Die Another Day (2002)

Die Another Day is the worst Bond film ever and its made even worse by the fact that this is the 20th Bond film and it’s the 40th Anniversary year. Think about that, we went from Dr No to Die Another Day in four decades. It’s also the final outing for Pierce Brosnan which is a shame really. This is the only Bond film directed by Lee Tamahori who did a few directing jobs and then did Along Came a Spider and went on to direct xXx2: The Next Level and the Devil’s Double where Dominic Cooper plays a guy who has to play Saddam Hussein’s son. Quite why he was given this film to do baffles me because he does nothing with it. 

The film does start off with quite a good set up in North Korea. I don’t quite know when North Korea became an acceptable baddie to use in films but I suppose it makes a change from the Russians or Nazi’s. Bond meets General Moon who I am guessing is supposed to be a Supreme Leader of North Korea or at the very least someone important. 

By the time the title music plays, Bond has been captured and during the course of the titles we see him being tortured. That is the only good thing about those titles because the theme tune is the worst ever. I don’t care what people say about Jack White and Alicia Keys in Quantum of Solace but this beats it. Madonna doing a Bond song is the stupidest idea ever. Madonna in the 1980’s would have made sense but she was going through a stupid techno dance phase and that is why this is the worst. 

One of the problems with this film is that because it’s the 40th Anniversary film, it feels like it has to nod to the previous films but does it in such a blatant way that it shows that they don’t really have a plot. It does the whole Bond being kicked out of MI6 by M which mirrors what happened in Licence to Kill. 

There are things which don’t have any right being in a Bond film. The scene where Bond slows down his heartbeat is stupid and I suspect quite difficult. I know its Bond but it just seems silly. One of the things people dislike is the invisible car. Now whilst I am not saying that its good or even decent, it didn’t bother me. I think that the invisible car is the least of the film’s problems.

The scene where all the different props from the previous films make an appearance such as the jet pack from From Russia with Live and the bladed shoe from the same film. There is also the propeller plane from You Only Live Twice. Then there is the comment that Q makes when he passes Bond his new watch saying that it’s his 20th referring to this being the 20th film in the series. I think that it’s a bit too obvious.

Another problem this film has is that the casting is pretty much terrible across the board. Apart from the regulars not one of the supporting cast is any good. I thought they couldn’t get any worse than Denise Richards as Christmas Jones but then comes Halle Berry as Jinx Johnson. This film came out two years after she debuted as Storm in the X-Men series and the year before this she starred in a film where she won an Oscar (actually collecting it during filming) so it made sense to cast her but the character she plays is just annoying. It’s not made very clear whether she’s suppose to be good or bad. Gustav Graves is suppose be this posh arrogant rich guy who when he first appears in the film parachutes to Buckingham Palace to receive a knighthood but I find him quite dull. Even the sword fight scene between him and Bond is rather dull because I didn’t care about Graves. Its like they knew they didn’t have anything for the character so they told Toby Stephens to sneer at the camera in every scene because that will show people he’s bad. Rosamind Pike makes her movie debut here and her character is basically Graves’ PA and its later revealed that she’s working for MI6 but then she proves to be working against them. Again like Halle Berry, its never very clear where her loyalties lie and so by the end when its really made clear, I don’t care and it’s a shame because Pike has become a good actress since. 

Visually the film is a mess. The film has quite a lot of CGI which just looks terrible and it looked terrible in 2002 and hasn’t aged well. There is one shot where Bond is coming out of the sea/lake after he has escaped and its clear the background is fake. Tamahori seems to rely too heavily on CGI when in the past it has always been done live and its at the cost of the film that its very clear when something is real and when something is created in a computer. I know it was how things were done in 2002 but this is Bond and it should be done differently.

However the main problem with this film is that it looks clichéd. In 2002, Kiefer Sutherland has debuted as Jack Bauer in 24 and Matt Damon made his first appearance as Jason Bourne and you put those two characters and everything involved with them and Bond does look quite outdated and I think that is partly the reason why this film is so weak. The CGI is also quite bad. One of the worst bits of CGI comes when Bond is surfing a tidal wave. Not only does it look bad buts it’s a stupd moment and the closest that the series has come to the ‘jumping the shark’ phrase.

This film has a 6.1 on IMDB which is the lowest rating for the series so far and its not hard to see why. Moonraker was the worst Bond film up to this point but at least there is an excuse for why that film is bad. They were trying to cash in on the space craze that was created by Star Wars. Also the stuff before they go into space was quite good but there is nothing redeemable about Die Another Day and it’s a sad way for Pierce Brosnan to bow out. Die Another Day is a watershed moment in the franchise because it’s the last Bond film of its type. When Casino Royale appears, the Bond we see is more gritty and less about the puns than had been seen before. As sad as I am to see the Brosnan era end, its going to be fun to see the four most recent Bond films and enter a great period of the series.