Die Another Day (Cinema: December 2002)

I'm afraid this review is something of a forfeit. I had intended to go & see Donnie Darko however those wonderful people at UGC cancelled the performance at short notice & didn't bother to forward the message onto any of their listings outlets (in this case SCOOT). So there I was, marooned AGAIN with nothing to see (last week it was Bowling for Columbine) & only James Bond to come to my rescue...

Bond has always had that peculiar British flavour that distinguished him from his many contemporaries in Hollywood (& the Far East) & while the old adage nobody does it better is questionable, the franchise has at least managed to keep this Brit flavour despite being largely bankrolled by US companies for some time. Brosnan, Pinewood, Judy Dench, MI5, John Cleese - it makes you feel all warm inside... However, with Die Another Day, the Yanks have finally extinguished all pretenses & Americanized our favourite universal export. The plot takes onboard contemporary US hysteria - battling the formidable(?!) North Koreans & slandering Cuba along the way as a playground for international bad guys. Meanwhile the role of Uncle Sam, once peripheral & satirical has edged it's way centre stage unveiling it's own indestructible crime fighter in Halle Berry's Jinx (you get the feeling this won't be her last Bond movie) & installing Michael Madsen (dubious at best) as M's opposite number at the NSA - who are now calling the shots as we, and Bond, follow their idiotic prescience like obediant lap dogs (Tony Blair has alot to answer for...). Director Lee Tamahori goes all hi-tech with the cinematography removing any element of class while the scriptwriters largely recycle the plot from License to Kill as does Brosnan's portrayal from the underrated Timothy Dalton's bitter portrayal of Ian Fleming's hero.

What ultimately sounds the death knell for Bond though is the lack of irony & playful disbelief that has legitimized the series over 20 something years. Amongst all the male chauvinism, camp swaggering, way-out gadgetary & truly bizarre histrionics is the fact that in their own silly context, everything seemed vaguely feasable. With Die Another Day's avalanche of Americanism comes a strict demand for total, unquestionable belief whilst simultaneously promoting this as a serious movie with scenes of torture (Bond gets captured & doesn't stage some witty escape???), terrorism, genetic tampering, virtual reality and, er, Michael Madsen & invisible cars...?

Of course, amidst this seriousness is the fantastic stupidity we have come to expect from Bond & this is precisely why is doesn't work. If one of the characters in Clear & Present Danger flew off a cliff in their car & crashed through the roof of an alpine house only to come strolling out the front door moments later, brushing himself off - would we believe it? In Die Another Day, we are expected too. When Bond turns into MacGyver & quickly manufactures a para-surfer whilst dangling from an about-to-crumble ice cliff & then surfs the resultant tidal wave onto dry land effortlessly - by virtue of association, this is expressed as some the kind of normality! And that invisible car - you're taking the piss!? Cleese is underused, the VR scenes are superfluous & disruptive, Madonna notably muted & the characters underexplored to the degree we have come to expect from all balls & no brains Hollywood trash.

It's a sad fact that James Bond 2002 is having to compete with all kinds of bigger & sillier fantasies that just don't fit into his world. True Lies & XXX borrow heavily from Bond but prove successful because of their ability to ditch the baggage that Bond cannot. Bond is, as M stated in Goldeneye, a dinosaur & the producers are running out of places to take him. Making the character more serious (as they tried unsuccessfully with Timothy Dalton) isn't going to cut it. At this rate, I doubt very much whether the Bond we all know & love will get the opportunity to Die Another Day...

All in all, a disappointment. Not least because I didn't get to see Donnie Darko...

RATING:

(c)Limer 2002