Screen Vistas: BONDATHON: DIE ANOTHER DAY

In 2002, the Bond franchise celebrated it's 40th anniversary with its 20th film, Die Another Day. The film isn't terribly well remembered, in fact it's considered a low point of the franchise that almost destroyed 007 forever. This hate fly's in the face of the fact that it got not terrible reviews and made a boat load of money, begging the question, is Die Another Day really that bad?

The short answer is no. The film is not good. Not good by any means, but it's hardly as unwatchable as say The Man With The Golden Gun and as much as it tries, and good Lord it does try, it's not nearly as outrageous as Moonraker.

Before descending completely into camp, we have an admirably hardcore opening where Bond (Pierce Brosnan) is captured and spends the next fourteen months being tortured in a North Korean prison camp. The torture continues through the opening credits meaning Bond's ultimate punishment is having to listen to Madonna's awful title track. Eventually Bond is traded back only to face suspicion from M (Judi Dench) over what Bond did or did not divulge during his internment. M strips Bond of his Double O status and detains him for further questioning. Backed against the wall, Bond has no choice but to break out and go rogue to clear his name.

Up till here everything is fine. The action is heightened, but not out of line with series norms. Brosnan is a bit hammy when playing dark, but generally okay. The film has adequately set the stage for a darker, more personal adventure. Unfortunately that's not what it delivers and things take a turn around the 50 minute mark as the film decides that it wants to be a goofy, sci-fi cartoon and never looks back.

On the one hand I admire separating the dark and whimsical elements of the franchise into separate segments as they have never played well together. On the other hand the series has never been good at whimsy so having the entire second half of the film be all whimsy turns out to be a pretty fatal move.

Some of it works. The ice palace fortress of super-villain/Richard Branson analogue Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens) is a tremendously silly idea, but a visually striking one none the less. Also, I liked that when the bad guys capture Bond late in the film, they figure out that they have to take his laser watch too. Also Halley Barry is fun as Bond's NSA agent sidekick Jinx. Jinx is another one of those female James Bonds from foreign agencies. She has her own gadgets, her own car, and like Bond she can only speak in groan inducing double entendres.

But then there is nearly every other element of the film. For every moment that works, there are entire sequences that fall flat. Let's start with the villain. I wanted to like Graves. He's partially based on everyone's favorite billionaire Richard Branson and partially on Ian Fleming's version of Moonraker baddie Hugo Drax, a character who certainly didn't get his due in the official adaptation and doesn't do much better here.

Take his villainy. In addition to having a derivative super weapon (another laser satellite) Graves also has a terribly unimaginative plan to (spoiler alert) destroy the mine field separating North and South Korea so that the North can invade. This brings up some important questions, 1) Why is he using a super-laser with more destructive power than an atomic bomb to clear a mine field when he can just destroy Seoul, forcing the South to surrender? 2) Are there any satellites in this universe that don't double as giant lasers, and if not, why doesn't the world just outlaw satellites? (end spoiler alert)

That laser leads to the films most infamous scene where Graves, who is controlling the weapon via a robot suit, has the laser chase Bond so that he must kite surf down a melting glacier. Until now the only reason the franchise has sort of gotten away with nutty ideas like this is that we've gotten to see talented stunt men pulling them off. This film robs us of even that pleasure by executing the scene with terrible CGI, with close-ups of Brosnan serving as the only photographic element. It's not that CGI can't produce nail-bitters (just look at the fantastic set-pieces that Pixar has done over the years), but you have to convince the audience that there is a real person in real danger. Even a wacky, cartoon universe should be able to ground it's audience somewhat.

Ultimately though, Die isn't interested in grounding us. It just piles on gimmick after shallow gimmick. DNA treatment centers, dancing lasers and the aforementioned robot suit. Heck, the most plausible element in the film is Bond's invisible car! Yeah, that invisible car that uses tiny camera's to project images onto the other side is actually, theoretically sound. Still, it doesn't matter because watching 007 slowly sneak around Graves's lair in a 4,000lb invisible Aston Martin is one of the most laughable images in the entire film.

The film's laughability isn't helped by the stylistic flourishes imposed by director Lee Tamahori (XXX: State of the Union). The man seems obsessed with step-printing and mock fast motion that hit at seemingly random moments and fly in the face of the formalism that the rest of the film is shot with and just help underline that these films had gone right back to being cartoon parodies of themselves. In a way, this is the cinematic equivalent of a mid-life crisis, artificially big, gaudy and over the top, the film keeps trying to convince us how young this franchise is and fools no one.

Grade: C-

Enjoy these other Bondathon entries:

Dr. No

From Russia With Love

Goldfinger

Thunderball / Never Say Never Again