 |
| Pierce Brosnan looking bored in Tomorrow Never Dies |
It's easy to enjoy Tomorrow Never Dies while you're watching it. It has some miraculous stunts and sequences -- but the problem is the story serves the action instead of the other way around.
The best Bond films have a really compelling storyline that sticks with you after the credits roll. Very little sticks with me from Tomorrow Never Dies, besides the pure absurdity of its premise.
Bronsan (who's much more wooden here than he was in GoldenEye) goes to battle with one of the silliest and least imposing villains in Bond history -- a Rupert Murdoch-inspired media mogul played by Jonathan Pryce. The film thinks it's making a statement -- I guess -- about the rise of infotainment, but it just feels like a stretch for a 007 film.
It doesn't help that the movie is saddled with far too many wince-worthy journalism puns and enough plot holes do drive the tank from Goldeneye through. Why, for instance, is Terri Hatcher's character even married to Pryce's villain? Is she a gold digger or was she actually attracted to this man? Hatcher has one of the weakest roles for a Bond girl in the entire pantheon, she has no chemistry with Brosnan and then is killed off screen.
 |
| Brosnan and Yeoh |
Tomorrow Never Dies is not the worst Bond movie ever but it is a definite break from its predecessors in the wrong direction. Instead of building on narrative strengths of GoldenEye, producers decided to go the big action movie route and a lot of what made the Bond character special gets lost in the process.
Brosnan doesn't get to do much character work here between shoot outs and explosions. Meanwhile, the plot is so overwhelmed by all the mayhem on screen. The series would try to inject a little more drama the next go round, but ironically it was Die Another Day -- which is ridiculed for its use of CGI and Madonna cameo -- that sort of salvaged the series under Brosnan.
As much as I like him, this film did not hold up well for me, so I'm ranking it near the bottom of the pack.
1) From Russia With Love
2) The Spy Who Loved Me
3) Goldfinger
4) For Your Eyes Only
5) Live and Let Die
6) Dr. No
7) On Her Majesty's Secret Service
8) The Living Daylights
9) GoldenEye
10) Octopussy
11) You Only Live Twice
12) Diamonds Are Forever
13) Thunderball
14) Moonraker
15) The Man with the Golden Gun
16) Tomorrow Never Dies
17) A View to a Kill
18) License to Kill
Liz's take: This one felt like the movie was built around the actions sequences, so I kind of got a gist of the plot but not really. I think the movie had one of the most interesting and lead interesting Bond girls. One the one hand -- Terri Hatcher -- why are you even in this movie? Her character makes no sense and doesn't really serve plot of the movie. It's almost like they just decided to throw in an extra beautiful for no apparent reason.
On the other hand, Michelle Yeoh is one of the most convincing Bond girls in action scenes of the series. She kind of steals the show from Pierce Brosnan, in the motorcycle scene in particular. They have nice chemistry.
You have a villain who's neither campy enough to be or menacing enough to be really scary. I guess my final thoughts are that Tomorrow Never Dies doesn't seem all that distinguishable from its predecessor, GoldenEye, in that it seems like another '90s action movie. I liked GoldenEye but this one doesn't deviate enough to raise the stakes in any meaningful way.
Liz's rankings:
1) On Her Majesty's Secret Service
2) For Your Eyes Only
3) Goldfinger
4) Dr. No
5) Live and Let Die
6) The Man with the Golden Gun
7) The Spy Who Loved Me
8) GoldenEye
9) The Living Daylights
10) Octopussy
11) Moonraker
12) A View to a Kill
13) License to Kill
14) Tomorrow Never Dies
15) You Only Live Twice
16) From Russia With Love
17) Diamonds Are Forever
18) Thunderball
On the other hand, Michelle Yeoh is one of the most convincing Bond girls in action scenes of the series. She kind of steals the show from Pierce Brosnan, in the motorcycle scene in particular. They have nice chemistry.
You have a villain who's neither campy enough to be or menacing enough to be really scary. I guess my final thoughts are that Tomorrow Never Dies doesn't seem all that distinguishable from its predecessor, GoldenEye, in that it seems like another '90s action movie. I liked GoldenEye but this one doesn't deviate enough to raise the stakes in any meaningful way.
Liz's rankings:
1) On Her Majesty's Secret Service
2) For Your Eyes Only
3) Goldfinger
4) Dr. No
5) Live and Let Die
6) The Man with the Golden Gun
7) The Spy Who Loved Me
8) GoldenEye
9) The Living Daylights
10) Octopussy
11) Moonraker
12) A View to a Kill
13) License to Kill
14) Tomorrow Never Dies
15) You Only Live Twice
16) From Russia With Love
17) Diamonds Are Forever
18) Thunderball
No comments:
Post a Comment