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All-Reviews.com Movie/Video Review
Die Another Day
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  out of 4
Review by Susan Granger
3 stars out of 4
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Over the past 40 years, this is the 20th explosive James Bond
action-adventure - so what's new? The opening sequence, which traditionally has
featured seductive women gyrating to music, now also serves as a prologue,
showing Bond (Pierce Brosnan) betrayed, captured and tortured by the North
Koreans. When he's is finally released 14 months later in a prisoner exchange,
his 00 'license to kill' is rescinded by M (Judi Dench) because, "You're no use
to anyone now." So Bond, seeking redemption, heads for Cuba, where he discovers
Jinx (Halle Berry) rising from the sea, clad in a bikini - in homage to the
unforgettable Ursula Andress in "Dr. No." Jinx is an American spy who's also
tracking Zao (Rick Yune), a ruthless North Korean terrorist. But there's an even
more awesome adversary, Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens, son of Maggie Smith and
the late Robert Stephens), a diamond tycoon who descends to Buckingham Palace on
a Union Jack parachute for a meeting with the Queen. The fencing duel between
Bond and Graves offers the most exciting combat, incorporating an unbilled cameo
by Madonna, who co-wrote and warbles the title song. But when the fast-paced
action shifts to Graves' ice palace in Iceland, screenwriters Neal Purvis and
Robert Wade, along with director Lee Tamahori, seem to run out of originality,
relying on a duplicitous blonde (Rosamund Pike) and Q's (John Cleese)
cutting-edge gadgets and hi-tech gizmos, the most impressive of which is an
invisibility cloak for Bond's Aston Martin. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to
10, "Die Another Day" is visually stylish, spectacular 8. While product
placement is now an accepted income-generator for film producers, this superspy
venture takes blatant tie-ins to an extreme, making one think it might be
subtitled: 'Buy Another Day.'
Copyright © 2002 Susan Granger
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