Die Another Day (2002)

It’s taken some time to get round to watching the last James Bond film before the Daniel Craig franchise reboot, but the other week we finally sat down and watched Die Another Day again. I’d previously loved this movie. I have to say though, watching it again in context and in sequence with the other Bond movies, that it suffers a bit from overkill, and some of the dialogue seems a bit forced, like Pierce Brosnan and Halle Berry are almost ashamed of the stuff they have to say.

The opening of the movie is just great, and very brave to show Bond as a fallible human being, suffering under torture and looking all shaggy with his long hair and beard. Madonna’s fantastic title tune fits the images perfectly and it’s one of my favourite title sequences of the series. Unfortunately, having set Bond up in a ‘real world’ type scenario where he doesn’t always escape, he comes across a bit too much like a superhero for the rest of the film. I know he’s always miraculously escaped danger before, but in Die Another Day it’s not so much effortless as cocky.

Die Another Day suffers in comparison with the other Brosnan movies from not having enough Judi Dench in it! I enjoyed John Cleese’s new Q though, and Moneypenny as played by Samantha Bond is just great, especially when she uses Q’s virtual reality glasses to imagine a passionate liaison with 007. It’s nice to see Moneypenny finally get a piece of Bond, even if it is just a fantasy. Other than the recurring characters, this being the 20^th official movie and 40^th anniversary of Dr No there are references to past adventures peppered throughout, particularly Q’s debriefing scene, and Jinx’s emergence from the sea á la Honey Rider (Ursula Andress). The plot has echoes of past movies too – the diamond-encrusted laser in space is very Diamonds Are Forever, and Gustav Graves, the baddy, gets sucked out of a plane like Auric Goldfinger. 

There are some very OTT touches to Die Another Day, including the invisible car, Bond surfing off the coast of Iceland, Bond swimming under the ice(!), and a ridiculous fight with the unimaginatively named Mr Kill while deadly lasers swirl about haphazardly. I enjoyed the fencing match (complete with English/American? accented Madonna cameo) and the car chase across the ice and around the ice palace, they’re just adrenaline fuelled fun.

While Die Another Day is not a bad Bond film by any means, it’s certainly not the sum of it parts in the way that The World is Not Enough or Tomorrow Never Dies are. It’s a shame that Pierce Brosnan could not have done more Bond – the 4 movies he did do showcased a shiny, modern 007 and brought him screaming into the 21^st Century in style.