Die Another Day Review
by Mark R. Leeper (markrleeper AT yahoo DOT com)November 25th, 2002
DIE ANOTHER DAY
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: After a really promising first hour this
Bond film falls back on its silly comic book style. Eventually the weight of all the silliness in the
second hour drags the film down in spite of the
good beginning. Still, the first hour is the
freshest thing that has happened to the series in
a while, even if it is wasted later in the film.
Rating: 6 (0 to 10), +1 (-4 to +4)
DIE ANOTHER DAY seems in large part to be an experiment for the Bond series. Much of it seems rushed and uneven. It starts stupid, turns smart for an entire hour, and then loses the magic and turns stupid again. The producers at Eon Productions and director Lee Tomahori seem to have recognized that the most successful series in film history needs some serious innovation to survive.
At least in the first hour the originality is there. The first new idea comes in the famous gun-barrel logo which has opened each of the nineteen Eon James Bond films with a touch of class and style. This time it has been goosed up with what was intended to be a new CGI thrill. It did not need it and it cheapens the effect. The first story sequence also has a sort of foolish idea for a surprise, Bond arriving at a mission via surfboard. Cute but daft. If we wanted to see a surfer we could have seen a beach party film. But then the film gets better when in this first mission inside North Korea Bond gets himself into some serious trouble. Not the James Bond breed of trouble with a quick and easy escape, but the kind of thing that happens to real world spies captured in enemy territory. It adds a sobering touch of reality that the series has not had before. Intercut with the credit sequence are scenes showing that Bond is indeed in trouble he cannot get out of and is not having a very good time of it. North Korea is not the sort of scenic tourist destination which is so often the setting of his missions. The writing in the first hour is at worst on a level with the Fleming books and some is better.
Then the new-found intelligence is squandered. In the second hour we find that Bond has his super-skills and his super-luck back. He is fighting a super-villain who has a sort of frozen ice palace appropriately enough built in Iceland. Somehow this building is constructed of ice and yet it maintains a comfortable temperature inside, nobody's breath freezes, and there is no dripping water. To this fairy-tale castle comes James Bond with a magic invisible car. We are back in James Bond Fantasyland. The dark tone of the first part of the film is replaced with a lighter than air plot.
This script by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade is a mismatched set of styles that noisily goes haywire. One almost feels that one person wrote the front end and the other wrote the back end. The whole concept of who and what the villain is is a pile of absurdities. Though it is not really used in the film we are told that the villain never needs to sleep. Also pointlessly added to the absurdity is Q's own version of the Star Trek Holodeck. In this film there is an escalation in the number of sexual double entendres but they seem less and less funny. The old Sean Connery subtle Bond wit has been replaced by a sequence of Playboy party jokes. So much has changed that there seems to be a real effort to tie the current films with the older ones. Much of the David Arnold score as well as the script seems to quote the classic Bond films. We see at least two pieces of equipment from THUNDERBALL. One interesting touch, the real book FIELD GUIDE TO BIRDS OF THE WEST INDIES by real life ornithologist James Bond, is worked into the plot. Ian Fleming borrowed the author's name when he wrote the first Bond book.
Visually, this is one of the least interesting Bond films. Director of Photography David Tattersall seems to have filmed the film with fancy stylistic camera moves that call attention to themselves but do not help the storytelling. All the Korean action is in dim light. A lot of effects are too obviously digital which takes a lot of the fun out of them. Too often in a chase a shot is set up to make the car look flashy, a likely sign of a product placement. This film has been rumored to be financed on the product placements alone.
The acting is sufficient, but not exciting. Pierce Brosnan is starting to grow into the role of James Bond and certainly looks better than he did driving a tank in GOLDENEYE. Halle Berry plays a mysterious female agent that Bond first sees rising from the sea in a scene borrowed from Ursula Andress in DR. NO. Madonna, who sings the title song, also has a small role at a fencing school. It is not a flashy role and she (somewhat surprisingly) plays it like a disciplined actress rather than a celebrity.
There is enough for the Bond fan to like and enough for a critic to dislike in this film. There is somewhat of a departure for the Bond series, but not always a prudent or intelligent one. I rate DIE ANOTHER DAY 6 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
[email protected]
Copyright 2002 Mark R. Leeper
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
