DIE ANOTHER DAY

The new Bond film is a bit of the old “good news, bad news” scenario. The good news is, this is a vast improvement over the previous 007, The World Is Not Enough. That installment was long on concept and short on execution; the stunts felt tired, the adventure seemed old-hat, and the drama was forced. The new film addresses most of these issues by jazzing up the formula, amping up the action and mixing in a solid villain and a top-notch leading lady. Yet the ingredients don’t quite add up to an altogether satisfying picture. And, this is the bad news, there’s a bit too much goofiness here for the film’s own good.

Pierce Brosnan returns as Bond for the fourth time, and what can you say about him. His Bond is nearly as good as Sean Connery’s, so accepting him in the role is not really an issue. Frankly he had the character down in Goldeneye. In Die Another Day the opening sequence puts Bond in the hands of the North Koreans, who spend 14 months (and the whole title sequence) torturing him for information. Exactly what information they want from him is unclear, but scenes of Bond getting trounced to the techno beats of a Madonna song are bizarre, to say the least. This is, hands-down, the nastiest title sequence in the franchise history.

Of course, Bond does get released, but M. in what seems for her to be an uncharacteristic bit of malevolence, suspends Bond’s “license” and effectively fires him. Why? I’m not sure. Anyway, Bond escapes from his own people, and in the film’s first bit of ludicrousness, swims all the way to Hong Kong. He then spends the next hour in an unmotivated pursuit of a diamond-studded Korean goon. Along the way Bond meets (and instantly beds) Haley Berry, blows up a genetic clinic, and smokes some stogies. None of this feels like a real Bond film, but it moves along at a good clip.

Then Bond gets back to England and the real movie begins. We finally meet the main baddie, Gustav Graves (nicely played by Toby Stevens), the bad girl (or is she?) Miranda Frost, and Madonna - in the film’s second bit of ludicrousness - as a fencing instructor. Actually the duel between Bond and Graves is the highlight of the whole film; long and brutal. It’s almost hard to believe that the franchise never had a real sword fight, and this one doesn’t disappoint. John Cleese as the new Q is another highlight; his interactions with Bond are dead-on and funny. Obviously Bond gets re-instated, is given new gadgets and sent to Iceland. That’s where the remaining set-pieces take place and they’re fun. Haley Berry’s Jinx comes back to the action and Bond gets to try out his dumbest gadget to date, an invisible car. Now I don’t know who would insure an invisible car, but for all the use Bond gets out of it, it hardly seems worth the R & D. Thankfully this goofy gimmick is not overused. The final showdown takes place on a cargo plane and it’s probably the best finale of the Brosnan films, as our heroes confront their adversaries while the plane disintegrates around them.

Die Another Day is the first Bond film of the 21st Century and it’s the first one to rely heavily on digital effects. This is a departure and I’m not sure a welcomed one. Bond movies always had this stunt-heavy, hands on quality to them. Seeing a computer-generated Bond parasail down a computer-generated glacier is a bit under whelming. I was also annoyed by the overuse of digital slo-mo; if they wanted a John Woo vibe, they should have just hired John Woo to direct. There’s also an ending bit with Miss Moneypenny that’s completely out of left field and is, frankly, a pathetic grab for laughs. But overall, this mixed bag is still worth it. Haley Berry is good, the villains are good, the references to past Bond films are mostly cute, and they even throw in Michael Madsen as Jinx’s boss; what’s not to like about that? So it’s probably safe to say that if there is a world 40 years from now, James Bond will still be around to entertain it.