I don’t want to go so far as to
say everyone hates Die Another Day. I’m sure it has its fan, every Bond film
does, but of all the films I had to watch this month, this was the one I was
looking the least forward to reviewing. I was hoping for a pleasant surprise,
as I’d come across several during this retrospective... sadly, there were no
surprises to be had. Good god, I hate this movie! This is up there with A View
to a Kill as one of the most uninspired, unproductive, and all around clunky
James Bond films ever made.
One thing that everyone seems to
agree in criticizing is the over abundance of CGI. This film was released in
2002 (the franchises 40th anniversary), and it was at a time between
here and the mid-90’s when CG was all the rage. Movies like The Lord of the
Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean used it to inspired effect, but most others
were exploiting it to cut corners. Comedian and online critic Doug Walker
described this period of movies best, stating “Mostly, [CGI] was just used as a
dodge, a way to save money on much bigger effects. And the filmmakers seemed to
think ‘If we have CG, we don’t need to try that hard on the stories, either.”
Sad to say this is the exact pitfall Die Another Day suffers from: Preferring
to value flashy visuals as opposed to good storytelling.
After a somewhat entertaining,
but still jumbled opening, we find out that Bond has spent over a year in the
captivity of North Korean soldiers. These soldiers are trading illegally
harvested diamonds in exchange for weaponry. Bond teams up with an NSA agent
named Jinx Johnson (an actual curse on this movie) in tracking down and
arresting the culprits: A Korean terrorist who was scarred after the events at
the beginning of the film, and a British entrepreneur who seeks world
domination by using a laser that use solar power.
This had some strange choices in
its production, in just a sort of total mash-up of ideas. The film was to be
directed by Lee Tamahori, who had directed Once Were Warriors. Alright. The
Bond girl was gonna be played by Halle Berry, who had just won an Oscar for
Monster’s Ball. Makes sense, I guess? The villain’s motivation was that he
wants to gain his father’s respect. Wait, what? And the title song was gonna be
performed by... Madonna. Oh, crap!
This movie takes every bad
element of the franchise and enhances them to the max. First and foremost lies
with presentation, where the characters are as interesting as paint, the
structure lacks any rhythm, the twists are confusing, and then there are
narratives thrown in only for convenience. As for humor, the movie lacks any
good sense of it. On top of not making John Cleese funny AGAIN (that’s one of
the seven deadly movie sins, guys), it wastes all potential on absurd sight
gags and non-stop innuendos. Well, there is one really funny scene involving
Moneypenny near the end of the film, but that’s about it.
Pierce Brosnan seems to have
finally hit that point where he simply can’t make Bond work anymore. Any sense
of charm has been evaporated, and his sense of humor is terribly misguided.
Halle Berry’s character will probably give viewers nightmares of horrific
Catwoman memories. The villains didn’t register to me at all, and even the side
cast felt wasted here.
Nothing against the director, but
the style here is HORRIBLE. Again, the potential this movie could have had is
wasted on way too much CGI. Like The World Is Not Enough, the best moments that
I remember from this movie are the ones that use little to no digital
manipulation at all. Maybe if there had been more practical effects, this could
have been better, but the CG is way too tacky, forced, and obvious. I might
have preferred more subtlety, but this movie’s flair is about as subtle as Zack
Snyder. The fluctuating slow-motion and fast-motion shots are distracting, and
the shaky cam would make even Michael Bay nauseous.
So now that all of that’s out of
the way, I’ll address the elephant in the room. The title song that Madona
performs is HIDEOUS. Her style of music does not fit with the James Bond universe
in any way, shape, or form, and the music and lyrics are beyond generic, set to
one terrible title sequence. It’s hands down the worst Bond song ever. As if
that wasn’t bad enough, she even has a distracting cameo in the film. Because
isn’t that what you want? The performer of your title song to take attention
away from your story, even if the story sucks? I know that’s exactly what I’d
do, too.
In short: THE MOVIE’S AWFUL! Once
again, reception of the film was mixed. Some of the critics really loved what
Lee Tamahori did with the movie, but most everyone criticized it’s over
excessive use of CGI and poor plotting. Bond fans were less than pleased, a lot
of them even going so far as to call it the worst Bond film ever made (Can’t
say I disagree with them), but the movie still did well at the box office. It
outsold GoldenEye in its worldwide gross, but with a budget of 142 million
dollars compared to GoldenEye’s 58 million, it was a conditional victory. It
was a poor end to the fifth generation of Bond. EON weren’t exactly pleased
with how the movie turned out, and with Brosnan’s contract up, they decided to
take the series down brand new roads. Little did we know that it was not only
gonna be good, but it was gonna be the best.
* / *****
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