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| Pierce Brosnan in Die Another Day |
It's got some seriously dodgy CGI, far too many terrible one liners and it's last act occasionally plays like a greatest hits of late 90s/early 2000s action cliches.
I get it -- it's easy to hate on this movie, but I think there's a lot to love it about it too.
Die Another Day is perhaps the most excessive and over-the-top of all the 007 films -- it's got an invisible car for Christ's sake -- but it also, at least in it's first half is a bit of a throwback Bond movie as well.
Pierce Brosnan gives perhaps his best and most signature performance as Bond in this film. He finally gets to show more of the flinty charm he's had in films outside the series here. In the opening the unthinkable happens -- Bond is captured. He gets tortured and is all but abandoned by her majesty's secret service. Bond, ready for revenge, goes rogue and in the film's most satisfying sections goes on a globe trotting journey to get back in action.
The film works great here because it both pays homage to the classic Bond films (this one marked the 40th anniversary of the franchise) but also gives it a modern action feel as well.
Halle Berry has to deliver some ludicrous dialogue here but she comes out more unscathed than Denise Richards did, and she and Brosnan do have some sparks together. That said, some of their sexual innuendo becomes cringe-inducing by the end.
There are some real laughs in this movie though -- and no, I'm talking about Madonna's much derided cameo appearance.
And some of the action sequences feel fresh and creative -- there's a dynamite sword fight, a terrific car battle on the ice and hovercraft chase in a minefield. Brosnan really sells these scenes, even if he doesn't seem like a naturally physically imposing guy. He's less pretty here and more rough hewn. It's the first of his Bond films where I felt like he had a nastier edge and seemed less like a nice guy who is just super dedicated to his job.Unfortunately, like all four of his films it gets a little overwhelmed by pyrotechnics at the end and the plot becomes so unbelievable that it becomes impossible to get seriously invested in it. Also the obsession with the puns just galls me. That increasingly irritating trope was wisely jettisoned when Craig took the reins.
I've always had a soft spot for Die Another Day though, and Brosnan, because I guess I think they both deserve to be remembered more fondly than they are. Is it a great spy film? No, probably not. But it's still fun and diverting, which Brosnan's tenure largely was.
That said, Daniel Craig takes the cake for me, and I can't wait to revisit his first three outings as 007 next.
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) Die Another Day
15) Moonraker
16) The World Is Not Enough
17) The Man with the Golden Gun
18) Tomorrow Never Dies
19) A View to a Kill
20) License to Kill
Liz's take: I didn't like it. I really liked the beginning and I think the Daniel Craig ones do this well too -- it's very grounded. It was very real and gritty. But, the special effects in this one really took me out of it. They just didn't really age well at all. The sequences I liked best -- like the car chase on the ice -- I really liked because if looked legit, but the rest felt like CGI and not very good CGI, which I found really distracting.
Although The World Is Not Enough went off the rails a little bit -- it never looked bad -- and this one did. I get what they were trying to do with the two Bond girls -- Miranda Frost (Rosamund Pike) is all icy and cold and Jinx (Berry) is all heat, passion and sex. But then they had to go and pit them against each other is this cliched catty way, which left a bad taste in my mouth.
I will say I like Pierce Brosnan a lot. Daniel Craig is definitely a clear break from him, but Brosnan feels like this amalgamation of Connery, Moore and Dalton -- in a really good way. He's really sexy, he's really believable in the role. He's the highlight and shining point in the movie, everything else was like meh.
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) The World Is Not Enough
9) GoldenEye
10) The Living Daylights
11) Octopussy
12) Moonraker
13) A View to a Kill
14) License to Kill
15) Tomorrow Never Dies
16) Die Another Day
17) You Only Live Twice
18) From Russia With Love
19) Diamonds Are Forever
20) Thunderball
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