage he’s suppressing. Very creepy and a welcome change from the detached, cold-blooded evil of most Bond villains – his drive for world conquest is personal.
Of course, his big secret plan is pretty dopey. It involves some giant Jiffy Pop-looking thing in space, which he publicly says will save the world by providing more sunlight to grow crops, and then he says to his henchmen that he’ll demonstrate its “true purpose,” which, from the action that follows, is to chase his enemies with rays of sunlight, which is not only laughable (as in goofy), ineffective, and overly complicated, but also lame, but then there’s the true true purpose, which is also laughable (as in improbable), ineffective, overly complicated, and lame. Y’know, the old “holding the world hostage with a really big bomb” may have been done already, but dammit, it works. Why reinvent the wheel… or rather, the evil, world-dominating wheel?
Fights: The sword fight between Bond and Graves is the most energetic battle I can remember seeing in a Bond movie. Subsequent punching and kicking fights are the usual generic rote, even with the token martial arts moves thrown in, but the sword fight is thrilling. Partly it’s the exotic and nostalgic – and hard to fake with stuntmen – sight of a duel, but mostly its excitement comes from the fierce, undisguised emotion on the faces of both men. Plus, it’s disconcerting to see such a sexy (maybe that comes from the clashing phallic symbols), vital, physically agile villain; for a little while, Graves makes Bond look like a tired, middle-aged man.
Action sequences: Not only are most of the money-shot pieces strained, preposterous, and stupid, now they look like games. Literally. The “surfing the glacier-created wave” sequence doesn’t even look like cinematic CGI; it looks like X-Box. You wanna sell a computer game based on the movie, fine. Just remember: you insert scenes from the movie into the game, not vice versa.
Assorted stock characters: John Cleese is terrific, bringing his unique, aggrieved mien to Q’s perpetual irritation with Bond’s cavalier use of equipment. Unfortunately, he and Judi Dench (always a welcome sight) get too little screen time, as does a new character, Jinx’s boss, played by Michael Madsen, who really should be getting more work (that is, work that doesn’t go direct to video). He could take all the roles that Tom Sizemore will miss if he goes to jail for beating on people! Maybe I liked him so much because I’m just incredibly relieved to see an American contact who isn’t Joe Don Baker.
Suspensions of disbelief (excluding action sequences and the other usual allowances): A man can give himself a heart attack and then snap out of it? No one’s suspicious of a mysterious gazillionaire touting something called “the Icarus Project”? (Doesn’t anyone read Greek mythology anymore?) Land mines won’t be set off by massive hovercrafts but will explode if hit with really intense… sunlight? When devising the means for a man to change his physical appearance, did they use Face/Off as a medical reference?
Homages: As the 20th Bond movie, Die Another Day contains homages to all 19 predecessors. I couldn’t identify more than a handful (the IMDB lists at least one from each film, although as these are contributed by random people, many are stupid, like “James Bond wears pants here. He also wore pants in Moonraker”). Many tips of the hat are found in Q’s workshop (where he grumbles about Bond being on his 20th watch – I know the cars always get wrecked, but the watches?), which gets distractingly meta, because as Bond walks around appreciatively caressing objects, it looks more like Pierce Brosnan admiring movie props. Either that, or you think, “Wait a minute – he was Roger Moore when he used that fake alligator! How come he remembers it?”
Most of the references I spotted are from Goldfinger (either because it’s the Bond movie I’m most familiar with or because the filmmakers agree with me that it’s the best Bond film). Most obviously, the meeting between Bond and Graves at the fencing club is almost identical to Bond’s encounter with Goldfinger at a golf course (they even quote some of the same dialogue). Graves also has an Oddjob-like henchman who wears a lethal device on his head, although this oh-so-cleverly-named Mr. Kil doesn’t get to demonstrate the murderous power of his… er… hair pick.
Realpolitik: Well, they’re timely in going with the North Koreans as the enemy (granted, a rogue group of North Koreans, but the movie hints that few in that country would be hating it if the rogue group achieved its aim of conquering South Korea). And a previous favorite pariah, old-school, racist, white South Africans, make a cameo as boorish tourists in the movie – they no longer have enough power or numbers to be credible threats, so now they’re just asses.
But it’s
positively quaint to hear someone, particularly a Korean, accuse
the British of trying to police the world.
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