A very good Bond film filled with action, locales, and fun, but unfortunately sorely lacking in certain areas. Like many Bond films, Die Another Day has its good points and its bad points -- and also like the rest of the series, the things that a good are very good, and the things that are bad are -very- bad.
First the good. The plot is excellent and worthy to the globe-hopping tradition established in the last 35 years of 007 films. Brosnan is still excellent when given good material to work with: he has really come into his own as Bond and seems to find an excellent balance between the hard-edged literary Bond and the more playful cinematic character. Graves makes a for a decent villain (even if he sometimes comes off as a weaker copy of supreme psychopath Max Zorin), and Zao is suitably menacing despite his "expensive acne." The action scenes, though overblown, are typically well done and exciting -- with the swordfight between Bond and Graves the obvious standout highlight.
Now the bad. First off, the actual script tries much too hard to be hip and trendy while still "true" to the Bondian heritage. The sexual innuendo in this film is so forced and so poor that it makes me cringe just to think about it, let alone hear it. Some of the interplay works -- mostly between Bond and Graves as well as Bond and M -- but mostly the dialogue is trite and uninteresting. The CGI effects in Die Another Day are amateurish at best, and make me long for the days of modelwork -- and competence. The shot of Jinx diving off the cliff is so poorly constructed I damn near gagged on my soda when I saw it for the first time.
Last and certainly least is Halle Berry's character of Jinx. An uninteresting, overhyped loudmouth of a character, Jinx is little more than an amalgam of other Bond girls (Major Amassova, Holly Goodhead, Wai Lin, etc.) who is given to a Flavor of the Month actress in a chance to catch lightning in a bottle. It doesn't work. She has zero charisma and almost as little depth; it takes more to be a successful character than simply posturing and shouting "Yo' momma!" and "Bitch!" at opportune moments. The fact that MGM initially wanted to spin her off into her own film is not only alien to the entire Bondian conceit (IE, the Bond girl, as well as all other Bondian trappings, exists only within the Bond film since they represent their own little world), but simply a bad, bad idea -- and I thank the cinema gods that they decided to nix that idea. The obvious ego which Ms. Berry brings to the screen kills practically any scene she is the focus of, as if you can see her holding her nose up, saying to herself, "I won an Academy Award!" Also grating is her delivery -- its just as stiff and unnatural here as it is in the two X-Men films, and that is saying something.
Now, don't be mislead. Jinx is bad enough to nearly ruin Die Another Day -- nearly. The strengths of the film are very, very strong. I don't think most Bond fans will be disappointed -- even diehards like myself. So, if you are a fan of Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, or just like a good, international espionage-cum-action film, definitely check out Die Another Day.
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