Review of Die Another Day (2002) by Mirko B — 18 Sep 2010

This was the last time Pierce Brosnan played the man with the license to kill. And rightly so. By 2002, the Bond franchise deteriorated into the male version of those infamous Sex & City movies, where Bond always wears a Brioni tux, an Omega watch and drinks a Martini (shaken, not stirred!). He just lacks the three backup chicks like Carrie (in fact, he doesn't- there's Moneypenny, then Jinx and Miranda Frost, all of whom seem to be taking hints from Kim Catrall). The plot itself is irrelevant. It's merely a sequence of excuses to see Brosnan chasing criminals in a yet another very expensive car and/or taking his shirt off while seducing yet another Bond girl. Speaking of that, Halle Berry did a nice job with her Jinx (including re-creating that famous scene with Ursula Andress from "Dr. No"), though I think that there are hardly more humiliating and less demanding roles for an actress these days.

The Bond franchise is probably one of the last resorts of old-school Hollywood machismo, where the only thing women are supposed to do is to sleep with 007 or fight with each other, ripping the clothes off each other while they're at it (such a turn on for the men in the audience). By now, they also installed the bad Bond girl as a regular installment in the movies, who usually turns out to be one of the main villains in the end (an even bigger turn on, yeaaah!). So boring. At least in case of Rosamund Pike, who was probably cast as the villain because the producers didn't want the NAACP on their back for casting a colored actress as a freakish murderess. Judi Dench is booooring as well as the eternal M. You'd think that after winning that Oscar she can finally pay her bills and doesn't need crappy roles like M to make ends meet. But obviously, she does.

Though, all of these performances border on the Meryl Streep-kind of brilliance when compared to Madonna's cameo role as Bond's fencing instructor. What were they thinking? She did the theme song so they probably decided to save some money and let her do a cameo instead of actually paying the woman. Why, oh why did they do that?! In comparison to Craig David, Brosnan does seem much less metro-sexually self-possessed. Which is a good thing. Brosnan's allure goes rather in the direction of classical elegance of Sean Connery. And frankly, he puts much more credibility into the role then David.