[FILM] Die Another Day (2002)

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Okay...

As most people might have noticed. I like the Bond films. I grew up on them. They are a part of my DNA. And because of that I can watch and enjoy any of them, even those who are considered weak.

Die Another Day defies that love though. It has parts that are good. Elements that show promise, a few scenes that work. But it's largely shit!

Ive always known that which is why I have avoided it. Tonight was my second time watching it since I first saw it on DVD in 2003.

But I went in with an open mind, hoping to enjoy it. Like it did with AVTAK, Moonraker etc. At first this worked. The teaser is quite good. Nice hovercraft chase, and I liked the idea of Bond as a prisoner. The scenes between 007 and M are actually rather interesting. Based on material from The Man With The Golden Gun, their relationship of mutual antagonism actually somewhat resembles the relationship they would have in the Daniel Craig era. And Brosnan does actually do quite well in the early scenes where he plays a Bond who's confused and angry. The fake beard they gave him looks shit though.

The scenes in Cuba are decent too. Though Bond meets the main Bond girl, played by Halle Berry, more about her later.

The action then moves to good old England where 007 has a completely over the top sword-fight with the Bond villain with the typical Bond villain name of Gustav Graves. Madonna has an awful cameo here. Things already start to look poor here. Bond practices using virtual reality in a scene that gets an awful follow up late in the film where Moneypenny abuses government property for masturbation and we are introduced to the dreadful invisible car.

Sigh...after 3 films with boring BMW's Bond finally get an Aston again, and they make it invisible. Nice going!

But really the film derails once they get to Iceland, and any promise the film has deflates rather fast. Almost all the bond films, from Goldfinger to Goldeneye or from Moonraker to Man With The Golden Gun have a sense of style, a decorum that is totally abandoned here. The previous Bond had the problem that the action scenes werent all that engaging. DAD had the problem that everything gets turned up to ELEVEN...and not a soft eleven. BUT A LOUD ELEVEN!!!!

I usually enjoy over the top action, but not here. A laser or two in a Bond film is fine. But I cant enjoy a fight-scene where 007 has to dodge 6 laser beams. I like cars with gadgets, but two cars with a complete arsenal going at each other in a frozen lake being blasted by a North Korean satellite stuffed with diamonds emitting a super heat ray which actually takes forever to melt Gustav's icy palace....

This film looks like SHIT!

It was shot by David Tatterstall who also shot all 3 the Prequels and it has that flat, one dimension look about it. Everything looks fake. The sets look fake, the locations look fake. The colorgrading of this film reminded me a bot of Superman Returns. It makes everything look phony.

The previous 3 used CGI to home extent but relied mostly on good old fashioned stunt work. Sadly in an effort to imitate the more stylized look of action films like The Matrix, X-Men, the Prequels etc they decided to really go all out with the CGI and the result is awful! Even in 2002 this must have looked like shit!

Pierce Brosnan plays Bond for the last time. And he deserved better then this. He does his best, especially in the early scenes, but you can detect that Brosnan is playing in a film that he knows is rubbish. (he has ridiculed it since)

He looks slightly too old now too, though never like Moore in his latter films. The effortless charme of his first 3 films is gone. You can see he was "contractually obligated" to appear in this film.

He gets little help from Hally, who looks breathtaking in her opening shot, but is simpy awful in this. Thats the bane of her career. She is gorgeous, but also highly annoying. I would not say she's as bad as Christmas Jones, and at-least the script attempts some kind of background on her character. But even though the American Bond girls tend to be written as abrasive anyway, she is by far the worst.

The second Bond girls is Miranda Frost (great Bond girl name). Played by Rosamund Pike (an even better Bond girl name) who would establish herself as a credible actress after this film. She's not bad, but simply not that memorable.

Toby Stephens really puts in the effort as Gustav Graves. But what a poorly written role. A North Korean undergoing gene alteration to become white, pass himself of as an Englishman and goes on a rampage through the DMZ with his super diamond sunlight thingy? I liked the conceit that Graves modeled his disgusting persona on Bond though.

Michael Madsen is in this film. He's normally a fine actor, but not here....

This film is too sci-fi like. From DNA alteration to scanners checking Bonds health. From too many lasers to a bionic suit that Gustav Graves has made for him, for reasons that are never made clear. He uses it to zap Bond with Force lightning.

Many Bond films include fantastical elements and tend to stray over the lines of plausibility a bit too much. But DAD zapps the lines of plausibility with it's Force lightning, then bombards it with super concentrated sun light from its diamond satellite (and yes I know it's a call back to Diamonds Are Forever).

This was the 2oth Bond film so they included more references to previous film then usual. Like Rosa Klebb's pointed shoe. Or the decompression scene from Goldfinger, or the ejector seat from that same film etc etc. Some are fun, others fall flat. Skyfall would do a better job referencing the series on it's 5oth birthday

I like Arnolds Bond scores a lot. I also like this score....on it's own. It's Bond music on acid! But in the film it only too often becomes part of the problem. Arnold was served with a film that has no subtlety of style and writes a scores that fits that film to a tee.

I'm in a minority for actually liking the Madonna song....

Lee Tamahori directed The Edge, an excellent film with confident direction and strong performances.

Sadly none of the qualities that made The Edge so strong can be found here. Too noisy too much of the time, badly shot, poorly edited and with those horrible horrible speed ramp camera tricks that simply DO NOT BELONG in a Bond film!

The script by Purvis and Wade plays like a fan wank best of series of scenes and situations from the previous films, stripped of their innate style and charm, injected with a dose of gaudy obviousness and printed out in CAPITAL LETTERS only. In an extra large font so everyone could read it.

I'm not sure who takes the most blame here. Tamahori, Purvis and Wade, Broccoli and Wilson?

It's actually almost impossible to imagine that 4 of those 5 names would go go on to make write and produce the next film, Casino Royale.

Though looking back a few seeds of that film can already be seen in the mess that is Die Another Day. The antagonistic relationship between M and Bond. The description given by Miranda Frost of Bond as a "blunt instrument". Also 007 is more severe in this film, more angry, less interested in quips. Which is something that would work well with Craig, but less so with Brosnan.

Perhaps that is the saving grace and sole purpose of Die Another Day. Those who made it saw it fro what it was and knew they had to up the ante.

This would lead to Casino Royale. The first Bond film since Goldeneye that would not only be a great Bond film, but a great film....

* out of ****

[Jay 37,271]

Wait, if you're such a fan of the series, why didn't you see DAD in the theaters?

Did you see any of the Brosnan Bonds in the theater?

I assume you saw all the Craig Bonds in the theater right?

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

I saw Goldeneye and TWINE in the cinema. Missed TND and DAD for some reason. With DAD i think it was simply a question of not having time. Hoorn's cinema closed down and i never got around to seeing it in Amsterdam. Had to struggle to catch TTT.

Ive seen every Craig film in the cinema. Skyfall 7 times.

[Jay 37,271]

I watched Goldeneye on TV / Pay Per View / VHS after loving the N64 game, then have seen every Bond film since TND in the theater opening weekend. I've since watched them all at home again, some more than once, except DAD and Skyfall (I foolishly bought the Blu Ray box before it was included in it)

In college there were always marathons on cable and we'd have them on while doing homework and stuff, so I saw bits and pieces of probably all the classic Bonds that way, but never any in full all the way through.

Until at some point, I picked up the entire collection when they first appeeared on DVD. I think it was for the first 19 films - TWINE might have even been sold separately, but the box had room for it once you got it. For whatever reason, I only ever watched the first two (Dr No and... FRWL?) before selling the box off. I was waiting to watch with a friend I could never get together with.

So now I have the blu ray set and we've watched the first four films. Haven't watched any in a while though, Marcy usually isn't interested when I suggest it when it's movie time.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

Late 2002 was a bad time for me to see movies. All I had time for was CoS, and I missed Star Trek Nemesis and Die Another Day.

[Sweeping Strings 2,344]

Yep, DAD doesn't know when to stop ... it unfortunately doesn't pull back from tipping too far over into sci-fi than a Bond film should.

And oh dear LORD, that parasurf sequence *shudder* .

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Dissapointing because the opening surf scenes in the teaser actually look good.

[Naïve Old Fart 9,490]

Best line; "I know all about the U.N. embargo. I studied at Oxford and Harvard; majored in Western hypocricy".

Second-best line: "A man like that could blow my cover".