Dying On Its Arse Another Day
[spoilers follow]
So for an hour, Die Another Day is just bowling along, a fairly typical Bond film. It has a nice edge of dark about it and Brosnan is even quite watchable. I have no idea what Halle Berry is doing but she's nice enough to look at. Hilariously, throughout the film, Berry's lines are ALL oneliners and wisecracks. She just spits cliches. At least she has the good taste to look fainty bored all the way through.
And this could have continued and we'd be discussing a fairly decent Bond film. But someone turned the needle to WTF and it just went off the hook. And when I say off the hook, I mean, not even in the same fucken room as the hook.
I mean, there's probably -- no not even probably, definitely -- the most lunatic whitewashing of a character you've ever seen. I have no idea why a North Korean becomes white but he does. And his sidekick is a British spy who betrays her country for no good reason whatsoever (Rosamund Pike -- who funnily enough I see as a possible future Jane Bond). There's an invisible car. Bond windsurfs down a CGI glacier and how do I know it's full-on CGI? Because no effort is made to blend Bond into it. He then prances around in a cardboard set that looks nothing at all like Iceland.
There's an ice palace. Which melts. Nearly drowning Berry. And that's relatively sensible. The last half an hour is totally incomprehensible. I literally had no idea not only why things were happening but also how. It didn't just beggar belief. It said fuck belief. It kicked belief out of the door and went. off.
Now I don't mind a film going off. I love Safe, where Statham murders a couple of thousand Chinese, and I'll even buy Expendables-level gunfights, and the stunts in Fast and Furious (my favourite stunt ever is the parachuting SUVs not even kidding). But where this ought to be thrilling, it's just bad. They spent millions on this nonsense but it looks cheap. It has the look of something directed by committee.
Oh wait, nearly forgot. Madonna's theme music. If you've never heard it, give it a try. Ha ha no. Only kidding. Make sure you in no way ever listen to that because it's like staring into the abyss. You'll question your own existence when you realise there are people who thought that was a good idea.
Right. What can we say? I was never a fan of Brosnan and he looks barely interested all the way through. He's better at the start and gets worse as it goes on. Most of the plot is incomprehensible and if you look away for a minute, chances are you'll have no idea what the fuck is going on, and that won't change. I missed a minute and suddenly the main villain had three henchmen I had no idea who they were and it seemed neither did they. There's a death ray. No idea how or why.
So yeah, if it had continued in the tracks it laid in the first hour... no wait, it would still have been shit. Because they invented gene therapy just so the main villain wouldn't be Asian. And he's*still* one of the worst Bond villains I've seen. And there are like three good oneliners in the whole film. Yeah that'd be good for Skyfall -- dark Bond -- and three more than Dalton did in his whole time as Bond, but when I tell you there are approximately seven hundred oneliners in the whole film, you get the idea how bad this is. There is too much action and it's too stunty. And that fucken invisible car. D for drag it outta here. Drag it. Drag. It.
posted by Dr Zen @ 8:14 pm
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