FILM: The Man With the Golden List
Die Another Day
It is nigh on impossible that anyone with a television set or radio receiver could have missed the fact that James Bond 20 Die Another Day has just been released in cinemas nation-wide. Such is the impact of this British institution that even the Queen was drawn into the hype, with the tabloids making a great deal of her attendance at the premiere. Even the most die-hard Bond fan, however, would admit that any series with Bonds one-every-two-years hit rate would inevitably suffer from quality control problems; while some Bond films are great fun, some are undeniably rather poor. The question is, which of these is Bond 20?
The plot is effectively Bond-by-numbers: after having been double-crossed, imprisoned and tortured, a newly released Bond sets off to hunt down those who betrayed him, whilst unavoidably sleeping with various gorgeous women, causing huge explosions and employing legions of natty gadgets on the way. Formulaic and clichι-packed though the plot is, it hums along giving little chance to catch ones breath. The direction is good in the sense that one doesnt really notice it: competent enough to make the film eminently easy on the eye, but certainly not ground-breaking in any way. No flashy gimmicks are employed, but the action sequences mostly look the part.
The producers were clearly intent that this should be the Bond film with the most memorable explosions and the most exciting action set-pieces ever, and they have succeeded for the most part. Expensive and visually intensive as the stunts are, in their quest to out-Bond all the previous films the production team have occasionally not only stretched the bounds of credibility, but have also surpassed the limits of what can usefully be achieved by computer generation. One stunt entirely CGI is both improbable, beyond even the most vivid late-teen imagination, as well as looking truly, utterly, awful. Indeed, the CGI is without doubt the worst thing about the film; someone needs to take the Die Another Day CGI team to see the next Lord Of The Rings film in two weeks, by way of a look-and-learn exercise.
In contrast, the special effects team have surpassed themselves. The real-time stunts are superb, including as they do amongst various other bangs and crashes hovercraft chases and a particularly decent Jaguar versus Aston Martin car chase on ice. Think Torville and Dean with rocket launchers, machine guns and V8 engines, and you would be somewhere near the mark marvellous stuff. Ironically enough, it is the excellence of this stunt-work that makes a great deal of the CGI look so bad.
Enough carping and cavilling about the CGI effects; though, there are other areas too, where this film does not quite satisfy. First and foremost of these would be that the significance of this film being the twentieth in the series as well as Bonds fortieth anniversary is clearly uppermost in the mind of the production team. At one point, there was half an hour or so of Bond in-referencing that made me want to grind my teeth and throw things at the screen. Obviously some form of acknowledgement of the Bond legacy would have been entirely apt, but thirty minutes of nudge, nudge, wink, wink-ery was not the way to do it. The only way it could have been less subtle would be if Pierce Brosnan had looked into the camera and given a matey wink every time an old prop had appeared on screen.
Whilst on the subject of Pierce Brosnan, it is worth noting what a very good Bond indeed he has proven to be. He seems to have combined the best traits of Connery (looks, athleticism and on-screen charm) with the best traits of Moore (the tongue-in-cheek acting, and the oh-so-English suave demeanour) without the wooden acting of the former and the smugness and orange perma-tan of the latter. He excels himself in this film, although he is getting rather too old for the part. Brosnan himself admits the next film will be his last outing as 007.
Halle Berry as a wise-cracking American secret agent is equally good, in spite of the horribly un-Bond-like PC undertones of having a black, female equivalent to the great white alpha-male. Her genuine quality and Oscar-winning class along with her ample charms are evident throughout the film, and her on-screen chemistry with Brosnan is one of the best things about Die Another Day; together, the two get the most out of a rather mediocre script, and she is undeniably one of the most memorable Bond girls to date.
The same, alas, cannot be said for Rosamund Pike, who plays the second Bond girl role. Pretty in a way that will no doubt have the Daily Mail exhausting the phrase "English Rose", Pike is plainly out of her depth here. Her acting is painfully wooden, and she is practically blown off the screen whenever she appears alongside Berry. Class always shows, and Ms Pike does not strike me as having the right screen presence if any screen presence at all to compete in this medium as yet. An instantly forgettable performance.
Disappointing though Pike may have been, the word does not do justice to Toby Stephens, who plays the main villain of the piece. Stephens really hams up his role to the extent that it becomes deeply annoying. Where great thespians are able to over-act and get away with it due to charisma and sheer screen presence see Alan Rickman in Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves for the perfect example Stephens lacks both of these and merely comes across as lightweight, which rather spoils his impact as a supposed criminal genius.
Die Another Day is an odd film, self-defeating even to an extent. Where it does one thing well, it does something else badly. Brosnan and Berry are outstanding; Stephens and Pike are poor. The real-time stunts are some of the best ever seen in a Bond film, whereas the CGI effects are in places laughable. Furthermore, the theme tune by Madonna is truly terrible, and represents the nadir of Bond music. The whole mix of the film, however acting and special effects peaks and troughs, a fairly stilted script coupled with an off the shelf Bond plot that nonetheless includes some genuinely memorable stunts holds together well enough and the overall effect is generally pleasing. The film is not the superb action-thriller it aspires to be cinema-goers are still waiting for the truly perfect Bond movie but the good points generally outweigh the all too obvious negative ones. Bond fans will love it, and Die Another Day contains plenty to keep a non-Bond obsessive fairly happy for two hours.
Andy Fox, November 26, 2002 06:06 PM