This seems to be the year for dark movies, even for children. So James Bond should be no exception and is not as he comes to the screen a twentieth time in 007 – Die Another Day. Kudos to director Lee Tamahori and producer Barbara Broccoli for their strength and willingness to reinvent what many have called limp and even irrelevant.
For this is a different James Bond, a new style for the new century, though clearly care has been taken to keep his character, and the overall movie, in league with the past. Change is apparent right from the opening frames: Bond has what looks at first to be a typical pre-credit action sequence, his mission to take out a rogue North Korean colonel who’s trading arms to African armies for banned diamonds. But while James does destroy the man’s base and inventory, he himself is taken prisoner. Then as the title credits play, instead of simply showing us silhouettes of beautiful yet dangerous women–as all past movies have–the screen is intercut with shots of Bond’s torture and interrogation. When the credits end and the film truly begins, 14 months have passed and Pierce Brosnan could pass for Tom Hanks halfway through Castaway.
Bond is released yet cut adrift from MI6; even M wonders to him why he hasn’t done the honorable thing. “I threw the cyanide capsule away years ago,” he replies. Brosnan is, perhaps, not quite too long in the tooth for this role at 49 but he’s getting there. Supposedly the next one will be his last and I will be glad that he does not try and stretch as far as Roger Moore, who made A View to a Kill at 58. Sean Connery was wiser and only 53 when he made Never Say Never Again.
Must mention the second among equals performance of Halle Berry as Jinx. Quite good, quite delectible, and stunning in one of the movie’s homages to the past when we first see her walking out of the Caribbean surf in a bikini (Ursula Andress as Honey Rider in Dr. No, the first Bond film). For most of the film she is pursuing her own mission, separate from 007, though their paths intersect; she’s also the first woman Bond beds after his long stint in North Korea. The media has been full of talk that Jinx, and Berry, are too good to waste and that they’ll make her the star of the first spinoff from the franchise. Some of us remember, though, that much the same talk was around five years ago when Michelle Yeoh partnered up with Brosnan and that came to naught.
The villains are much in the style of the past as well, yet new in ways. The action man Zao, played by Rick Yune, is smoother and smarter than, say, Odd Job, and has better weapons as well. The gorgeous Rosamund Pike, who looks quite familiar though this is her first major role, follows the path of Sophie Marceau and Famke Janssen as bad girls who can’t keep their hands off the main man yet can’t kill him either.
Toby Stephen and Will Yun Lee play the master villain in a nasty twist which isn’t nearly obvious for quite some time. In any case, they come up with a diabolical plan using a huge mirror in space, controlled by a cool remote control worn as a gauntlet. Their planning, reach, and wealth put them in the same fine company as Ernst Blofeld and Emilio Largo but are far more willing to get their own hands dirty and get physical.
Lee Tamahori (who also directed an episode of The Sopranos) blows out the doors here. Writer team Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who also wrote The World Is Not Enough, came up with snappy dialog and a spiraling, ever tightening plot. Earlier this year, after seeing xXx, I thought that perhaps Vin Diesel and his character could become the combination that finally knocks 007 off its perch. But if the producers are smart enough, and hire this trio for Bond 21, that won’t be true any time soon. This is probably the best in the series since the end of the Cold War.
Highly recommended
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