Die Another Day
Cast & Credits
Actor Character
Pierce Brosnan James Bond
Halle Berry Jinx
Toby Stephens Gustav Graves
Rosamund Pike Miranda Frost
Directed by Lee Tamahori
Original running time: 2 hours and 12 minutes
Despite mixed reactions by critics and fans, the last two Pierce Brosnan movies raked in a considerable amount of cash. Could anyone really fault them if they decided to stick with the over the top antics that were prevelant in those installments? I suppose not so I guess that in a lot of ways the film Die Another Day turned out to be pretty much exactly what I expected. Also, the film was marking the 40th anniversary of the birth of the film franchise since it would release 40 years after the movie Dr. No hit theaters. Director Lee Tamahori and producers Michael G. WIlson and Barbara Broccoli promised that the upcoming film would be an homage to the entire series and reference several scenes from previous films. This was to be a film for the hardcore Bond fan, or was it?
After the gunbarrel sequence... Wait! What in the blue blazes is going on? The gunbarrel sequence starts out normally with Bond walking across the screen with the gun barrel fixed on him and then he fires, but then something incredibly wrong happens. A bullet goes through the gun barrel before the blood trickles down. Do the people making this movie realize that the gun barrel is supposed to belong to a would be assassin of 007 and not to James himself? Or are they implying that he just shot a bullet through the front of the villain's pistol? Or am I thinking too much? Or do the film makers need their collective head's checked? I think that it's the final answer and that's my final answer, Regis. Don't mess with the iconic gun barrel sequence. Don't do it! Moving right along...
We open up with three surfers riding a massive wave towards the coast of a North Korean military base. After the surfers come ashore and one of them punches out a guard that needs a white cane and a seeing eye dog, we see that it's agent 007 and two South Korean allies. He promptly disables a satellite dish that couldn't locate three guys surfing on a fifty foot wave. How did they get on that wave? Obviously they didn't paddle out from the shore. Bond then punches out a guy named Mr. Van Bierk that is boarding a helicopter with a briefcase full of African conflict diamonds. Next, he meets up with one Colonel Tan-Sun Moon on a weapons base. There is too be an exchange of the diamonds for weapons. Upon walking up, Moon's accomplice Zao takes a photo of Bond and quickly finds out who he is. Moon pulls out a tank buster and destroys the helicopter. Bond blows up the diamonds with a little help from his watch which sets off a detonator and also sets the diamonds in motion into Zao's face. This leads to a chase scene on hovercrafts through Korea's demilitarized zone. It would be better if Bond didn't do things like move his head to avoid bullets and shoot mines with an uzi that are behind him without looking. Last time I checked, he wasn't a super hero. The climax of this scene has Bond and Colonel Moon fighting atop a speeding hovercraft. Whoa! Moon is a high kicking bad ass that knows martial arts. In the end, Bond escapes the hovercraft (that still has Moon on it) just before it goes over a waterfall. He has time to give a bad one liner before Colonel Moon's father, General Moon, captures him.
This leads to the credits which feature a scene where Bond is being tortured by being drowned, beaten up, stung by scorpions, and given an antidote to be kept alive. I'm sorry, but the credits are supposed to be just that and not part of the story. Stop messing with the formula Mr. Lee Tamahori! During the sequence, we see some CGI fire and ice women dancing about and find out that fire melts ice. Also, scorpions prance about while we our auditory senses are assaulted by the venomous Madonna theme. Honestly, I don't dislike Madonna as much as some do and think that some of her stuff is pretty good pop music, but this song is extremely annoying. What starts out as a harmless little toe tapper just keeps going and going and going. Maybe if there was a change in tempo or if it went on about 2 and a half minutes less it would be bearable, but as it is it's the pits. That being said, I think that I like it better than the previous two theme songs since it actually kept me awake. The soundtrack is once again done by David Arnold, and while I've been a bit harsh on him in my two previous reviews I have to say that this soundtrack wasn't all that bad besides for the theme song. It's kind of a modern twist on John Berry's stuff and thankfully the Bond goes to a rave stuff is gone except for the party at the Ice Palace.
The movie continues and we learn that Bond has been held for the past 14 months. Wait! What? He's really slipping. Usually he only gets captured for a day or two, gets the information that he needs, and escapes. Once again, the formula is being messed with and I'm not happy. A bearded, long-haired Bond is taken to a bridge by General Moon who one last time asks him who his son's allie in the West was. Bond replies that it's the same man who set him up and is then told to walk with a firing squad at his back. Just as he thinks that bullets are about to enter his back, he sees Zao on the bridge and realizes that they are being traded. As James gets across he sees M, Lieutenant Chief of Staff Robinson, and Mr. Blonde from Reservoir Dogs (he is actually head of the NSA - Damnien Falco - in this movie). Next thing you know, a hypedermic needle is entering James' arm and he is out like a light.
Bond awakens in a hospital bed and M enters his room to have a conversation with him. She informs Bond that Zao was captured in a terroist bombing, but that they had to get Bond out because they thought that he was hemorrhaging information to Moon. His Double-Oh licence is taken from him and he is to be kept under surveillance. Bond then makes his heart stop. He must have learned this from Derek Flint in the movie Our Man Flint. That's what the series has come to. It's taking ideas from movies that were inspired by Bond... Anywho, the nurse and doctor come in to save the flat-lining Bond who escapes with a little help from some medical equipment. Appparently the North Koreans can keep Bond captive for 14 months, but he can get away from his own people in five minutes. He finds out that he's on a ship in Hong Kong Harbor. Why? This is never explained. We hear the first sounds from Dr. No before he jumps off of the ship and he swims ashore. He checks in to the finest hotel in town where he knows the head maitre d, Chang. Bond gets a haircut, a shave, and a suit and a massuese named Peaceful Fountains Of Desire comes to his room. Really? Peaceful Fountains Of Desire? Pussy Galore sounds like it actually could be a name but this is beyond ridiculous. Bond finds a gun in her garter belt and throughs an ash tray through a mirror on the wall to see Chang and a couple of other guys filming him exactly like he was filmed in From Russia With Love. It turns out that Chang is Chinese intelligence. After clearing the air between each other, Bond finds out that it's rumored that Zao is in Cuba.
After arriving in Havana, Bond meets up with a man named Raoul that resembles the most interesting man in the world. Raoul and Bond talk about Zao while smoking a cigar. He informs James that Zao has been locoted at Isla de Los Oganos which is where a lot of illegal gene therapy takes place. Bond takes a gun, a pair of binoculars, a bird watching book written by an author named James Bond if you look real close, and gets a fast car from Raoul. James poses as an ornothologist hanging out off of the coast of the island and we see Jinx (Halle Berry) come out of the ocean in a bikini with a belt and knife exactly like Honey Rider in Dr. No. I'm sorry but this scene does not rival the original. Halle Berry is an attractive woman, but she does not fill out a bikini like Ursula Andress did. This leads to a sleazy conversation between Bond and Jinx that could have only been inspired by Andy Sidaris' movies. Please don't up who that is as I don't want to be outted as a pervert. Then Bond and Jinx are in bed immediately. He wakes up the next morning and Jinx is gone just like the scene where Tracy is gone in On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
After beating up a jerk and putting him in a wheelchair, Bond hitches a boat ride to the island and snoops around. Along the way, he eats a grape just like in Thunderball and walks through a hall of mirrors which reminds one of The Man With The Golden Gun. This cuts to a scene where Jinx is talking to the man behind the gene therapy and she abruptly kills him. Why? Once again, unexplained. Bond finds Zao in the middle of being transformed from a Korean guy with diamonds in his face to a white guy. The result is that he now has light skin, no eyebrows, blue eyes, and the diamonds still in his face. Wouldn't you have removed those badd boys and maybe sold them? Yeah, me too. So Bond interrupts the therapy and a John Woo / Matrix isnpired fight happens. Things slows down during all of the good parts so you can see them. You know, that whole thing that was popular for five years that has no place in this franchise... After this horribly directed battle, Zao escapes in a helicopter that's waiting outside while being pursued by Bond and Jinx. Jinx then jumps off of a cliff into the ocean that's approximately as high as the fall that Max Zorin has in A View To A Kill and lives! She just swims off onto the back of a boat and waves goodbye. No big deal. During his battle with Zao, Bond removed a bullet from around his neck on a string that was hollowed out and contained diamonds just like the ones earlier in the movie. He recognizes that they have the marking GG engraved on them. He asks Raoul about it who explains to him that the marking is Gustav Graves'. He is curently in London and soon going to have a huge demonstration of something called Icarus in Iceland.
Boond soon meets Gustav Graves in a fencing club called Blades (apparently the filmakers thought that this was hilarious since M often hangs out at a card club called Blades in the Bond novels). This leads to a cameo by Madonna, the introduction of the beautiful Miranda Frost who won a gold medal at Sydney and happens to be Graves trainer, and Graves himself. He wagers a bet against Bond two out of three points and wins quickly. James refuses to go away and continues. He employs a dirty tactic and cuts Graves wrist. Graves loses his cool and gets out some real swords and says that first blood from the torso is the winner. Predictably Bond wins after they destroy the entire club in the process. Being a good loser, Mr. Graves invites 007 to his unveiling of Icarus. As he's leaving the club, James is given a key.
The key is for an abandoned London underground train station where he meets up with M and Q (John Cleese got promoted to the position after The World Is Not Enough). M explains that Graves is politically connected and that Bond's suspension from MI6 could work to her advantage. Q gives Bond a ring that is actually a sonic agitator that can shatter bulletproof glass. Also he gives Bond an Aston Martin that has machine guns, snow tires, an ejector seat, and turns invisible. Bond says that Q must be joking just like in Goldfinger. *rolls eyes* This leads to a brief scene where we find out that Miranda Frost works for MI6 and has been keeping an eye on Graves. M tells her to keep an eye on Bond.
Next we get to the Gustav Grave's Ice Palace and this is where the movie starts to get incredibly outlandish. Bond meets up with Graves who just got out of a car that can break the sound barrier. Jinx also shows up and lets Bond know that she actually is a NSA agent. We also find out that Zao has arrived at the Ice Palace and that Graves is actually Colonel Moon after gene therapy. At his presentation, Graves / Moon explains that his Icarus can give heat to where it's cold in order to grow crops or make it datime at night. It's all done through the expertise of a guy name Vlad that can take solar energy to make a beam of light through a group of diamonds in a satellite dish. Hey, that sounds just like Diamonds Are Forever. Before you know it, Bond trips an alarm and starts making out with Miranda Frost to avoid being caught which leads to him being in bed with her soon.
Jinx sneaks in through the top of the dome next to the Ice Palace into Grave's diamond mine / residence and is caught by Graves who now has a Nintendo Power Glove that was made for him by Vlad that can pump out 100,000 volts of electricity. His Henchman named Mr. Kill (that's really his name) decides that instead of killing her by shooting her immediately that it would be more fun to kill her with a laser just like in Goldfinger. Bond swims under the dome and into the bottom of it with his underwater breathing apparatus from Thunderball. He has a fight with Kill in between a bunch of lasers and Jinx actuallly saves him. Soon we learn that Frost works for Graves and that he got her the gold medal in Sydney by making sure that the real gold medalist overdosed on steroids. Just as she is going to shoot Bond, she makes the mistake of talking too long and he obliterates the ice floor with his sonic agitator. Bond escapes is the super sonic car and Graves has Icarus lock onto the car's heat signature. This leads to Bond hanging over the edge of an ice cliff where the Icarus beam is making the ice melt. Bond then makes a makeshift parachute surf board and parasails / surfs to safety assisted by some of the worst CGI effects that I have ever seen in a movie with a budget this size. Next, Bond finds a guy on a snow mobile that just happens to be out there and borrows that snow mobile from him. Meanwhile, Graves locks Jinx in her room and has Icarus start to melt the Ice Palace.
Bond makes his way back to the Ice Palace and gets in his invisible Aston Martin which is run into and has it's camoflague disabled. Next, Zao hops into his Jaguar XKR which has as many gadgets if not more than Bond's vehicle. There is a car chase on the ice that involve greandes, machine guns, rockets and a bunch of other stuff. I love when Bond's car gets flipped upsode down and he uses the ejector seat to flip the car back over. I'm sure that would really work. The chase leads back into the Ice Palace where Bond gets the invisiblility to work again and uses it to his advantage. Zao dies an appropriate death and 007 gives Jinx mouth to mouth in order to save her life.
After meeting with their respective bosses, Bond and Jinx sneak aboard a plane which has Graves, several Korean generals, Frost, and Vlad on it. He now has a suit like Robocop to go along with his Nintendo Power Glove and explains to his father who he is and what his plan is. General Moon is visibly disturbed by his son's appearance. Graves explains that he is going to have Icarus clear out all of the mines in the 38th parallel and that the North Koreans are going to take over South Korea. If the Americans or anyone else shoots a nuclear missile, Icarus will burn it up before it reaches them. The General tries to stop his son and is killed by the Power Glove. Bond has his gun go off and what comes up is the plane going out of control just like Goldfinger. Jinx hops in the cockpit and gets the plane back on course. Miranda Frost come up behind her, forces her to put the plane on autopilot, tells the third bad joke in the movie involving the word point, and challenges her to a swordfight instead of slitting her throat right there. Both fights go on forever (Graves is no longer a bad ass that knows martial arts since he's now a white guy) and without giving too much away we see more really bad CGI, a scene similar to one in The Living Daylights, and cars stuck in the ground just like a scene in The Spy Who Loved Me.
Where do I begin on this movie? The film makers said that his was going to be a tribute to the Bond franchise as it was released on it's 40th anniversary. What did we get? An over the top Bond movie that was even more ridiculous than Moonraker. By including the several referencial scenes from other movies, what they did was not honor the franchise but unintentionally make an Austin Powers type of self aware movie that was winking at all of things that it was rehashing. Did I, a hardcore Bond fan enjoy all of this stuff? No. What it did was make me think back to all of the older movies and how much better they were. If they really wanted to honor this long and illustrious series, they could have written an original script with a good story. Now that, would have been a good concept instead of this rehashed comic book crap. I also hated that they made Bond and Jinx like Batman and Batman insted of Batman and Robin. Speaking of which, this movie is almost as bad as Batman and Robin. The whole affair was ridculous. That parasailing down an ice cliff scene was less believable than a hippopotamus jumping through a wedding ring. I give the movie...
1 out of 5 - Poor for a Bond movie. It would be the Bond movie that would be best to get the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 treatment and that's how I normally watch it. If you make snarky comments with friends through the entire thing, it's actually kind of enjoyable. I know that to some it might be controversial that I ranked this horrible movie slightly higher than The World Is Not Enough, but I have my reasons. Yes, this movie has several scenes that you can point to and say this movie the worst Bond movie because of this scene or that scene, but that's just it. It is memorable in it's awfulness. Remember anything in The World Is Not Enough? Probably not. See my point? Also, The World Is Not Enough had that scene where Brosnan almost made out with Elektra King after he killed her which was where he might as well have taken the 007 character and wiped his ass with it. There is a split second where he is visibly shaken by Miranda Frost's death in this, but it's not nearly as bad. Why does he care when these evil bitches that want him dead die? Oh, that's right because he's Pierce Brosnan and he sucks. Worst Bond ever. Barry Nelson had more of an idea of what the character was about...
Cool thing to know: As bad as this movie was, this might not have been Lee Tamahori's biggest embarrasment. He also did XXX: The State of the Union and there's always this: http://www.nndb.com/people/376/000112040/
Another cool thing to know: This movie was meant to be a vehicle to start a franchise starring Halle Berry as Jinx. Let's be glad that didn't happen.
Yet another cool thing to know: The movie's main villain was originally named Colonel Sun and the movie was going to be called Colonel Sun. This was also the first Bond novel not to be written by Ian Fleming (it was written by a guy named Kingsley Amis). I'm glad that the movie was not named Colonel Sun since that book is actually fairly good and doesn't need to be associated with this film.
James Bond will return next Monday in Casino Royale.
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