From its early moments, it apparent that Die Another Day is a new breed of James Bond movie – at least as new as a 40-year-old movie franchise can ever be expected to be. We see Bond not just as a secret agent, but an assassin; we see Bond as a violent, cut-throat operative; and we see him captured by the bad guys and locked up for so long that he grows a beard of almost Rip Van Winkle proportions. This is no kinder, gentler Bond; it’s a tough, high octane Bond determined to build momentum as he moves into his fifth decade.
Die Another Day manages to maintain this tough, high energy pace throughout, helped considerably by a strong cast of supporting characters and a couple of terrific scenes that are gripping and great fun. By now, the cool, debonair Bond is so familiar that Pierce Brosnan – who clearly is determined to rival Sean Connery for best Bond of all-time, and might just do it – and director Lee Tamahori (Along Came a Spider) virtually dispense with showing him as a cool character. He doesn’t even spend a whole lot of time going after women. Instead, Bond is highly motivated – even angry – in his pursuit of whoever was behind his imprisonment in North Korea. At the centre of the mystery is a small collection of diamonds that Bond snatched from the right hand man of a rogue North Korean army officer. These diamonds lead to the magnate Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens), and eventually to Graves’ Icelandic diamond mine and ice palace. Here’s where most of the fireworks take place.
This is one of the best Bond movies in a long time, and credit must go in substantial measure to the Bond ‘girls’ played by Rosamund Pike and Halle Berry. The two complement each other well, with Pike playing the coldly efficient British agent Miranda Frost, and Berry the competent, confident American agent Jinx. Both are strong (not to mention beautiful), and – when combined with a worthwhile foe in Graves, make for a cast of characters that’s anything but Bond on his own.
The best scenes are thrilling – a fencing match between Bond and Graves that turns into an all-out swordfight in a ritzy London sports club, a fist fight between Bond and a thug amid twirling lasers, and a car chase on the Icelandic ice. These are the sorts of scenes that help us forget that the Bond formula is very, very old.
Set in Korea, Cuba, England, Iceland and the UK, this is one Bond film that doesn’t depend particularly on its locations. It also doesn’t depend as much as you might expect on computer generated special effects. Oh, they’re here all right, but they’re also among the movie’s weakest scenes. A sail boarding sequence and a helicopter escaping the cargo bay of a crashing jumbo jet are two of the least impressive and most bogus-looking scenes in the film. Here’s hoping the Bond braintrust continues to depend mainly on real, live stunts rather than fake cartoons like these two scenes.
Fast-moving, violent and packed with fun characters and action, Die Another Day never bores, even though it runs longer than two hours – often a dangerous length for an action movie. Those who despise the Bond formula won’t be won over by this one, but everyone else is in for a good time. Brosnan is a strong Bond, and here’s hoping that Berry also makes a return appearance in the future.
