Die Another Day movie review & film summary (2002)
The film opens with an unusual touch: The villains are not fantastical fictions, but real. The North Koreans have for the time being joined the Nazis as reliable villains, and Bond infiltrates in order to--I dunno, deal with some "African Conflict Diamonds," if I heard correctly, but I wasn't listening carefully because the diamonds are only the MacGuffin. They do, however, decorate the memorable cheekbones of one of the villains, Zao (Rick Yune), who seems to have skidded face down through a field of them at high impact. A chase scene involving hover tanks in a mine field is somewhat clumsy, the hover tank not being the most graceful of vehicles, and then Bond is captured and tortured for months. He's freed in a prisoner exchange, only to find that M (Judi Dench) suspects him of having been brainwashed. Is he another Manchurian Candidate? Eventually he proves himself and after a visit to Q (John Cleese) for a new supply of gadgets, including an invisible car, he's back into action in the usual series of sensational stunt sequences. For the first time in the Bond series, a computer-generated sequence joins the traditional use of stunt men and trick photography; a disintegrating plane in a closing scene is pretty clearly all made of ones and zeroes, but by then we've seen too many amazing sights to quibble.
The North Koreans are allied with Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens), a standard-issue world-dominating Bond villain, whose orbiting space mirror is not exactly original. What is original is Gustav's decision to house his operation in a vast ice building in Iceland; since his mirror operates to focus heat on the Earth, this seems like asking for trouble, and indeed before long the ice palace is melting down, and Jinx is trapped in a locked room with the water level rising toward the ceiling. (Exactly why the room itself doesn't melt is a question countless readers will no doubt answer for me.) Other characters include the deadly Miranda Frost (Rosamund Pike), whose name is a hint as to which side she is on, and Damian Falco (Michael Madsen), whose name unites two villainous movie dynasties and leaves me looking forward to Freddy Lecter. Oh, and Miss Moneypenny (Samantha Bond), who seems to have been overlooked, makes a last-minute appearance and virtually seduces Bond.
The film has been directed by Lee Tamahori (whose credits include "Once Were Warriors" and "Mulholland Falls"), from New Zealand, who has tilted the balance away from humor and toward pure action. With "Austin Powers" breathing down the neck of the franchise, he told Sight & Sound magazine, it seemed like looking for trouble to broaden the traditional farcical elements. "Die Another Day" is still utterly absurd from one end to the other, of course, but in a slightly more understated way. And so it goes, Bond after Bond, as the most durable series in movie history heads for the half-century. There is no reason to believe this franchise will ever die. I suppose that is a blessing.
