Rating: 7.5/10
Review date: May 20, 2002
Pierce Brosnan returns as James Bond in Tomorrow Never Dies which is the 18th installment in the series. A media baron with the name Elliott Carver has managed to construct a stealth ship and he is trying to create attention-grabbing news for his media channel by provoking the British and Chinese into a war.
Bond is sent in to investigate the truth behind the matter where he met his first equivalent counterpart in the form of a female Chinese agent, Wai Lin, with the same mission. Together, 007 and Wai Lin must team up to stop the madman from fulfilling his dreams of global domination…
I have to say that I enjoy this flick better than GoldenEye. Brosnan is as charming as ever in his role and he hasn’t stop bedding every woman that he can find and that even includes his language tutor.
Michelle Yeoh fits the Bond-girl role really well since this is the first time where we see that not only she has a cute face but she can kick a lot of asses as well. As a Chinese agent, she has a lot of gadgets to rival Bond himself and she is not hesitant to use them. Not only that, she also do a lot of kung-fu and hand-to-hand combat which is not existent in her predecessors.
Bond himself is also equipped with a lot of new toys such a new BMW with rocket launchers, which can be controlled from his cell phone. The cell phone also serves as a fingerprint scanner and a tazer.
Tomorrow Never Dies packs a lot more action scenes than the GoldenEye and a more interesting storyline. The overall theme of global domination through media seems very fitting with the new era of information and technology that we’re living in now.
The score was performed by Sheryl Crow and it is actually a very nice music to go along with the pace of the movie.
Roger Spottiswoode includes quite a number of large explosions in the movie as we can already see from the opening sequence. Tomorrow Never Dies is quite well-paced with almost no slow down in the middle at all which I think make the movie even better.
I would say that Tomorrow Never Dies is one of the best Bond movies so far with enough emphasis placed on the gadgets and the actions aside from the overall pace which doesn’t seem to slow that much.
I personally hope really much to see Michelle Yeoh make a second return in other Bond movies because of her ability to rival Bond, both in the combat and gadget departments. Rumor has it that she is supposed to star again in Die Another Day, the 20th Bond movie hitting theaters this November, but was dropped due to scheduling conflict. A shame really, I wish she would return while kicking more asses in the next Bond adventure…
Memorable quote: “The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.”
-Jonathan Pryce as Elliott Carver-
(c) 2002 Martin Taidy