For a little while, DIE ANOTHER DAY looks as though it's preparing to do something new with the 40-year-old James Bond film formula. While our hero has been captured and tortured often before, this is the first time he's gotten locked up for 14 whole months and then doesn't even escape but instead is released, looking shaggy and unkempt as Robinson Crusoe.
Whether or not the Bond formula should be altered is a question with multiple answers. On the one hand, there are certainly enough things out there that desperately seek to emulate Bond and can't to argue for some stability in the franchise begun in Ian Fleming's flamboyant spy novels if films bearing the 007 brand name can't deliver on what's expected, they're likely to disappear from the face of the earth forever. Then again, the deviation from expectations gives DIE an unusually punchy, engaging start.
All this turns out to be a moot point. Once 007 (Pierce Brosnan, essaying the role for the fourth time) has reoriented himself by escaping from his own people (who think he's a liability due to someone else's leak, naturally), showered, shaved and dressed, we are back to business as usual. In the case of DIE ANOTHER DAY, that would be the intersection of Bond's personal vendetta against the North Korean agent Zao (Rick Yune) who betrayed him and an investigation into the doings of mysterious diamond magnate Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens). Along the way, Bond encounters (does he ever) super-capable CIA agent Jinx (Halle Berry) and Graves' cucumber-cool publicist Miranda Frost (Rosamund Pike).
The screenplay by Neal Purvis & Robert Wade puts together a more or less standard issue Bond tale, with beats in all the places we imagine they'll be sex here, action there, high-tech weapons everywhere. They do come up with one good, legitimate character surprise and a cool explanation of how one of the villains comes by his bizarre diamond-studded appearance. However, the puns seem even more egregious than usual, rolling out whether they're appropriate or not.
Lee Tamahori Pierce Brosnan gets down with Halle Berry in DIE ANOTHER DAY. © 2002 MGMdirects proficiently, with a good eye for spectacle and a feel for speed. Oddly or perhaps not so oddly after all one of the action high points is a low-tech fencing duel between Bond and Graves that starts off as a simple salon match and turns into a bloodthirsty brawl with blades (sword fans, take note).
Emotionally, though, the temperature seldom rises, even by Bond standards, which is a shame after the engaging melodrama of THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH. Brosnan fulfills his duties admirably, radiating contained anger and steely determination with a measure of appreciative charm where the ladies are concerned. The part allows him to express a great deal in the early sequences, when Bond is sure he's about to be executed we very much get the tough guy with major regrets who's not about to articulate one word of what he's thinking for his captors. However, once we're back in mainstream Bond mode, the character is not allowed to manifest extreme reactions to anything, and Brosnan goes with the flow.
Berry looks like she's having a ball her attitude and appearance are perfect for the occasion and she partners well with Brosnan. Although Graves isn't memorably eccentric, Stephens makes the most of the role, showing off with the tycoon's terrible temper. Pike is a suitable maiden of fire and ice as the more difficult of Bond's conquests this time out and Judi Dench, John Cleese, Samantha Bond and Colin Salmon all reprise their continuing supporting roles with flair. Michael Madsen has a small role as Jinx's CIA handler and Madonna makes an uncredited cameo as a fenching coach.
Madonna also contributes the title track, which adorns opening and closing sequences. Unusual for a Bond theme, the lyrics in this one comment directly on the action while out of context, it may sound like a song about sexual abstinence; seen against the early scenes here, it denotes Bond's state of mind during torture. Again, this is an intriguing innovation that isn't pursued further in the film.
DIE ANOTHER DAY effectively provides pretty much everything we've come to expect from a James Bond movie, with big setpieces that combine breathtaking stunts and some wit, exotic locations, gorgeous performers, a plot with twists that occur like clockwork and clear-cut lines of good and evil. It is, in short, spectacular movie comfort food, with a few moments that suggest it might have been something more.
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