2002 / 132 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

I love Bond movies. Some people love them and some people just don’t get into them. That’s really all there is to it. If you are the sort of person that loves them, then you are in for a hell of a treat. If you’ve never understood their appeal, then don’t worry about catching this one, because it probably won’t make you a convert.

Pierce Brosnan returns as James Bond, master spy for the British Secret Service. He’s got a license to kill and a gift for thwarting the most power-hungry evil geniuses on earth. He’s also been proven to be somewhat invincible. Which is why, when he is caught and tortured at the end of the standard-issue opening action sequence, we are shocked. Bond can’t be caught. He can’t be tortured. He can’t get dirty and grow a beard and look this haggard, this broken, this defeated. It’s just not how these movies are supposed to go. Which is why Bond fans (and you know who you are) will be hanging on every second of this stuff. We’ve never seen this before, and that is the strength of so much of this latest entry into the James Bond pantheon: we’ve never seen it before.

In the past decade (at least) the Bond films, even the best ones, have adhered to a strict formula. There’s been an air that we’ve been there, we’ve done that: Bond had very few new tricks left up that immaculately tailored sleeve. This is why “Die Another Day” is so damn refreshing. It keeps serving up things that we Bond fans thought we would never see. I won’t ruin them here, but if these movies are your bag, then you will smile throughout “Die Another Day”. You will thrill to the fights, ooh at the gadgets and laugh at the characteristic Bond one-liners.

Among the many perks of this film is the fact that Bond and his new nemesis Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens, who sometimes looks like a clone of Guy Pearce) seem to really hate each other. Graves is a debonair British entrepreneur who seems like nothing so much as a shadowy reflection of Bond himself. He’s not just some old guy sitting in a room and stroking a cat. He’s a man of action and grace and misdirection, a man who is a match for 007, for once. His henchman, Zao, is also a treat. He’s an archenemy deserving to go up there with Odd Job and Jaws. He’s a vicious mother who seems almost impervious to everything Bond can dish out.

Then there are the Bond girls. Halle Berry does a fine job with the cheesy one-liners and sexual innuendo. Here is the sort of woman that Bond belongs with: a woman every bit as strong, sexual and dangerous as he is. We also have Rosamund Pike as Miranda Frost, a British agent and ice princess it’s fun to watch Bond thaw. Both of them are memorable, more than just Bond’s average bimbo of the week.

The film even manages to grip us on the plot level. The plot involves diamond smuggling, enormous lasers and a plot to take over the world, and it’s ridiculous (so much so that it sometimes approaches the sort of parody you might find in an Austin Powers film) but it unfolds beautifully. I usually sit through a Bond movie, enduring the plot and awaiting the next action sequence, but I actually enjoyed the plotting of the film as much as, and maybe more than, the outlandish action bits. Until it goes really over the top in its finale, this is a tightly made Bond film that oozes with style and finesse. Brosnan has put his own signature stamp on the role. I still regard him as the second best Bond ever, right below Connery’s place on the pedestal. And this movie is a great Bond adventure that has the potential to become one of my favorites. Sure, it’s sometimes ludicrous. The Bond series always has been something of a fantasy tailored for the adolescent boy in all of us. But at least it has the guts to try something that approaches the ridiculous. At least it has the balls to do something new and risk failing.

In this case, the risk has paid off handsomely.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 22nd, 2002 at 2:25 pm and is filed under Dale's Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.