DIE ANOTHER DAY (2002) - **

Many will disagree with me, but I truly think that the first 20 minutes or so of DIE ANOTHER DAY is the best opening within the entire 007 franchise. I mean you have Pierce Brosnan infiltrating North Korea by surfing, get involved in a thrilling and exciting as hell hovercraft chase sequence shot by legendary stuntman/2nd Unit Director Vic Armstrong, get captured and tortured for over 14 months during the opening credits. Then the West exchanges him for a Korean bomber because they don't want Brosnan to possibly leak anymore Intel and is disavowed by MI-6. So Brosnan is feeling guilty that a terrorist walks free because of him, escapes his prison during his cardiac arrest (a rather awesome scene) and goes to Hong Kong where as a free agent assassin, the Chinese contract him out to murder the Korean for blowing up their guys, and send him off to Cuba.

That set-up right there is pure pulp badass storytelling, and if anything it reminds me of the same feeling I got from CASINO ROYALE a few years later, you know that sensation known as "engagement," or giving a shit about the story, which for a James Bond movie with me is quite remarkable. No surprise considering Neal Purvis and Robert Wade were credited scripters on both. Seriously, DAD could be Bond getting down and dirty like DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER and LICENSE TO KILL so promised and yet so failed to deliver.

So how could a movie with such a great 1st act goes straight to hell once Brosnan is in Cuba, and become an incredibly bloated, noisy dumb, money spent like water, and quite easily the silliest 007 flick since MOONRAKER?

I think the first sign of trouble is when Bond is off to a secluded hospital island, and a title card names it...even though Brosnan and others had named that location earlier. I mean seriously guys, we're not that dumb, nor that short of an attention span. Plus, who gives a shit what it's actually called? It's just that place Bond is going, and that's all we need to know quite honestly, right? Still, you gotta glee at that sly joke where at this medical center for wealthy western elites, there is communist iconography from Castro to Che all over the place, an allegory of selling out the revolution. Plus Brosnan gives a pretty good line:

Cuban Contact: One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
Bond: Zao doesn't care about other people's freedom.

I'm still surprised the Bush Administration never lifted that one.

Then ole Halle Berry pops up out of the water. You all remember when the media made such a big damn deal that an Oscar-winning movie star was playing a Bond Girl? Hell, MGM and EON were openly booking plans for a "spinoff" film franchise, the first for Bond, around her character of NSA agent Jinx. The problem was, as mighty as they try to strengthen her part, the filmmakers refused to abandon the fact that such "Bond Girls" in their nature are foil only used to fight, screw, show hot body, blow shit up, and get saved at the end. Speaking of which, will we ever have a Bond Girl that not only could kick Bond's ass, but also not need to be rescued? I mean Jesus Christ, even Hong Kong cinema martial arts legend Michelle Yeoh got stuck with that garbage in TOMORROW NEVER DIES.

Anyway, I still remember the audience at my screening just groaning at Berry's one-liners. Either they sucked written down, or she botches it...I can't really tell, maybe both?

Berry fails much like another Oscar-earned actor in Christopher Walken did in A VIEW TO A KILL. I mean both can be terrific players, or at least people thought they could be when they won awards. So how come they drop the ball with 007? I think the fault lies in that instead of trying to craft characters around the actors, such stars are pegged awkwardly into pre-existing parts, much like what you did when you jammed that square peg into the circle hole as a kid.

Contrast them with some great 007 supporting performances like Robert Shaw in FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE or even recently with Mads Mikkelsen in CASINO ROYALE, parts that aren't that interesting on paper but which those folks are allowed to use their paid-talents to their extent, instead of jobbing to the status quo. Then again, that whole theory has a flaw, considering that if reports are to be believed, Mikkelsen wasn't even casted as the baddie in ROYALE until weeks after production started.

All I know is, when Berry is trying to avoid the killer laser beams, if she had slipped and had been sliced like a deli ham, the crowd at my screening would have cheered because she really was useless and forgettable, even for a Bond Girl. Funny enough, Brosnan told this one story on Conan O'Brien's program where while at a Dublin bar, someone asked to shake his hand. That guy then replied, "That's the closest my hand will ever get to Halle Berry's arse."

My bitching aside at Berry and Madonna's rather mediocre title song and cameo (both done I believe when she was sporting that fake British accent. Remember that goofyness?), DIE ANOTHER DAY was still working until Brosnan goes back to the UK, and here is where the movie jumps the shark. It's like this renegade action tale stopped and forgot to fill out the rest of the old school 007 quota, and went straight to hell...I must admit, it was DAD that finally convinced me that unless you have something cool or creative to do with them, don't even bother including Moneypenny or M or Q or whatever. They're pointless.

The same goes with the obligatory gadget sequence. Maybe its just me, but the best 007 toys are those that are rather practical in numerous scenarios, the sort you would want to carry around everywhere just in case, i.e. the grenade pen from GOLDENEYE. With DAD, didn't anyone else feel like when Brosnan does deploy his ring device, how contrived that whole set-up is? I mean thank friggin God that he got that gizmo before knowing that he was going to an ice palace...

I believe DAD lost my crowd back in 2002 when they guessed the plot twist with the villain about a half-hour before the movie got around to it, and when his assistant is revealed to be a MI-6 mole, that she'll heel turn on Bond. I know there is an art to action storytelling, and yet its not rocket science either, but you've failed big time with both misfires. Then we get another 007 villain with a goddamn space laser (can't the franchise just retire that older-than-dirt plot device?) and the biggest crime of all is the violation of a very basic action cinema theory I cooked up some time ago: If something you see in real life would probably be incredible to witness, it should be similarly on the big screen. Well, when Bond is out-driving the laser or crashing through the palace to save Berry.....I was bored, and so was my audience.

Really, how about a movie that opens great with everyone hooked, and ends with them lukewarm?

To put it another way, the only other time at the movies afterwards where such a super big-budget action extravaganza failed to even stimulate most people in a crowd, it was Stephen Sommers' infamous VAN HELSING. Damn.

DIE ANOTHER DAY was a massive box-office hit world-wide, which is no surprise for the 007 label, but apparently the budget was so ridiculously high, the profit margins was rather thin. DAD would be a turning point when Brosnan, tired of the sub-standard scripting and refusal of EON to escape the formula, demanded to share creative control for his fifth Bond movie, and EON promptly told him to take a hike, effectively firing him.

In the wake of the BOURNE movies and their license to print money, 007 was rebooted and effectively Purvis and Wade were told to do their thing, forget the "formula." So really, as much as I whine at DAD, we should be thankful really that it sucked so much. I mean without BATMAN & ROBIN, no BATMAN BEGINS and thus no THE DARK KNIGHT. Likewise, no DAD, no CASINO ROYALE.

There is redemption in pain sometimes.