Die Another Day (2002)
Die Another Day came out in 2002 and was billed to be a 40th anniversary Bond movie that seemed desperate to walk the audience through the last 40 years of James Bond films by dropping in props from the previous movies and razzle dazzle with the whopping 140 million dollar budget.
PLOT
Face-changing North Korean’s get access to giant space magnifying glass intended to give crops sunshine all year long will instead be weaponized by turning it up to 11 and burn South Korea to a crisp. All the crazy stuff has been paid for by conflict diamonds.
Halle Berry and Rosamund Pike were the Bond girls in this film.
MY TWO CENTS
The main reason I find this Bond film at the bottom of my list is that it had a very loose story that seemed to be more in service of the action sequences and less about trying to get us to believe Rosamund Pike’s character was a traitor, that the billionaire sword fighting British gentleman wasn’t really the evil Korean man Bond “killed” earlier in the film. I remember seeing it and feeling like this would be the last James Bond movie under Brosnan… and possibly ever. Which really disappointed me as I was a big fan of Brosnan’s portrayal of Bond. There was also a lot of rumor at the time that the whole thing was just a vehicle to get Halle Berry her own spinoff series about her NSA agent, Jinx.
The opening credits dealing with Bond being tortured by the North Koreans was pretty much dropped about halfway through, and the whole point of it seemed just to be so he could “go rogue” and look over all the obsolete Bond gear from the last 40 years. It was fun fan service, but it felt like it was just that and that alone. Appreciated, sure, but I think overall didn’t feel natural to me.
In the end, it was a big let down of a Bond movie that didn’t take advantage of it’s cast’s ability and instead felt focused solidly on big action and CG effects.
