Die Another Day

No, look, it's not that it was a bad movie. It just wasn't a Bond movie. Bond movies, however far-fetched, contain elements of realism - we all know that to drive off the edge of a runway on a motorbike and then catch a plane in midair is ridiculous, but you could imagine James Bond doing it. What's more, you wanted to be James Bond doing it. Keanu looks great in that black raincoat and Tom Cruise can cut it roaring through uptown Sydney, but there's nothing quite like the dashing, impeccably straight-faced antics of a sharp-suited (British) spy.

Die Another Day, sadly, contains little of the innovation present in most Bond movies, choosing to rely instead on a mountain of unimaginative and occasionally ropy CG. Lasers weave back and forth across the landscape, cars become invisible, cliffs explode...and - here's the thing - it really doesn't look very impressive. I got bored. The biggest innovation the film had to offer was an opening torture sequence in which Bond is consigned to a Korean prison. Ah, the obligatory "humanisation" continues. We have to give him a backstory. Stop him smoking. Give him "emotional depth".

If Bond is a little different, the bad guys are, thankfully, as dumb as ever: when one of the supporting characters is captured and strapped to a table, the villain of the piece instructs his strong-but-dumb henchman to kill them. When he leaves the room, the other henchman hands strong-but-dumb a revolver, but he refuses it, remarking "I think I'll use the laser". Anyone who has attended Evil Megalomaniac class 101 will know that deciding to dispatch an adversary in a visually impressive and undoubtedly painful and tortuous manner using a nonetheless complicated and lengthy process that will, of course, give them plenty of opportunity to escape is stupidity of the highest order. And these guys are supposed to be a threat to the safety of the world. They probably would be, if you put them in charge of safety at a nuclear power plant.

It was Bond post-Matrix, and let's face it, that was never going to be easy. (While I'll concede, by the way, that The World Is Not Enough was released after The Matrix it didn't have the opportunity to tap into the legacy that the Wachowski Brothers left...most mainstream action flicks since then have borrowed from it, consciously or not.) There are several great lines, the bad guys are evil bastards of the highest order and there's a wonderful car chase, but ultimately what you're left with is a rather vacuous and empty experience, determined to impress you without actually involving you. But at least it has Judi Dench.

(Monday, 9th December 2002)