FILM CRITIQUE:
"Die Another Day" is everything a James Bond fanatic could want, and more. With the exception of Sean Connery as Bond, Pierce Brosnan has now slipped into this role with a style and a flair all his own. This is in spite of the fact that his is one that is now a little more honest than the others by showing a Bond, especially in this movie, who is occasionally tired and weary and more than a little beaten up.

All Bond movies are formulaic films which have survived for forty years on a generous helping of action, violence, testosterone, splashy cars, beautiful locales, and even more beautiful women. Some of these women are good, some of them are bad, and a few of them are rotten to their sadistic core. But even the worst of them, as long as they are beautiful, of course, will still be great for a quickie bedroom tryst for our ageless and virile, albeit amoral, hero at some point during the film.

I sometimes wonder if the producers will ever run out of politically
correct villains, but new ones always seem to be cropping up. In this instance, it is the North Koreans who are the "villains du jour." Timing is everything, I guess, but how could they have known the North Koreans would be this distrusted and this disliked from recent events that must have occurred far after the selection of this locale for the movie?

"Die Another Day" starts off on a very dark note with our hero captured by the North Koreans and subjected to 14 months of prison camp interrogation. This is rather unusual by the Bond film standards, as practically all of the other films start off in a humorous vein, perhaps even in a rather flippant and sardonic manner, just to set up the sexual or the physical invincibility of our 007 licensed to kill star.

Like the lovely Michelle Yeoh in her role as Wai Lin in 1997's James Bond movie, "Tomorrow Never Dies," Halle Berry proves to be almost equal to James Bond in her role as Jinx, an American secret agent employed by the National Security Agency. She is gutsy, inventive, and almost as quick as Bond to adapt to the rapidly changing circumstances in their personal
security. Unlike Bond, however, Jinx eventually will find herself in a life threatening situation in which she will need Bond's help to survive.

The stories are already making the rounds that Halle Berry's role as Jinx is tailor-made for a cinematic spin off in another spy movie franchise all her own. This would not be such a bad idea as she is great in this movie. Her film entrance as she exits the Caribbean surf in an attractively revealing bikini is similar to that of Ursula Andress in first Bond film, "Dr. No"(1962), and is a wonderful homage to that great moment in cinema.

Miranda Frost also enters the scene as fellow British double "O" agent, Rosamund Pike, in a role that is substantially less interesting than that of Jinx due to her smaller screen time along with her being in a role that is somewhat flat, colorless and rather poorly fleshed out.

All the action is here with Bond and Jinx and the others forced to undergo death defying feats of endurance that are almost unbelievable. In fact, they ARE unbelievable. For example, both Bond and Jinx spend a considerable amount of time in the Icelandic seas swimming under the glacier ice. As the freezing point of sea water is below 32 degrees, I would estimate that hypothermia would render them incapacitated after only seconds of immersion with death following in a very short order. Somehow, however, this icy swim is just a walk in the park for our two super agents.

Another trip in the very beginning of this movie has several agents invading the territorial waters off the North Korean coast surfing in the dark of night off ocean breakers that look like they are about 30 feet in height. Yeah, right.

But the greatest leap of logic in "Die Another Day" is performed at
a secret scientific laboratory housed in a fortress island off the coast of communistic Cuba, our favorite workers' paradise. This laboratory for the criminally rich supposedly allows these criminals to swap their DNA with other criminals with the resultant effect that they each then somehow assume the actual physical appearance of the person with whom they have swapped their DNA. Huh? An interesting but a totally unbelievable hypothesis. Inject me with some pig DNA and I will then suddenly start snorting like a little porker, I guess...

Well, I suppose that all Bond films require a certain suspension of
disbelief and logic at some of these incredible gymnastic, scientific, and personal endurance efforts.

Maybe it's that I just like a little more intelligence in my movies. Or
perhaps the Bond franchise is finally wearing thin after 40 years of my slavish devotion to this entertainment concept.

"Die Another Day" is everything that you could ask for if you still
love this genre. Even if you don't, it must be admitted that this movie, while quite long at over two hours, is still very interesting as it does move along with its rapid pacing of gags, guns, babes, and locales.

One compliment that this movie really does deserve is thanks for the smartness of the writing, something that is usually sadly lacking in the action-adventure genre of films.

James Bond films almost always stand over all other spy films for
the reason that the many quips, repartees, and double entendres
require a literary bent to the script and the characters along with
a scenic set up just to make them as believable and as funny as
they always are. In the final analysis, this is the one great quality
of the Bond film franchise.
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MOVIE SYNOPSIS:
It is dark and stormy night. (Gee, where have I read this before?!)
Huge ocean breakers crash onto the heavily fortified beach along the North Korean peninsula not far from the demilitarized zone. Suddenly, one then another and then a third shadowy figure comes out of the storm driven mist expertly surfing these huge breakers into the relative safety of a shoreline lined with military bunkers.

James Bond and two of his two cohorts quickly subdue a lone guard and make their way to a nearby field where they set up a radio beacon and a landing light to misdirect the landing of an approaching helicopter. After the helicopter has landed and the pilot "dispatched," Bond opens up a briefcase that has an enclosed tray literally covered with diamonds sparkling in the soft light. Clearly a very large payment for something, but what?

Assuming the identity of the diamond smuggler, Bond makes his
way into the armed camp commanded by the volatile Colonel Moon (Will Yun Lee), the only son of the North Korean General Moon (Kenneth Tsang). It develops that Colonel Moon has been educated in Britain and speaks fluent English. Furthermore, this education abroad has given him a taste for the finer things in life as evidenced by a fleet of sports cars resting nearby. Bond, operating under the alias of the diamond smuggler, learns that these diamonds are to be the payment for a fleet of hovercraft that Colonel Moon plans to use to invade South Korea directly through the DMZ.

Floating above the ground as they do, these hovercraft would be
able to avoid setting off any of the land mines buried under the ground in this heavily mined area between the two countries. In addition, since they are an enhancement in the military status of the North as opposed to the South, they would be forbidden under the armistice agreement between the two countries. Colonel Moon has been careful to keep the presence of these hovercraft away from the eyes of his father, General Moon, a rather gentlemanly military traditionalist of the old school.

Unfortunately for our double 0 seven hero, technology has caught up with him and his identity as a British secret agent is revealed to one of Moon's assistants. Someone has set him up and betrayed his identity, but who?

After fourteen months of torture in a military prison, the very shaggy and disheveled Bond is traded for another North Korean spy, an agent named Zao (Rick Yune), who is a very forbidding, though colorful, villain sporting a face carved by tattoos with diamonds placed in the extremities of the scars. The hatred of the two agents as they pass each other on the bridge linking the two Korean countries is palpable, and, like two opposing football linemen, it is guaranteed that they will meet again on another playing field.

Bond returns to receive desperately needed medical care after his fourteen months of torture and deprivation. Quickly met by M (Judi Dench) in his hospital room, Bond is informed that his American hosts consider him to be damaged goods because secrets have been leaked during his captivity and they assume that he talked while under some form of drug induced trance.

He escapes his American naval ship hospital quarters and flees to Hong Kong and the pleasures of a luxurious hotel suite in a yacht club. Informed that Colonel Moon vacations at a resort in Cuba, Bond quickly flies there and ascertains that Moon's many Cuban trips have been to a small island off the Cuban coast where a rather nefarious and secretive health club is headquartered. It is here that he meets the very beautiful bikini clad American agent Jinx (Halle Berry) as she slowly and sensuously ambles out of the ocean surf in what must be every man's most romantic fantasy.

From this island fortress back to Britain and off to Iceland James Bond and Jinx pursue a British diamond industrialist, Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens, "The Great Gatsby"). Graves appears to be legit with his vast wealth derived a newly discovered diamond mine in Iceland, but Bond suspects that he really derives his fortune from laundering forbidden diamonds smuggled out of the many African conflict zones and sold for great profit as "clean" diamonds supposedly from his mine in Iceland.

In the manner of many wealthy industrialists before him, Gustav Graves has been given to supporting many charitable British and international endeavors, all of which has placed him on that country's publicity radar screen. He is respected by all and is soon to be knighted by the Queen, which, of course, makes Bond's suspicions all the more preposterous.

While M still trusts his famous nose for a person's true character, she sends another agent, Rosamund Pike (Miranda Frost), along with him both for support and backup in case Bond slips over the edge.