Review of Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) by Vidyabum — 21 Oct 2021

I watched all 25 from Dr.No to Spectre (including Never say Never again), I would place Tomorrow Never dies at 22nd (4th worst).

This movie can roughly be summarised like this: it's a somewhat decent action flick with some of the worst acting (Brosnan was the worst Bond), dialogues, and storyline of the franchise.

Plot:

A British ship is in the South China sea, being told by Chinese fighters that it's in Chinese waters. The british ship thinks it's in international waters because its GPS has been hacked by some EEEEVUL force. The EEEEEVUL force then sinks the british ship, and one of the two Chinese fighters.

Then, because Britain thinks that China just randomly decided to torpedo one of their ships, they send the entirety of the Royal Navy to China in 48 hours. Nevermind the unrealistic timeframe, Bond has that much time to find what really happened before the war starts.

So Bond says "well, we can ask the Chinese where THEY think that the ship was, and search the sea bed, and if it's there, we've been bamboozled.".

Then the movie ends after they find the ship exactly where the Chinese thought it was.

I'm kidding.

No instead, Bond, who starts off in London:

Goes to Hamburg for a party.

Spends the night in Hamburg.

Infiltrates a factory.

Goes back to his hotel.

Has a chase scene.

Arrives (somehow) on an aircraft carrier (somewhere).

Gets paradropped in the middle of the South China Sea.

Finds and searches the British Ship.

Gets captured and taken to Vietnam.

Escapes and has another chase.

Tells a Chinese agent to "contact both their governments and let them talk it out" despite having physical proof that there is a ploy.

Goes back to the sea in a dinghy and finds the EEEEEVUL ship.

Has a big final fight and wins.

Now I do not really mind this plot. It's obviously very, very stupid, and there are a ton of ways the entire movie's main thread could unravel at every moment.

But it's not the first Bond to have really nonsensical stuff and even if it is pretty bad even for Bond, it's passable.

But the dialogues is where this movie crashes and burns beyond words.

Scene where Bond is gonna get executed by some goon:

"I must kill you Mr Bond".

*Bond gets the drop on him*.

"WAIT, I'M JUST A PROFESSIONAL DOING A JOB!".

- "Me too".

.........what?

Did the murderous goon seriously try to save himself by saying "wait I'm just doing my job to kill you"?????

Scene where Bond is suspicious that the EEEEVUL villain is using GPS hacking to create the crisis:

"Tell me Villain, I was just wondering about your satellites".

- "They are merely tools for information Mr Bond".

- "Or disinformation".

"Say if you wanted to manipulate the course of governments".

"Or a ship" I mean at this stage, just walk up to the guy and tell him "hello i'm the agent sent to find out why your satellite misplaced one of our warships and is starting a war"! The dialogue is so bad, so forced and nonsensical that I don't think the franchise goes lower than that. Only maybe Thunderball(worst movie), and I'm not even sure. Along with the terrible dialogue, the villain, who is supposed to be a media man, a man of words and manipulation, is one of the most petty, uncharismatic and poor villains of the franchise. No fault of the actor IMHO, simply his dialogue and character were just terrible. I however do have a personal love for his gigantic, Big Brother-style self-portrait in Saigon, that makes the movie drop into so bad it's good territory with gusto. I always burst out laughing at that scene, it's so silly. As a beer-and-chips stupid action flick, it can be an enjoyable time, but it is a movie that I love to hate more than anything. Worth watching drunk, with friends, to laugh it together.