Project Bond: Die Another Day

I thought this effort was a very disappointing end to the Pierce Brosnan era. Brosnan hasn’t been my favourite Bond, but prior to this film, I thought his tenure had had the most consistently high quality, all things considered. Die Another Day, while entertaining enough in places, felt like a lazy attempt to pull together all the best bits of the previous films in the hope that it would work. It didn’t.

Bond has his licence to kill revoked (again) over fears that he may have given away information (without knowing it) while he was held in North Korea for a year, during which time he grew quite a nice beard. He breaks free from MI6 and follows Zao, the man who betrayed him, to Cuba. There he meets Halle Berry who is also investigating Zao, and they track him to a gene therapy clinic. He escapes, but leaves behind some diamonds that Bond traces to Gustav Graves, a rich English guy. Back in London, he meets Graves and his assistant, Rosamund Pike, who is quite good at fencing. She’s also an undercover MI6 agent, keeping an eye on Graves. Bond and Graves have a game of fencing, which then turns into a full-on sword fight, of which Bond is the victor.

Now believing his crazy story, M reinstates Bond and helps him chase down Graves, who it turns out is actually Colonel Moon, Zao’s boss who Bond was chasing in the first place! Crazy. As is his wont, Bond attempts to seduce Rosamund Pike with a series of awful innuendos, presumably believing her to be Cool Girl. This works, but only because it is to her advantage, for you see, she is one of those double agents! They thought she was on their side, but she was on Moon’s side! Crazy. You couldn’t make it up. Now Bond has to rescue Halle Berry, who has been captured by Moon, which he does successfully because he has an invisible car. Then there’s a mad bit in which Bond shoots down an ice chandelier to kill Zao, and Halle Berry drowns, except then Bond saves her somehow. Crazy.

The end is rather predictable: the good girl kills the bad girl, the good guy kills the bad guy, happily ever after, etc. It’s not the worst of the Bond films I’ve seen, but it’s one of the most forgettable, and shows that having a bunch of stuff that works well on paper doesn’t always work in practice.