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DIE ANOTHER DAY?  I WISH I DIED DURING THE PREVIEWS
by Dave Bennett

I love James Bond.

I love the classic adventures of the Sean Connery Bond, to be precise.  The suave womanizing.  The effortless way he skulked around, gathering information from the inside.  The way he handled the edge-of-my-seat car chases at high speeds through exotic locales with flair and style.  The way he could dispatch with an evil minion with a smooth and simple gunshot, punch to the head, or shove on a rickety balcony (or bridge) that sends them plummeting to their doom. 

For five movies in a row, then a short break, then one more movie, James Bond was the coolest guy on the face of the earth, battling memorable villains like Dr. No, Goldfinger, and Ernst (first person to say Ernest gets a shove off a balcony) Blofeld.  These were villains that, although truly despicable, you loved to watch tease and torment Bond.  Who can honestly say they haven't screamed "Look out, James!  You're standing on a trap door!" during You Only Live Twice, or "Look out James!  It's the guy with the hat!" during Goldfinger?  Sure, everyone knows his name is Oddjob, but come on, it's so much more fun to call him "the guy with the hat".

But after Connery, things went downhill.  First, we had to sit through Roger Moore through almost two decades of mind-numbing kitsch (I had never actually "seen the strings" holding up spaceships on film until I saw Moonraker), then Timothy Dalton came along at a time when the Cold War was ending and Bond was becoming irrelevant, thus making his two shots at the role irrelevant as well.

For six years, no one knew what to do with Bond.  Then along came Pierce Brosnan.

And we've been riding down the slippery slide of stupid ever since.  Each Brosnan Bond movie has become more convoluted than the next.  In order, they have been:

1) Stealing a stealth helicopter.

2) Using a submarine and the media to cause war between China and Britain.

3) Doing something-or-other with an oil line running through the Middle East and having something
nuclear go off in a submarine or something.

4) Um...there was an ice palace...and something about...the sun...and...North Korea is bad, I think...Halle Berry.

You'll notice how each explanation gets both longer and fuzzier.  Hell, the only thing I distinctly remember about all these movies is that Judi Dench makes me feel uncomfortably tense, as if I've been thrown into a small room filled with acid-tripping bulimic supermodels wearing a hot dog suit.

But let's talk Die Another Day.  Specifically, let's talk about how mind-numbingly awful Die Another Day was.

First, take a look at James Bond himself.  Despite Brosnan looking older and older with each progressive movie (as opposed to Connery, who apparently either stayed in suspended animation or flew towards the second star on the right, straight on 'til morning in-between Bond films), the people behind Die Another Day thought it would be better to make Bond appeal to today's younger audiences.  And what better way than to make Bond surf not once, but twice?  Because surfing is totally radical, dude.  Oh, and completely stupid in both contexts.

But let's not forget the great, original villains in the movie.  Like Mr. Kill.  Yes.  That's his name.  Mr. Kill.  Mister...Kill.  Let's all take a moment to reflect on that, clear our throats and move on to the guy with no hair and diamonds embedded in his face, sneering around the movie like a surly, sparkly Uncle Fester.  Is this the rogues gallery from a Bond film or the old Batman TV show?

The problems don't stop in front of the camera.  The direction can be summed up in one sentence: When the camera moves quickly, there is really no need for there to be a "Whoosh" noise accompanying it. 
Not that the movie would care about such a minor annoyance, since it seems possible for an iceberg two hundred feet above sea level to have a lake just inches under the ice.

Speaking of which, if you thought things like secret volcano layers and "Russians" were implausible, you'll hate the plot of Die Another Day, which I won't fully explain for the sake of avoiding spoilers (but let's face it - the movie's made some serious cash already, and if you haven't seen it by now then all of your friends have probably already seen it so not only will you never get to go, but you'll hear it discussed so much before its video/DVD release that you'll not only know the entire plot, but where all the worst lines are so you can know how far to fast forward to hear Halle "I'm a respectable actress now, really!  Hey, what are you doing with that copy of 'Swordfish'?" Berry say "Yo momma!" over and over again), but suffice to say, it's bad and overcomplicated.  All this stuff about spies and moles and secret DNA reconfiguration laboratories, accompanied by lingering shots of the bad guy lying under his favorite SpectroMagic mask so he wouldn't have to sleep (by the way, that whole Sleep-B-Gone mask subplot led to a real surprise twist in the film...a surprise, that is, if you haven't ever seen an action film before in your entire life) was enough for me to start praying for another surfing scene, or at least anything that didn't feel like a cross between XXX and Face/Off, only cheapened a little by low-rent British actors and an overall disastrous disregard to the laws of physics.

Not to mention that the golden rule of moviemaking has been violated: There's a Madonna cameo.  Yipes.

Hopefully the producers of the series will eventually come to their senses and decide to make a good Bond film in the near future.  Until then I shall cuddle with my copy of Diamonds Are Forever and fall asleep crying to myself, thinking of happier times when we were afraid of a real nuclear enemy and not just exaggerating our conflict with the North Koreans.

As a North Korean who had his DNA reconfigured, I am deeply offended by that generalization.