Die Another Day

So, this is where the filmmakers went too far and turned James Bond from an outlandish action hero into the star of something monumentally stupid. Die Another Day has a few decent moments, but in general it's just insane. Even more of an unbelievable science fiction movie than Moonraker, practically every ten minutes it tops its own ridiculousness. It actually starts out not too bad. I'm not sure why Bond and his bodies had to surf to their mission start point instead of a more simple method, but they steal a helicopter and a briefcase of diamonds, hoping to interrupt an arms deal by a corrupt North Korean Colonel. After a betrayal and an action sequence featuring a bunch of hovercrafts (probably the film at its most reasonable), Bond gets captured and tortured for over a year before being traded for one of the Colonel's henchmen. Later in a hospital on a boat in Hong Kong, things take a turn for the worse. Bond has been restricted by MI-6, but he decides to escape his enclosed room by willing himself into cardiac arrest. That's right. He just thinks about his time in Korea and his heart stops. He then wakes up, takes out the doctors, and swims to shore.

What follows is a parade of overly double entendre-heavy one-liners and technologies each more ridiculous than the last. People changing their identities with gene therapy, because plastic surgery is too old fashioned! Cars that turn invisible! Virtual reality training simulations that also apparently support erotic fantasies! A satellite that can channel the sun's energy and cut a swath of destruction across the earth! Also, why is Iceland an icy wonderland in this movie? I mean yeah, there are glacial areas there. But they couldn't sustain a frozen palace. When you include the sequence where Bond appears to kitesurf off the edge of the world, you get the feeling the screenwriters meant to place that act in the North Pole and got confused. When you add the general low level of acting (do people actually like Halle Berry?) and how nobody can seem to have a fucking conversation without throwing eight dick jokes out there, and it's a disappointing way to celebrate forty years of Bond. The scenes with John Cleese as the new Q are generally entertaining, but the film can hardly go five minutes without something dumb happening. The best thing you can say about the movie is that it's at least not boring.

James Bond stats
Theme song: "Die Another Day" by Madonna
Foreign locations: Korea, Hong Kong, Havana, Iceland
Bond, James Bond: 53:55
Martini shaken, not stirred: 50:05, 1:11:00
Ladies seduced: 2
Chases: 2
Kills: 16 real, plus explosion victims, 7 virtual
Non-lethal takedowns: 11

Original continuity James Bond stat totals
Bond, James Bond: 22
Martini shaken, not stirred: 16
Ladies seduced: 53
Chases: 46
Kills: More than 219
Non-lethal takedowns: 176

The World Is Not Enough

You getting tired of these yet? I sorta am. But we're in the home stretch. TWINE is another solid if unspectacular film in Brosnan's repertoire, entertaining without changing the world or really asking you to think much. It's notable for being Desmond Llewelyn's final film as Q, with John Cleese already there ready to replace him. He was apparently planning to return once more, but was killed in a car accident. Can you believe that? The guy was old for 35 years and that's what it takes to get him. The movie brings back Robbie Coltrane's Russian character, and makes him into a bit of a buffoon. Sophie Marceau plays one of the very few major female villains in the series, and does an okay job of it. Denise Richards meanwhile plays the least convincing nuclear physicist ever. I'll give her credit for looking awesome in a tight t-shirt and daisy dukes, but it's seriously one of the poorer major performances in the series.

You can sort of see a transitional arc over Brosnan's four Bond films in terms of the style of the action. Goldeneye was a bit over the top but still sort of gritty and somewhat believable. Tomorrow Never Dies was still not what I'd call silly, but more unbelievable and movie-like. This film is even more outlandish, with crap like being chased by flying snowmobiles on parachutes down a mountain and helicopters with hanging buzz saws destroying a dock around him, but still not too moronic. As for the next movie, well... we'll talk about that later. The plot starts out decently although degrades by the end with one of the harder to justify villainous goals, and serves to present some action sequences that are rarely better than decent. Honestly, I can't think of much the movie truly does well, but it's hard to dislike also. It's dangling on the edge of the cliff leading to irritating stupidity, but its fingertips are strong enough to never fall in. And with a follow-up like it has, it's hard not to come out looking all right.

James Bond stats
Theme song: "The World Is Not Enough" by Garbage
Foreign locations: Spain, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Istanbul
Bond, James Bond: 31:25, 1:07:50
Martini shaken, not stirred: 43:25
Ladies seduced: 3
Chases: 2
Kills: 20
Non-lethal takedowns: 7

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

GoldenEye

We're finally into the Bond movies I've definitely seen all the way through. The gap between the last film and this one was the longest in the series' history, and they even talked about rebooting it like they would end up doing 11 years later. They probably should have, because there's no reason it had to be tied to the existing continuity. Desmond Llewelyn as Q is the only returning actor, and the hiatus between films did him absolutely no good. He's always been an old guy, but he never looked like this. Pierce Brosnan is a solid Bond, but it's weird how the opening sequence supposes something that happened nine years earlier, when the character was in transition between Moore and Dalton. Judi Dench takes up the role of M, with them needing to explain she's a successor to the old one thanks to the switch in gender, and it's weird how she refers to an actor 18 years her junior as a "dinosaur of the Cold War". Despite these little things, it's a good film, the best in the series in a while.

It's in a slightly weird position, stuck right before CGI really took off in films, and it's a little strange to see so much slightly obvious work with miniatures for the first time in the series, right before the shift into computer effects. As they enter the 90s, the sex scenes become more explicit, especially a scene where Famke Janssen (the only significant female villain in Brosnan's films that he doesn't bone) kills a guy in coitus. There's also an increase in violence; Bond's kill total jumps into the twenties as he is seen firing a machine gun wildly into a crowd as several go down at once for the first time. Robbie Coltrane is a cool Russian guy, and Sean Bean's character is interesting. I mean... yeah, he's the villain. He betrays 007. Sorry, the movie's 14 years old. It's cool to see him "die" in the beginning only to come back as an adequate, fairly rape-y antagonist. If you've ever noticed, Bean gets a lot of roles where he either dies or disappears early or gets fucked over in some way, to see it subverted before it ever became a thing is neat. Anyway, Brosnan's first Bond film was his best, and still pretty good.

James Bond stats
Theme song: "GoldenEye" by Tina Turner
Foreign locations: Russia, Monte Carlo, Cuba
Bond, James Bond: 20:25
Martini shaken, not stirred: 20:05
Ladies seduced: 2
Chases: 2
Kills: 26, plus explosion victims
Non-lethal takedowns: 7