Starring: Pierce Brosnan, Judi Dench, John Cleese, Halle Berry, Toby Stephens, Rick Yune, Rosamund Pike, Will Yun Lee, Michael Madsen, Rachel Grant
Director: Lee Tamahori
Genre: Action, Adventure, Thriller
Rating: C
I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this movie. While it does escape from the evil Soviets plot, the twist did surprise me, and I really liked a lot of the references and allusions to previous Bonds, it was also overly complicated, cheesy, and a bit too much. Roger Moore said of the film "I thought it just went too far – and that’s from me, the first Bond in space! Invisible cars and dodgy CGI footage? Please!" That's actually pretty much exactly how I feel. I like Brosnan overall as a Bond, but this movie in general felt like it should have been a Roger Moore one - and in my opinion, that's not a good thing.
The background to this is that Bond (Brosnan) was captured by the North Koreans while on a mission related to illegally traded African conflict diamonds. After 14 months of captivity Bond is released in exchange for the release of North Korean agent Zao (Yune), whose face had been disfigured by diamond fragments during the struggle with Bond. Once released, Bond is suspended from active duty because M (Dench) doesn't believe that he hasn't leaked information, so Bond escapes to complete his mission. In Havana (because that where you go when your mission involves North Korea) Bond meets NSA agent Giacinti 'Jinx' Johnson (Berry), who he follows (along with Zao) to a gene therapy treatment, where more conflict diamonds are discovered, this time with the company crest of British billionaire Gustav Graves (Stephens). Bond returns to England to continue the investigation, where he meets fellow MI6 agent Miranda Frost (Pike), who is undercover as Graves' assistant. Points if you guess who's sleeping with who!
There's a lot about this movie that is really classic Bond and in a way, I admire Tamahori for trying to recreate that feel of the series. The problem is, however, that you really can't go back. What made movies like Dr. No work only worked because of the time in which they were created. Outside of the sixties and seventies, classic Bond doesn't work as well; that was one of the problems of the Roger Moore films. Die Another Day fails even more because in addition to trying to grasp that classic feel it also tries to incorporate new technology, namely CGI. The result is rather disastrous. No, the result is horrendous. Actually, there's more to it than that. Another part of the problem is that while trying to envoke a lot of the old classic feel Die fails to intentionally invoke the humour and the cheese. As such, it's a lame and cheesy movie that fails to realize it's as much. It's okay to be ridiculous, when you know that's what you're doing - that's why Dr. Strangelove is so awesome. If you take yourself seriously but fail to be serious, you just don't work out in the end.
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