I never used to detest this movie. In fact, I can remember enjoying Die Another Day quite thoroughly with my crew in the theater. But time, and a second viewing, have not been kind. I’m a fan of the Bond film series, but Die Another Day is just a disreputable mess. While the action is solid, and the special effects are on point, the plot is nonsensical garbage. I’ll see if I can sort this out: Bond is captured by the enemy in a secret mission in North Korea, and from there he goes to Cuba to follow some guy named Zao, back to England to trail Gustav Graves, and then to Iceland, presumably for no reason except that the setting is a neat place to film stuff. See, I sorted the narrative out. Well, mostly. But these things don't matter to me, and shouldn’t matter to you. Halle Berry does absolutely nothing for me, but that may be due to the fact that she is a movie star, and I’m a lowly student from the Midwest. I suppose that I’m digressing, aren’t I? I mean to say that she is clearly not very good in her role as Jinx, and together with Bond they are content to trade insipid sexual innuendos throughout the film, something that was immensely annoying onw my second time through. At times, Die Another Day seems to wonder if it wants to go a completely different direction than the past films, or if it wants to pay homage to them. Frankly, I couldn’t care enough to hope for either route. I give the film credit for some fun action sequences, a rare humorous dialogue or two, and Pierce Brosnan for at least trying to make Die Another Day anything else but a chore to slog through. Unluckily for him, he isn’t successful. Try to avoid this one, people.
I agree with nearly every assessment of this movie, but giving it a three rating seems a bit harsh. Objectively, no, this movie is not impressive (the childish innuendos perhaps ruining it more than any other single thing). Subjectively, yes, it was very disappointing for a Bond film (especially given what Brosnan had brought to the table in the previous movies). But as far as all movies go, I can think of many I dislike more than Die Another Day, and to rate them below a three would require us going into negatives in order to maintain some type of scale between whole numbers in our ten point ranking system.
ReplyDeleteFair enough. What do you think would be an appropriate score? Perhaps 4? 5? In any event, I may need to re-watch this movie.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I do have your reviews as well. Maybe when I post these "retro" reviews, so to speak, I could post yours as well? Or would you rather I send them to you and leave it at your discretion?
I suppose you could, though I may regret it upon seeing them. Oh well.
ReplyDeleteGo for it!