Die Another Day

DIE ANOTHER DAY 

Directed by Lee Tamahori  Written by Neal Purvis & Robert Wade.
Starring Pierce Brosnan, Halle Berry, Rosamund Pike, Judi Dench
2002, 133 minutes, Color, Rated PG-13, Panavision 2.35:1

Commentary:

I'm not saying I have great taste, but I know what I like.  Generally, when it comes to the Eon Bond films, there are only four that I don't like.  Not that these are the worst Bond films, mind you, just the ones I don't particularly cotton to.  The first Bond films that I saw when I was young were SPY WHO LOVED ME, MOONRAKER and THUNDERBALL, and for better or worse, these remain my favorites.  I think that the films that introduce you to the character become your favorites, so take the following with a grain of salt.  You know, nostalgia.  But on to the ones I don't like.

I find YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE tiresome--Connery looks bored some of the time, and I never once buy him when he is disguised as a Japanese man.  From a technical perspective, you do have those great Ken Adam sets, and some of the outer-space work is quite nice, but the film also has some of the worst blue-screen work I have ever seen in a major film, which lends a certain cheapness to the affair. (Granted, this is not uncommon for films of this era.) The action scenes are generally well handled, but I've always found the final battle curiously lacking in energy — a criticism I have also seen leveled at all three of the films I consider my favorites.  This is not lost on me.

LIVE AN LET DIE is likewise problematic for me.  Moore was not at all comfortable, and the filmmaking seems reactionary to its time and thus more dated than most other films.  The move back to non-anamorphic also strikes a discordant note as well.  I also am not fond of the Bond films that a) take place in the United States and b) were directed by Guy Hamilton.  Still, Jane Seymour is sumptuous in this, and I have found that if the mood is right, I can enjoy the film.  

VIEW TO A KILL is one Moore Bond too many.  He was far too old at this point and the film has the look of a TV movie and perhaps the most annoying Bond woman ever (Tanya Roberts, not Grace Slick).  I am resigned to never really liking this movie.

Which brings us to DIE ANOTHER DAY.

From a technical standpoint, DIE ANOTHER DAY is certainly not embarrassing.  It was an expensive movie, and the money is all there on the screen.  It is full of shiny objects and brightly lit beach bodies, has a couple of rousing action sequences, and a pretty good cast. And yet, it is the nadir of the Bond series for me.  

The Bond films have always been formulaic — this was especially true of the Brosnan films and is especially true of DIE.  Most of the time, you can go along with it--you get what you pay for after all--but this film tilts too far into the outlandish too many times.  It makes this feel like a superhero movie.  

Bond is captured at the conclusion of the long pre-credit sequence, which begins a long period of torture and imprisonment.  Do we doubt that Brosnan will eventually escape or be released?  Never for a second.  He HAS to be in the rest of the film — it is a James Bond film, after all.  Which makes me wonder, why include it in the film to begin with?  Just to do something different?  Nothing of real consequence happens from it.

The film's cast is pretty decent--Rosamund Pike, Halle Berry and Toby Stephens are all fine in that they are all young and attractive and thus easy on the eyes.  Berry especially leaves an impression in a scene where Bond blatantly ogles her as she emerges from the ocean in a bikini. 

The film's main problem is that it is so damn outlandish.  True, Bond went to outer space in MOONRAKER, but he at least did it in a way that was halfway plausible.  Meaning, on a shuttle, not on a custom MI6 rocket car or something.  

I am sure there are those who love this movie, and if you are one of them, more power to you.  We shall agree to disagree.

It grossed $430,000,000 on a budget of $142,000,000.

Stuff To Like:

• A lot of eye candy is on display, both human and technological.
• Rosamund Pike is pretty good in this.
• Halle Berry is also pretty good, but unlike Michelle Yeoh's character in TOMORROW NEVER DIES she is never really given much to do.  Yes, she gives Bond a roll in the hay, but as I've stated above, it's all pretty meaningless.
• Some of the visual effects are pretty good.  The climax on the plane is not let down by the effects.
• Humor is pretty forced.  

Stuff to Dislike:

• Opening surfing scene is WORSE than the Beach Boys song in VIEW TO A KILL.  That was at least aware of what it was doing.  The sequence is just wrong, from conception to execution.  The day for night photography is dire. It made me do the math in my head on how long it would take for someone to get good enough to surf those waves.  Took me massively out of the movie before it really started.
• Halle Berry's character does a back dive off of an incredibly high cliff about an hour into the film.  Poor visual effects aside, it is still a wildly improbable stunt.  
• Bond has an invisible car.  For fuck's sake.
• Why is Madonna in this movie? 
• I don't care about anyone in this movie.
• Once again, all of the bad guys have terrible aim.  

NOMADS

Written and Directed by John McTiernan. Starring Pierce Brosnan, Lesley Ann-Down, Mary Woronov. 16:9 enhanced. 1.85:1 widescreen.

The plot of NOMADS is this: Lesley-Anne Warren is a doctor who treats a crazed Pierce Brosnan one night in the ER. Right before he dies, he whispers something in her ear and somehow transfers his memories to her. After he is dead she starts to experience flashbacks of what happened to him in the last two days of his life. Brosnan was a french anthropologist who had spent the previous 10 years in the field, and was taking a teaching job as a concession to his wife. On the first day in their new house he notices some shady looking people who vandalise his house. Intrigued by their look, he slips into anthropologist mode, grabs a camera and starts to follow them.



He follows them for 31 hours straight. They don't sleep and are always moving from place to place. Ultimately, they notice him so he breaks off his study. They are Nomads, of a type that is not quite human. The point is made that they are spirits who roam the earth. Most people do not notice them (probably cannot physically see them), but a few unlucky one do notice them. Once noticed by the nomads, they are generally killed by them in a violent manner. Because of the manner in which they die, they become Nomads themselves, which is kind of similar to the whole Ju-on concept I suppose. As I said, it was an interesting idea, but handled too abstractly.

He is visited in a dream by a nun who warns him to run from them, but of course he doesn't.



The film is "arty" and generates an effective atmosphere, but the framing structure doesn't work well. The idea is gripping enough that a linear approach following Brosnan's character would have worked better. I have a novelization of this by Chelsea Quinn-Yarbo that is quite good and have always meant to catch up with the movie itself. It's generally bad reviews didn't help me to become motivated to tracking it down. Anyway, overall I quite liked it. It also features a tremendous dream sequence (that may not have been a dream). The major problem is a needlessly abstract and disjointed narrative.

Notice the capture of the man/nomad falling. McTiernan would use the shot to better effect in DIE HARD.