Bond, Greek mythology and Madonna. Best not mixed.

Forty years and now twenty films and this one does it's best to kill the Bond franchise like clubbing a baby seal.  Die Another Day is Bond20 and apparently an homage to all the Bond films that have come before it.  Is Die Another Day, like Icarus, punished for it's ambition?  No.  In reality, Die Another Day is a horror show, an elongated car commercial with awful CGI and a script so clunky Brosnan almost chokes on the words.  You can't blame this all on hubris.  The director, Lee Tamahori, was well known for making commercials so was obviously right at home with $100 million worth of product placement (he has another 'George Michael' type claim to fame now).  Spotting the references to the previous Bond films is the most entertaining thing you can do and still watch Die Another Day, such is the appalling nature of the dialogue and set pieces.

Although the film drove Bond and Brosnan into a cul de sac that there was seemingly no escape from, perversely Die Another Day made an absolute fortune at the box office.  Even Roger Moore had a pop at it saying 'it just went too far'.  This really did feel like the end of Bond especially as The Bourne Identity had been released six months prior.  Maybe that's a bit harsh as Die Another Day only really falls apart when Bond gets back from Cuba.

If I curl my lip a bit they'll KNOW I'm angry

The Bond films are at their best when they have an impressive villain, see Red Grant, Goldfinger, Scaramanga, Blofeld, unfortunately, Rupert Graves is a poor mans' Stromberg equipped with some electricity.  It's when Graves becomes central to the 'plot' that Die Another Day crumbles.  It looks as though a Bond film was too big for Toby Stephens and his acting range seems to be a change in the severity of his sneer.

Die Another Day opens with a surfing skit in what is apparently North Korea.  Can you even surf in North Korea?  At least we've got a level of self awareness as there is no sign of The Beach Boys breaching the soundtrack.  Standard operating procedure resumes as Brosnan steals some sunglasses with a cheeky smile before he goes and blows some stuff up.  The twist comes after Bond drops a model hovercraft over a waterfall and delivers a half baked one liner.  He's captured and imprisoned, the story continuing over the opening credits and beneath Madonna's lame, schizoid theme tune.  Marvel at Bond's waterboarding and Kleinman's CGI fire and ice ladies.  Keep them in mind as they're the best special effects you're going to see in this film.

I'm going to hold my gut in til Ravi Shankar gets here

In between scorpion stings and beatings Bond becomes George Harrison before being traded by the Americans for the terrorist Zao.  Zao now has a shiny and probably very expensive face after the pre credits run in with Bond.  Things look promising as Michael Madsen makes his appearance.  Don't get too carried away though, Madsen agreed to do Celebrity Big Brother after all.  After Bond's return to Western hands he's informed by M that he's a liability.  A washed up excuse for an agent.  Brosnan admirably sucks his stomach in before escaping from the high tech hospital before taking a little swim to what is supposed to be Hong Kong.  This is all a ruse so Bond can have a shave before going renegade again.  Brosnan's playing the Dalton card in seek of revenge against the person who set him up in Korea or something.  It's hard to pay attention as Halle Berry's Jinx appears Andress like from

Figs. Better than Bond in bed

the sea.  This is the only homage to previous Bond films that actually works.  It's subtle compared to Graves' parachute and the scene with the new Q that just shouts 'OCTOPUSSY', 'FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE' at you.  Three minutes of hard flirting and Bond has got Jinx into bed although he seems to be losing his touch as she stops mid-coitus for a fruity snack.

A run around Scaramaga's updated funhouse is peppered with choreographed fights that would put Michael Flatley out of business and we work out that Jinx has to be CIA at least before she jumps in an atrocious CGI stunt from the top of the complex.  Bond is left behind with some diamonds that bring him back to London accompanied by The Clash.  Quite how Joe Strummer was convinced to let this happen is beyond me.  He must be spinning as British Airways have done it all over again recently.  Graves is introduced and you begin to wonder what exactly he has to do with Zao and the Koreans from earlier.  You don't wonder for too long as you are distracted by his appalling characterisation which is only overshadowed by his stealing of Blofeld's satellite idea.  What's more impressive is the scale of his Icelandic affair.  The Ice Palace is the biggest thing Bond has had to run around in since The Spy Who Loved Me.

Bond fannies around Iceland in a few scenes which are only set so that Miranda Frost (Rosamund Pike) can show off her body and kill time before the inevitable car chase.  Bond's 'Vanish' (I know) vs Zao's horrifically green Jaguar convertible.  Inexplicably Zao's Jag is armed to the teeth and the ice based chase looks like it was nicked from The Fast and the Furious.  Zao is dispatched in improbable circumstances yet all I can see in my mind's eye are computer generated ice bergs and Pierce Brosnan ageing before my eyes.

Brosnan; ageing and turning into McCartney

With Zao gone it's time for the removal of Graves.  By now we know that Graves isn't actually Graves and his father is none too pleased about what he's done with his face.  Graves does his Iron Man impression and removes his father from the equation.  The end of Goldfinger is rehashed and extended as Bond and Jinx battle Graves and Frost before Graves has a chance to destroy South Korea.  Graves is reduced to bird soup melange before a ridiculous escape by Bond and Jinx as the film draws to a close,  Forty years of legacy has been pissed on as the Brosnan era comes to an end.  Die Another Day creaks under the weight of an atrocious script, music video tricks and around twenty companies worth of priduct placement. I can't even be bothered to look at the laboured allusions to Madonna's character being a lesbian or the invisible car such is how cheap the shots are.

It's hard to see how Bond can recover from Die Another Day.  Although the last time there was such a ridiculous Bond film the producers came back with a serious effort in the form of For Your Eyes Only.  Die Another Day is undoubtedly Brosnan's Moonraker and he's contracted for one more.  Brosnan will officially stay as Bond until 2005 with Tarantino sniffing around to cast him in a black and white Casino Royale.  It won't happen though. All the promise of GoldenEye now seems such a long time ago as Brosnan's fall from grace is complete.

James Bond will return, this time he'll be blond and look a bit like Jason Bourne.

Moonraker

The 70s are nearly over but there's still time for one more jolly with Roger.  This time we're all set for outer space.  The producers have gone zeitgeist shopping again and this time I blame George Lucas.  Star Wars has come along and changed films.  For the better? Well, Moonraker became the biggest grossing Bond film to date in 1979 and wasn't beaten until GoldenEye.  So there's that.

It's 1979 and unfortunate that the other space based film doing the rounds is Ridley Scott's Alien.  A tense and brooding thriller set in the used future.  Alien is dark and magnificent.  Moonraker is not.  That's a bit harsh on Moonraker perhaps but Roger's space race is a film of two parts.  Drax's nuclear missile of the novel is replaced by a space shuttle and as Bond investigates it's supposed crash and destruction it's actually quite good.  It's as if Eon saw The Spy Who Loved Me as a little too cheesy and tried to make Moonraker a little more serious.  But then we go globetrotting on a bizarre scale and Jaws comes back.

We begin with the RAF ferrying a US shuttle home for bed.  Yes, the RAF have replaced the Royal Navy of The Spy Who Loved Me and they're making such frightfully good time that they forgot to check the kitchen cupboards for two lurkers in black leather jackets.  Such is the movie shorthand that we instantly know that black leather jackets = bad guys. But why the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon walk?  The Moonraker shuttle is hijacked and assumed to have crashed much to the embarrassment of the British authorities.  As a result M recalls Bond from another mission.  This mission seems to be sleazing on a young girl aboard a small plane but the pilot has other ideas.  Jaws, quite literally, appears from nowhere and Bond is flying.  Parachuteless.  Mid air shenanigans follow before good ol' Shirley belts out another theme tune and Jaws ruins a circus.

M is driven into an almost fluster by the increasingly annoying and irrelvant Minister of Defence and so dispatches Bond to find out what happened to the Moonraker shuttle.  Where else to begin but California and the Drax estate.  We learn a couple of things from the Drax estate.  The main one is that only ladies fly helicopters in Moore's world.  At least this time she isn't removed by a Lotus-to-air missile.  It's also pretty obvious that Drax has some cash.  Well, quite a lot of cash.

Conservatory, pond, moonbase, garage.  All good homes need one

Drax seems to own Moonbase Alpha from Space 1999 and, of course, the Eiffel Tower.  However, Drax is definitely a bad guy as he's vaguely European and plays the piano like Hannibal Lecter plays the clavier. And he paraphrases Oscar Wilde. Dodgy.  He's also a little less than original as we soon find out he's basically stolen Stromberg's idea to create a new civilisation.  Little clues are dotted around, mainly in the form of Drax's odd habit of surrounding himself by pairs of pretty young ladies with various European titles.  Like the time when Mrs Noah went on her holidays.

Bond's investigation essentially involves a guided tour but when someone called Goodhead offers, you don't refuse.  We soon accompany Bond to a massive centrifuge.  'It's a trap!' we all cry yet Bond hops in eagerly.

Roger doing an impression of Harry Redknapp

A 70 year old can take 3 Gs according to Dr Goodhead. Moore (too busy trying to flirt) neglects to mention his advancing years and waits for some subliminal Q action to save himself from turning into Droopy.  Drax's evil henchman scurries away to change his pyjamas.  Sufficiently recovered from his ordeal Bond puts phase two of Moore espionage into operation.  Phase Two is 'shag the secretary' and doesn't it work well?  Bond learns he must now go to Venice.  The secretary isn't so lucky.  Corinne Dufour's death is very well done and all the more horrific for it.  Chased through the woods we know there will only be one outcome.  So far Moonraker hasn't been that bad.  Yes we've had some cheesy moments but there's been some genuine tension too.

Then there's Venice and the pigeon.  The fucking pigeon. We were doing so well until we got to Venice.  Then Bond hopped into his gondola.  Inexplicable Hammer horror extras chase Bond down the canals and all the good work is beginning to come undone.  A touch of Close Encounters of The Third Kind and Bond has found a secret lab, bumped into Dr Goodhead again and embarrassed his boss.  Nevermind all that we're off to Rio.

It's licorice, deal with it

Moore's wannabe Junkanoo skit sees Jaws reappear and a bimble up Sugarloaf Mountain.  The film is falling apart faster than that cable car control room and we're back into the realms of random villains appearing just to provide a chase scene.  The only punctuation is a casual British base in Brazil as we find out that Drax is going to kill everyone with flowers.  He may as well have given out maps as these flowers only grow in one place.  Now where could Drax be, I wonder?  This 'comedic' infodump is bookended by another chase.  This time down the Amazon.  Words fail me it's that bad.

Wait thirty seconds and Bond finds Drax's secret and very plastic base.  The polystyrene wobbles as Bond has a roll around with a snake (not like that, although that was probably in the script for a while).  For some reason this is all watched over by girls in togas.  The Grigori angels are less than please when Bond defeats the snake, however, Bond is soon captured and listening to Drax explain everything about his evil plan.

So that's where Petr Cech got it from

We're off to Drax's space station to see if Bond can stop the eugenics. And stop it he does, naturally.  With some cod psychology and a battery of Marines that the world just happened to have standing by.  The end battle of Moonraker is a rehash of The Spy Who Loved Me's rehash of You Only Live Twice.  Except this time they've borrowed some sound effects rejected by the Cylons.

Bond successfully manages to complete re-entry, which is getting more and more impressive as Roger gets older , and Bond's lost decade is almost over.  Moore's Bond started so well but began to peter out quickly.  The franchise has become almost happy to spoof itself.  Hopefully this trend will change in the 80s.

James Bond will return but will Roger?

Don't get any ideas Rupert

Brosnan gets a second run out as Bond in 1997's Tomorrow Never Dies and he's comfortable in the role now, maybe a little too comfortable.

Bond via a brainstorming session for The Matrix

Having successfully kick started the franchise with GoldenEye Brosnan now takes an unhealthy step towards Roger Moore territory.  This sees Bond take a step back from the vulnerability coupled with ruthlessness that worked quite well in GoldenEye. It's been replaced by a dangerous case of checklist Bond as if the writers were on autopilot.

Number one on the checklist: a big, bold, stunt driven pre credits sequence. Once you accept that terrorists go shopping at what looks like an outdoor Costco for their guns/bombs/nuclear weapons, the pre credit sequence for Tomorrow Never Dies is pretty damned good.  Bond enters by giving a terrorist lookout a light and knocks him out with a punch and the line 'filthy habit'.  It's now that it clicks that Brosnan's Bond is the first not to smoke (for now). You half expect him to say 'just say no'  Anyway, the Russians have failed to notice a plane armed with nuclear missiles has gone missing and ended up at TerrorCo and now Bond has to escape before Chernobyl looks like a picnic. And escape he does from all those white Eastern European terrorists with their designer stubble. It's as if al Qaeda didn't exist in the 90s.

If it's good enough for Sean, it's good enough for you Pierce

Checklist item number two: an overbearing megalomaniac villain. Step forward Elliott Carver. Jonathan Pryce is forced to ham it up as William Randolph Murdoch as Carver seeks to engineer a war to gain control of a TV contract aided by a poor head henchman and an iPad predecessor that can do EVERYTHING.  The worst part of Carver is his catchphrase of 'delicious' not to mention his karate act.

 I might be wearing my PJs but I can spot a good headline

Carver's plans centre around a stealth ship. A handy bit of kit sailing around with the even handier ability of sinking a Royal Navy ship in Chinese waters only for it's wreckage to end up in Vietnam. Let's also ignore that the technology used to make the stealth ship invisible seemingly means it's radar doesn't work and so Bond and Wai Lin can float right up and knock on the door.

Further to trying to turn Brosnan into Roger Moore for the 21st century we have checklist item number three: a big henchman of limited acting ability. Mr Stamper. The producers missed a trick by not casting Dolph Lundgren as Mr Stamper and so we have an almost pointless character. Just some bleached blond hair running around in a tight T shirt. Don't even get me started on his hero worship of Dr Kaufman.  Even his death at the end is rubbish.

The checklist continues by throwing Bond into far off locations. We end up in China for the first time in a few years, presumably to remind the world that Hong Kong still belonged to the UK. The set pieces bouncing around the Far East are pleasant enough even if they are saturated in BMW product placement.

Brace yourself for the continuation of the checklist. Delving heavily into the Roger Moore book of Bond cliches we have Q developing a remote controlled car. Bond can now drive his BMW with a Sony Ericsson. What's he going to be able to do if he gets his hands on an iPhone?  Having said that Q's appearance is a genuine high point in the film. He's held with such affection we can forgive the crocodile submarines and talking cars.

Tomorrow Never Dies leaves you with the feeling that Brosnan's Bond may have peaked to soon with GoldeEye. This is Bond by rote, lazy and uninspired and it's more than apparent the film suffered from rushed rewrites and no basis in Fleming's stories.  Tomorrow Never Dies is littered with one liners and innuendo, from cunning linguists to celebrity overdoses.  There's a hint of tiredness as the film casts names in minor roles in the same way ailing US TV shows cast bigger and bigger special guest stars before being cancelled and so we see Teri Hatcher getting the gig ahead of a then fairly unknown Monica Bellucci.

 You can see why Brosnan had the hump Monica didn't get the part

Looking back, Pulp should have done the theme song and the producers can count themselves reasonably lucky they were up against Cameron's indulgent Titanic at the box office.  James Cameron's juggernaut proved that at least there was something that was truly terrible in the cinema.

James Bond will return but first he needs a nap to recharge his batteries. The next instalment needs to be made with a considered approach to get the series back on track. Thank God it's not the 20th movie of the series.

You took your time

We all know it's named after Ian Fleming's old house. We all know it's the first film not to take anything from the books. We all know it might be a little too slick for our liking but none of that matters. We've been waiting.

We've been waiting. Since 1989.

We've been waiting for what seems like an eternity, but now we have GoldenEye.

Legal wrangles produced the longest gaps between Bond films so far. Understandably Mr Dalton got a bit bored waiting and so gave up the role and nearly ten years too late the producers got Pierce Brosnan. Pierce Brosnan with his improbably coiffured hair and impressive jawline in the role he was born to play. In the time since License To Kill the Berlin Wall has fallen and Communism with it. Bond has lost his old enemy so we wait with baited breath to see who will replace the Russians and their KGB.

 That hair will NOT move

This was the first Bond film I was old enough to see at the cinema. There is something quite magical about seeing the gun barrel intro on the big screen but something less wonderful about the cinema goers who mockingly applauded Bond's mastery of the small plane after blowing up the chemical plant.  GoldenEye's best feature is the way it draws on previous Bond films. Brosnan is the suavest Bond since Connery, he still pitches the odd one liner a la Moore (thankfully not as cringeworthy) and retains a little of Dalton's grit.  Balanced against the traditions of Moneypenny flirting and the comic asides of Q are some new elements. First and most obvious is the new M, Judi Dench is perfectly cast and perfectly reminiscent of Bernard Lee's M. It's good to see Bond getting the telling off he deserves every now and then.  Try and ignore the fact Bond has a BMW now, add in some relatively unknown actresses as Bond girls Simonova and Onatopp and some exotic locations and we're all set.

GoldenEye is essentially a revenge tale with a twist. An old MI6 colleague, Trevelyan, returns from the dead in an attempt to use a nuclear powered satellite (what else?) to initiate global financial meltdown and destroy the UK to avenge his parents.  Conveniently, Trevelyan will also get revenge on Bond who he blames for his facial disfigurement caused in the pre-credit sequence.  Ah yes, the credits.  The very credits which feature a girl who can deep throat a pistol.  In what I assume was a measure not to be too old fashioned the powers that be drafted in Tina Turner instead of Dame Shirley Bassey to belt out a Bono penned song. There are two things wrong with this. Firstly, it's a Bono song, it's a wonder his ego allowed him involvement. Secondly, I can't listen to any Tina Turner song without thinking of her 'dancing'.

Tina Turner should've taught Bono how to do this

Trevelyan is using renegade Soviet miltia to help him use the GoldenEye satellite to set off an EMP (remember Moore's explanation in A View to a Kill) to wipe out his emtying of every bank account he can lay his virtual hands on. He chooses Cuba as his base and so the hunt is on. After an altercation in a junkyard Brosnan finds himself bombing around St Petersburg in a tank to hunt Treveyan and save Simonova.

 Smashing up St Petersburg makes you thirsty

Despite an odd turn of events with a horse statue this is a very entertaining chase sequence (please ignore blatant product placement). It's no Bullitt but it's 100 times better than Connery in a car park in Diamonds are Forever. So we're off around the world again, destroying trains and squishing people with helicopters before a heavily choreographed fight inside Trevelyan's satellite's gearbox.

Sean Bean vs Pierce Brosnan in a good old fashioned fist fight is quite a good way for the villain to get his comeuppance. It's understated, no compressed air pellets, air locks or golden gunned duels.

Brosnan's debut was slick, entertaining and just the right thing to restart the Bond series after hiatus, let's hope it doesn't get silly in the future.

Bond has been substantially modernised.  GoldenEye was the first film in the series to use CGI. The franchise has been invigorated and hasn't gone too 'Hollywood' just yet, a good job then that John Woo turned down directing duties and the guest star roles haven't quite begun in earnest.

James Bond will return. Tomorrow or Today. Well, in the future and he'll have that bloody BMW too.



P.S.

GoldenEye was supposed to have been filmed at Pinewood but production clashed with Connery's First Knight. Instead production was moved to Leavesden, near Watford, now the home of Harry Potter World. So, basically, Harry Potter in Watford is your fault Sean Connery. I'll forgive GoldenEye that due to the fact it spawned the best computer game EVER and the only reason anyone bought a Nintendo 64.