Die Another Day gets a bit of a rough ride from James Bond fans, and it’s easy to see why.  “Too much” is the problem.  This is the movie that everyone accused Moonraker of being – full of gadgets, sci-fi, and special effects.  While Moonraker doesn’t warrant that accusation, Die Another Day certainly does.

It begins from the very first open scene of the three agents (including Bond) surfing in.  Why did I keep thinking “Old Spice”?

That kind of sums up the movie’s “style over substance” mantra.  For every piece of spectacle, there’s a question of believability.  The very first example of this CGI “over-indulgence” is the silly inclusion of the bullet on the opening gun barrel sequence.  Why?

I’ve got to mention it first – the car.  Putting aside the incredibly ridiculous “ice rink missile fight” for a moment and concentrating instead of the invisibility – I’m sorry, but that is bonkers!  The idea of an invisibility system – fine, I can put up with that.  But the explanation of “miniature cameras” and projecting the picture from behind the car onto the front of the car?  What a load of utter gumpf!

We’re talking about a three dimensional object – a car – not a two-dimensional picture.  A college drop-out knows that what we see relies on light hitting an object, reflecting back, and passing through to the back of our eyes.  There is no explanation for the car having a different image for different viewers, it only works through the medium of us watching the TV.  If, for example, two people were standing in exactly the same spot with exactly the same line of sight – they’d both see the same “projected image”.  But if one of those people moves a couple of feet to the side, the two people are now looking at slightly different images.  The perspective has changed – yet the car is only capable of projecting one image so how is it capable of handling multiple perspectives at the same time?  How does it know where your eyes are as to what you’re expecting to see?  What a load of cr*p!

At least on The Invisible Man they came up with some incomprehensible technobabble about the “quicksilver” being capable of “bending light”.  That could feasibly explain why different perspectives see what they’re expecting to see, because the light has been altered.  But “cameras and projections”?  I’m sorry.  They need to forget the science and stick with putting Halle Berry in a bikini – they seem to be good at that.

Now, with that out of the way, I actually didn’t dislike this movie as much as I remembered.  It’s certainly not going to challenge the best of the Bond movies, but as a “gadgets and action” movie, it delivers the goods.  It’s certainly not down there with the likes of Goldeneye.

I still don’t like the opening premise.  The idea of Bond being a prisoner for 14 months just doesn’t wash with me.  ‘M’ says that she’d have left him there if it wasn’t for the possibility that he’d broken and was leaking secrets to the enemy.  My first question is why she didn’t send any other double-O in to attempt a rescue?  No, you just casually throw away the result of millions of pounds of training, the investment of many years, just abandon the one guy who’s saved the world on countless occasions without a second thought.  I don’t buy that.  Of course this is what you do “officially”, but “unofficially” you’d at least make an attempt to get him back.

Secondly, she does a hostage-exchange based on her belief that Bond is giving away secrets.  If he’s *that* dangerous to the British government, that’s even more of an incentive to either get him out or to have him killed.  But no, leave him languishing in a prison for 14 months not giving a monkeys.

And thirdly, do any of us believe that in 14 months, Bond would not have orchestrated his own escape?  He’s been in much tougher situations than that over the years without sitting on his thumbs waiting for a hostage exchange to get him out.

Fourthly, when Bond is surrounded by the armed soldiers – why does he immediately give up?  In any previous Bond movie, he’d have leapt over that cliff and trusted his survival to his ingenuity, talent, skill, and blind luck.  But not this time, he just stands around looking for someone to surrender to.

This is all just nonsense – seemingly for no other purpose than to have Brosnan walking around town like “the Missing Link” with more hair than Chewbacca!

Halle Berry’s Jinx is mostly okay but she gets some woefully unfunny dialogue.  After the undercover Bond says that he’s an Ornithologist, Jinx replied (while looking at his groin) “that’s a mouthful”.  Since when did James Bond turn into a seedy p*rno movie?  The fun in a double-entendre is that it’s safe and witty – not that it’s crude.  There was another similar pathetic line later on.

The character of Jinx is an odd one.  We learn later that she’s working for the NSA, but that doesn’t excuse her actions.  Quite early on we see her at the DNA “clinic”.  Clearly her character, the NSA, and the American government have gone through a lot of work in order for her to infiltrate the establishment so convincingly – posing as someone who wants the DNA “treatment”.  Yet then it turns out that all she wants to do is to shoot one of the surgeons and then set a bomb off.  Huh?  Why not just nuke the place?!

Another poorly realised female character was that of Miranda Frost.  Given that, in The World Is Not Enough, both ‘M’ and Bond are caught with their pants down that the “young woman” is the baddie, why does no one think of this when looking for the traitor inside the British government? 

Here’s an expert in cryptology that’s been working undercover next to Graves for three months and hasn’t even turned up one hint of a suspicion – yet Bond’s on the job for three minutes and has near-proof.  And ‘M’ doesn’t say “hang on a mo”..?  And, as soon as Frost hears that Bond is on the case, she tries to get ‘M’ to change her mind saying he’ll just muck everything up and blow her cover.  And ‘M’ doesn’t say “hang on a mo”..?  Then, Frost gives Bond the cold shoulder until she’s forced to work with him and then she’s all over Bond like a rash.  And Bond doesn’t say “hang on a mo”..?  Are ‘M’ and Bond perpetually THICK?  They fell for this in the previous movie, and now the writer is relying on their ineptness again.

I watched the movie and in her first scene I had her pegged.  Quicker than you can say “here comes a cute girl”, I was saying “she’s the baddie”… and, sure enough, I was right.  With ‘M’ and Bond working for our government, I think we all need to defect to Russia.  Oh, I said that last time…

And, lastly, yet another pathetically-realised female character in the guise of Moneypenny.  For four movies, Samantha Bond’s Moneypenny has been doing everything to suggest that she despises Bond and wouldn’t look at him twice if he gave up his career tomorrow and proposed to her – yet, at the end of DAD, Moneypenny is using the “virtual reality goggles” to have Bond seduce her.  If she doesn’t want it in the “real world”, why does she want it when it’s fake?  Pathetic.

For all the efforts the movie makers have gone through to make “strong, independent, as-good-as-Bond” female characters in the Brosnan movies, most come off a lot worse than ANY “Bond-girl” in any previous Bond movie.  How silly.

The movie seems to be there just to have Brosnan take us from one CGI stunt scene to the next.  Some were ridiculous – such as the frozen lake with the cars; others were poorly realised – I’ve seen more dramatic “helicopters dropped out the back of a ‘plane” on Airwolf, and even Knight Rider did it more convincingly than DAD.  Even on the opening gambit, I can’t believe that the bad-guy was firing all manner of artillery at Bond, who was barely arm’s length away, yet he continually MISSES?!  Huh?  The burning up ‘plane at the end was fine, but it’s been done a lot better since on Superman Returns.  Even the “laser gouging out the ground” was done better on Enterprise.  It’s a movie of pieces, none of them bad but none of them spectacular.

In short, this movie works solely on superficial grounds.  If you like action, special effects, stunts, CGI, Halle Berry in a bikini, and Brosnan without his shirt on, this is the movie for you.  If you’re looking for a movie about a hero with a solid story and believable scenarios together with audacious stunts performed without the aid of a computer, look elsewhere.  While it’s not the worst of the Bond series, it’s a long way from being the best.  Turn off your brain when watching, and you’ll enjoy it.

Now that I’ve watched all of the four Brosnan Bond movies, it’s interesting that I don’t find them all as objectionable as I did the first time around.  When I first watched them (I was buying the DVDs so they were watched in close sequence) I didn’t mind Goldeneye that much but the others blurred into one.  Today, they still blur into one – but it’s Goldeneye that I’d have a tough time watching again.  The other three are better, with The World Is Not Enough being the best of the four, but there’s nothing in any of them to make them stand out.