Die Another Day (2002)

Starring Pierce Brosnan, Halle Berry, Toby Stephens, Rosamund Pike, Rick Yune.
Directed by Lee Tamahori.
Written by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade.
Distributed by MGM/UA.
123 minutes.

jchensor's Rating: 5/10

Try Another Way

I can already hear what most people will say about Die Another Day: "your typical Bond movie"; "has all the explosions and beautiful women and fancy gadgets you'd come to expect from a Bond movie"; "follows the Bond formula to a 'T'." The strange thing is, in truth, Die Another Day is so unlike a typical Bond film. Maybe I should clear things up a bit: Die Another Day is so very unlike a typical good Bond film. It's rather sad to know your "typical" 007 flick, nowadays, is a movie with tons of explosions, way too obvious sexual innuendos, and a bunch of action sequences stitched together by an underdeveloped plot. Some people would argue, "But that's what makes a Bond flick a Bond flick." I say, "Uhhh... no."

Pierce Brosnan's Bond films seem to follow their own "typical" formula, one which I have not grown to like in his four movies. These films, including Die Another Day, seem to try everything they can to avoid following a typical Bond formula. The Bond films I know and love are the ones where Bond is given his mission from M and he actually uses his undercover expertise to discover things that surprise even him. In this movie, Bond isn't even acting on assignment. In fact, he never even sees the inside of any office for M to give him an assignment. No sexual tension gets to occur between him and Miss Moneypenny. Meanwhile, in what's become almost a staple of Brosnan's Bond movies, 007's mission carries a personal nature (Goldeneye had 006, Tomorrow Never Dies had Paris Carver, and The World is Not Enough had Bond feeling responsible for the death of M's collegiate companion, Bernard King). I even joked to a friend that in order to try something new for the next Bond film, the movie-makers should make its tagline, "This time... it's NOT personal."

Die Another Day suffers from Jekyll-and-Hyde syndrome. On the one hand, it tries very hard to seem grave and serious and bound in realism, especially with what occurs right before and after the title sequence (and even during the title sequence). But then, it ends up being more over-the-top than the previous recent Bond films were -- for example, at one point Bond is chased by a giant laser aimed at him from a satellite in space. This inconsistency makes the movie hard to swallow. Adding to this hard-to-swallow feeling are the stunts in this film. All of the stunts performed in every previous Bond film, from the skis-to-parachute sequence in The Spy Who Loved Me to the bungee jump scene in Goldeneye, have been performed by actual stuntmen, adding to their believability. Die Another Day has resorted to having a stunt performed by a CGI-Bond (very poor CGI, I might add), a virtual blasphemy to Bond films.

In the past, there have obviously been good Bond films and bad Bond films. Die Another Day, unfortunately, falls into the "Bad Bond Films" group. It seems as if it was written by planning out the action sequences first and then trying to find a half-assed way to link these sequences one after another with a simplistic plot. It's a weakness shared by the majority of the bad Bond films (see Moonraker). The story is almost completely irrelevant and isn't even one of those more intelligent Bond plots that require three viewings before you figure out exactly what is going on. In fact, the major plot elements are almost a complete duplicate of those of a previous Bond film (after seeing the film, stop to think about it and you'll know which one I'm talking about).

Die Another Day isn't a terrible movie, though. It's a bad Bond movie, yes, but if it were an action film unassociated with James Bond, I might recommend it, especially for a very fun and exciting car chase sequence, probably the number-one highlight of the film. In fact, this movie's plot would have been an infinitely better plot for xXx than what xXx actually used. After all, Bond surfs, parasails, drives rocket cars, and jumps out of a plane on a small "hang-gliding" vehicle worthy of ESPN's X-Games. But it just doesn't work as a Bond film because a Bond film should be based more on espionage, not extreme sports.

I'm still pining for the great Bond films of old. Thunderball had very few explosions. From Russian With Love has one of the best action sequences ever, and there was no giant laser from space -- just two men in a small, cramped room on a train. Licence To Kill actually has Bond doing things worthy of being a spy, like adopting a different persona and using it to destroy the bad guy's empire from within. Octopussy had a story that drove the actions sequences, not action sequences that drove the story. Those, to me, are characteristics worthy of being deemed "typical" of a Bond film. The superficial things people say that make up a typical Bond film these days shouldn't be what make up a typical Bond film. But considering I haven't been particularly pleased with the last four Bond movies in-a-row, maybe the explosions, over-the-top stunts, and simple plots that I do not enjoy have become your recent, typical Bond formula.

©James Chen, Nov. 22, 2002

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