Tomorrow Never Dies

Much like Live and Let Die was the Bond blaxploitation movie, Tomorrow Never Dies could easily be called James Bond: Hong Kong Action Edition. It takes place largely in Vietnam, was actually filmed in Taiwan, features Hong Kong's biggest female action star as the first Asian Bond girl since You Only Live Twice (I think), and takes a lot of cues from that style of film. Thankfully there's no scenes with Bond doing kung fu, but Michelle Yeoh has a full-on fight with a bunch of dudes in an old, dusty shack that she afterward transforms into a high-tech command outpost with the push of a button. The last sequence where they raid a stealth boat trying to incite war between Great Britain and China so Johnathan Pryce can control the media there (cool plan, bro) is filled with lots of machine gun fire, explosions, people bloodlessly collapsing to the ground and a couple more gruesome ends.

But before that, there's a lot of traditional Bond movie stuff. I like how the early throwaway girl is already in his bed when we first see him, it's just like the filmmakers are saying "This series is 35 years old, you know what's up." It's a brief film for the Brosnan era, not reaching two hours, and some segments feel rushed, like when the entire briefing from M and Moneypenny takes place while in a car headed to the airport. Bond does some stuff at a party Pryce is hosting, including romancing a married woman for the first time in the series (though they have a previous history) and beating up some thugs who try to question him. After a sequence featuring an unusual hit man in one of the franchise's only instances of being funny for an extended period without being silly, followed by a remote controlled car chase that is totally silly, Bond moves on to 'Nam where we finally get to the stuff I was talking about earlier. Did I mention the tag-team moves using handcuffs, the stunt going down the side of a skyscraper, or the motorcycle chase through crowded streets involving jumps and helicopters? Because they happen. Tomorrow Never Dies is far from the most intelligent Bond movie, but it mostly makes up for it with generally competent action.

James Bond stats
Theme song: "Tomorrow Never Dies" by Sheryl Crow
Foreign locations: Russia, Hamburg, Vietnam
Bond, James Bond: 31:25
Martini shaken, not stirred: 33:00
Ladies seduced: 3
Chases: 2
Kills: 25, plus explosion victims
Non-lethal takedowns: 19