"Dont blow it all at once ": Die Another Day Appreciation Thread

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  • That dialogue with Bond and Jinx is the stuff of nightmares and the only time I have felt physically sick when watching a film, it is awful in every way. The close up of Berry's face at one point makes her look like a snake or a lizard, just as they are talking about beasts coming out to feast. It is no surprise the director got caught out in his private life the way he did.

    Brozzer? Looked damn handsome, a real movie star in retrospect compared to Craig, but he couldn't really care, in that he looked so tubby in key moments - in his surf suit, his fencing gear and waiting to be traded for Zao. He got paid millions for that film, you'd think he could get into shape.

    I do enjoy tiny moments, the bit in Cuba where he walks through the cigar factory is pure Fleming, the view of 'Cuba' in his meeting is great but it's all ruined by the fact I just can't hear what the damn actor is saying it's all mumbley foreign stuff. So my interest is rarely rewarded.
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    Look up the word "actually" in a dictionary, dear thread originator.
  • Creasy47Creasy47 In Cuba with Natalya.Moderator
    edited June 2014 Posts: 40,960
    I don't get it, Halle Berry is gorgeous (as was Jinx, she may have failed in many regards, but in beauty, I think not) and she CAN act when it comes to it, but man, the dialogue she was given was horrid, and her delivery was bad. You'd think she could have handled some of her lines a little better.

    Then again, the James Bond universe should never, ever have an actor utter a line as ridiculous as 'Your mama.'
  • Posts: 7,653
    I always thought it was YO MAMA. :-/
  • Creasy47Creasy47 In Cuba with Natalya.Moderator
    Posts: 40,960
    SaintMark wrote:
    I always thought it was YO MAMA. :-/

    Apologies, how could I forget that? Makes it even worse, somehow.
  • Posts: 53
    At its heart Die Another Day has a pretty good plot, however it's let down by the Vanish, the Ice Palace sequence and the execution of the Antonov sequence.
  • Posts: 7,653
    jaydubya76 wrote:
    At its heart Die Another Day has a pretty good plot, however it's let down by the Vanish, the Ice Palace sequence and the execution of the Antonov sequence.

    The Vanish okay a bit of fun, perhaps one step too far. The ice pursuit and race through the ice place are fine with me.
    the Antonov sequence is a let down especially with the scene of patricide by the main villain, with any decent writers about they could have made that a bigger issue and the downfall of the man who killed his father, instead of the big SFX extravaganza.

  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,789
    DAD isn't such a bad piece of entertaining nonsense if you just skip that Moneypenny VR scene.... 8-}
  • 4EverBonded4EverBonded the Ballrooms of Mars
    Posts: 12,480
    I think surely Halle was directed to read her lines that way. Or if she had come up with that attitude/type of delivery on her own, then again I blame the director for not stopping her. Oh, Tamahori has a lot to answer for with this film.

    I enjoy parts of this film, yes, but not Jinx. At all.

    Even though, yes, she is very fit. (had to sneak that in quickly before @thelivingroyale, for once). ;)
  • MurdockMurdock The minus world
    Posts: 16,351
    Die Another Day is a very interesting study. It tries to be serious and camp at the same time. I especially love the first and some of the second act. Bond being capture for 14 months in North Korea is a fresh and rather engaging plot idea. Sadly thrown away 10 minutes after the movie starts. Bond being ditched from the 00 section and going rogue to prove his innocence is also something new. Most dislike the Iceland part of the movie and while I think it is disappointing, I think it's great visually. The ice palace harken back to the days of Ken Adam's retro futuristic set designs. DAD's biggest blunder is it's directing and casting choices. I don't much about Lee Tamahori's previous works as I don't recall seeing any of his movies besides Die Another Day. EoN should have looked at his ideas more carefully and considered a better director. Luckily for all of us the codename theory was never put to pasture in the official Bond canon.

    Next comes the acting. Halle Berry was not good for Bond. She was obvious stunt casting because of X-Men and Monster's Ball. It would have been great to have Wai Lin come back. Toby Stephens isn't a bad actor. I think he's rather competant. But the idea of a North Korean having Magic Plastic Surgery Gene Therapy to becoming a British Man was the film's biggest weakness. I'd rather they kept Will Yun Lee and have him lie and discredit Bond to make him look like a Bad guy. Die Another Day is enjoyable in the It's a bad cheesy movie, but It had so much potential to be a great thriller.
  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,789
    Murdock wrote:
    It would have been great to have Wai Lin come back.
    Wes U rock. :)>-
  • MurdockMurdock The minus world
    Posts: 16,351
    chrisisall wrote:
    Murdock wrote:
    It would have been great to have Wai Lin come back.
    Wes U rock. :)>-

    Thanks. I think she is highly underrated, Her return would have been a lot better than random NSA agent Jinx. ;)
  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,789
    Murdock wrote:
    Thanks. I think she is highly underrated, Her return would have been a lot better than random NSA agent Jinx. ;)
    I remember praying for her return. Then I found out Halle was gonna be the Bond girl and I thought "Storm in a Bond movie? That can't be bad..."
    Ennnnnh, wrong answer Hans!
  • MurdockMurdock The minus world
    Posts: 16,351
    chrisisall wrote:
    Murdock wrote:
    Thanks. I think she is highly underrated, Her return would have been a lot better than random NSA agent Jinx. ;)
    I remember praying for her return. Then I found out Halle was gonna be the Bond girl and I thought "Storm in a Bond movie? That can't be bad..."
    Ennnnnh, wrong answer Hans!

    Good thing that Jinx spinoff never happened.
  • QBranchQBranch Always have an escape plan. Mine is watching James Bond films.
    Posts: 14,557
    chrisisall wrote:
    Murdock wrote:
    Thanks. I think she is highly underrated, Her return would have been a lot better than random NSA agent Jinx. ;)
    I remember praying for her return. Then I found out Halle was gonna be the Bond girl and I thought "Storm in a Bond movie? That can't be bad..."
    And to think Bond predicted it on his way to Skyfall with M: "A Storm's coming." :-O
  • edited June 2014 Posts: 414
    Had a spare afternoon the other day and was overcome by an insane whim to put DAD on and I was pleasantly surprised that it was packed (perhaps that’s an exaggeration – there were a few) with some great Bondian moments in amongst the dross. As someone who over the years has liked nothing more than to put the boot in to DAD I thought it was time to cut it some slack so people the question is:

    List your genuinely good things about DAD.

    And please no hackneyed gags like ‘the end’.

    1. The surfing is a stunt that doesn’t get the credit it deserves. Getting 3 people that close together on such a big wave is pretty impressive. (Whether Bond should ever surf at all is a different debate).

    2. The whole Bond being tortured thing (Pretending to myself I didn’t know what was to come I even found myself loving the segue into the credits and the opening bars until Madonna opened her mouth).

    3. I like the washed out look of the cinematography in the N Korea scenes.

    4. The look that nurse gives as Bond legs it from the hospital is class. A nice homage to that hotel receptionist in TB (or was it DN?).

    5. The Cuba scenes hark back to classic 60s Bond (well until Jinx turns up).

    6. Bond catching the revolver as it falls off the MRI scanner.

    7. Bond kicking the sword at the camera.

    8. John Cleese comes across as a decent Q and would prefer to see him back than have some young techno geek as we have in SF.

    9. Give Arnold some credit. Although his score his very derivative of Barry he comes up with some excellent moments. I like the Cuban music and the dramatic arrangement that comes in as The Clash fades out. The highlights though are two brassy bursts that echo the best of Barry. The first as the Aston drives towards the ice hotel and the second as the cars first come out onto the ice at the start of the chase with Zao.

    10. No couldn’t make it to 10. Lets say the Pikelet but that’s talking with my sexist, misogynist dinosaur hat on rather than my film critic one.

    Good luck finding some more. You'll need it.

    Is it redundant to quote the OP? I thought I would to bring things back to the original topic since we're about 855 posts in.

    Anyway, since I'm the type of person who can always empathize with where someone's coming from a little bit, and feels the need to defend everything, even one of his three least favorite Bond movies:

    1. As a blanket statement, I've been saying to people for a while that DAD was a thrill to see on the big screen, but loses its luster with repeated viewings on DVD. That's the exact opposite of the way I feel about QoS, where the quick-edited action sequences were nearly motion-sickness-inducing on the big screeen, but the film as a whole is easier to enjoy on the small scale of a television. Anyway, even the most absurd moments, like the para-sailing in Iceland, I found quite thrilling on the 40th Anniversary of the Bond franchise seeing DAD theatrically for the first time.

    2. Another statement about the film as a whole: I've always felt that, with the Brosnan era, Pierce Brosnan grew more comfortable with the role of Bond each film, even if the quality of scripts and directing diminished. Pierce may not be my favorite Bond, but I feel like his performance was better than the movie deserved. While GoldenEye may be a better film as a whole, Pierce was a better Bond in DAD.

    3. "Saved by the bell." It may be a cheesy pun, but considering the long list of cheesy puns over the previous 19 movies, it was par for the course.

    4. You guys can trash talk Madonna all you want. I wouldn't exactly consider myself a fan. But she is from my hometown of Bay City, Michigan so . . . Represent!

    5. The brilliant meta-reference to Bond being an ornithologist. A lot of the self-referential stuff gets annoying on repeated viewings, but a nod to Bond's origins in Fleming's mind will always be classy.

    6. The sword fight. As Bond is an action hero that throughout the franchise had been capable of pretty much any action cliche necessary, I always thought it would only be a matter of time before he got around to the most classic of swashbuckling tropes, sword fighting! And that scene did not disappoint.

    7. "Diamonds are foreveryone." Ah. I see what Toby Stephens' character did there.

    8. As said before, John Cleese as Q. A very worthy successor to Desmond Llewelyn. I look forward to seeing Ben Whishaw evolve in the role, but wish John Cleese could have had a few more go's at the character besides TWINE, DAD, and a couple video games. "You're cleverer than you look." "Still better than looking cleverer than you are." Actually up there with the best exchanges between 007 and Q.
    8b. That ring, as a Q gadget, is actually pretty cool and practical, especially in the Bond film where the freakin' Aston Martin turns invisible.

    9. Judi Dench's scenes as M. Never disappointing in a Bond film. She's actually had great chemistry with both Brosnan and Craig. And her scene with Rosamund Pike, where it's clear that M, as in Fleming's novels and Casino Royale, knows Bond is a "blunt instrument" and that, as is the pattern from the previous 18 films, his specialty is being flashy and causing destruction.

    10. The car battle between Bond and Zao. Both cars are eye candy. Plus, ever since Q equipped Bond's Aston Martin with gadgets in Goldfinger, it was only a matter of time before Bond finally had to duke it out with a villain with a car as tricked out as his!

    And, I can actually go even further than 10! From racking my brain to remember things I actually liked about this one, it seems better than I remember.

    11. Certain lines of dialogue. Most of it's cheese, but there's a few I've already mention. Plus, a few that belong in better Bond movies, such as Bond's final exchange with Graves: "Time to face destiny!" "Time to face gravity." Imagine that in another Bond movie, say, for instance, Sean Connery saying that to Gert Frobe in Goldfinger before the cabin became depressurized, and it would actually be pretty classic.
    11b. Also, it's kind of a cool villain death. The super suit doesn't belong in a Bond movie, but Graves' end seems fitting. Especially in retrospect, when two years later Disney/Pixar offed their villain the same way in The Incredibles.

    12. One of the sacred rules of the Bond franchise has always been that Bond's relationship with Moneypenny stay platonic. DAD found a way for Moneypenny to finally have a love scene with Bond, and still not technically break that rule.

    One of the worst in the series, for sure, but where Moonraker (which I still consider far worse) was trying too hard to be Star Wars, DAD was just trying to live up to the formula established by the previous forty years of movies, and then multiply that to the 11th power, which unfortunately seemed to result in self-parody rather than a solid movie. Good thing reboots came into vogue shortly afterwards, so Casino Royale could prove it was possible to nix the established formula and still make a Bond film.


  • Posts: 11,425
    DAD is unremitting garbage from start to finish. With hindsight I can't actually believe I paid to see it. Such is the lot of a die hard Bond fan. Still, I wasn't shocked as this was really the natural conclusion of the directionless Brosnan era.
  • royale65royale65 Caustic misanthrope reporting for duty.
    Posts: 4,423
    RC7 wrote:
    It's all a bit of bollocks, but has touches of quality and invariable moments of inanity. I don't get how one can be angered by it, though. I know we take Bond seriously here, but it's always featured a healthy slice of nonsense. On the right occasion I'll happily sit through DAD for shits and giggles. The biggest crime in cinema is boring your audience and I genuinely don't think it commits this sin.

    Exactly. And all Bond entertain me royally.
  • Posts: 11,425
    I certainly don't object to a bit of escapist fun, but DAD is unremitingly joyless, cynical dreck of the most dreary and depressing kind. I'd rather watch a Michael Bay movie.
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    Getafix wrote:
    I certainly don't object to a bit of escapist fun, but DAD is unremitingly joyless, cynical dreck of the most dreary and depressing kind. I'd rather watch a Michael Bay movie.

    I hate to say it, but Bay would probably have done better than Tamahori.
  • Posts: 11,425
    Getafix wrote:
    I certainly don't object to a bit of escapist fun, but DAD is unremitingly joyless, cynical dreck of the most dreary and depressing kind. I'd rather watch a Michael Bay movie.

    I hate to say it, but Bay would probably have done better than Tamahori.

    I have absolutely no doubt that Bay would have done a better job.
  • edited June 2014 Posts: 11,189
    Hmm...it's about the same level I think. CGI, crude jokes, vomit enduring dialogue.

    Don't forget this is the man who made Pearl Harbour.

    I liked The Rock but given a choice of Transformers 2 and DAD I'd pick DAD. I can't remember feeling so flat-out bored any other time in the cinema than when I was watching ROTF.

    At least with DAD I have a bit of fun laughing at it.
  • Posts: 1,596
    The exact moment where DAD goes from being a very good Bond film to "much lesser" Bond film is after the sword fight. In my opinion, aside from some spotty dialogue, everything up to the sword fight is pretty cool. And, while the film as a whole suffers after this sword fight, there are flashes of goodness such as:

    - car chase
    - Brosnan
    - Miranda Frost
    -..... that's literally it.
  • edited June 2014 Posts: 11,189
    I think up until Iceland the film is, while not great, decent enough. I like bits of Cuba, I like the PTS and I like the underground station. Most of the horrendous stuff happens in Pinewood Iceland
  • edited June 2014 Posts: 7,507
    The exact moment where DAD goes from being a very good Bond film to much lesser Bond film is... the gun barrel scene. Up to that point it's decent...
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    Posts: 18,264
    jobo wrote:
    The exact moment where DAD goes from being a very good Bond film to much lesser Bond film is... the gunbarrel scene. Up to that point it's not that terrible to be fair...

    Yes, a lot happens in those few nanoseconds. That's something that is criminally overlooked by many in my view.
  • MurdockMurdock The minus world
    Posts: 16,351
    I actually enjoy the Bullet wizzing through the Gunbarrel, It was so unexpected and the loud sound of it passing through is just so intense. It actually gets me pumped to watch it surprisingly.
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    Posts: 18,264
    Murdock wrote:
    I actually enjoy the Bullet wizzing through the Gunbarrel, It was so unexpected and the loud sound of it passing through is just so intense. It actually gets me pumped to watch it surprisingly.

    Well it was something different I suppose, but look where that led us in the next three...
  • QBranchQBranch Always have an escape plan. Mine is watching James Bond films.
    edited June 2014 Posts: 14,557
    The exact moment where DAD goes from being a very good Bond film to "much lesser" Bond film is after the sword fight. In my opinion, aside from some spotty dialogue, everything up to the sword fight is pretty cool. And, while the film as a whole suffers after this sword fight, there are flashes of goodness such as:

    - car chase
    - Brosnan
    - Miranda Frost
    -..... that's literally it.
    I would also stretch that out to include the scene directly after the sword fight- the 'abandoned station for abandoned agents'. To me, it's one of the highlights of the film- which may not be saying much, but I do enjoy the banter between Bond and M. Despite the ridiculous 'gene therapy' topic that is briefly discussed, it's a nice moment showcasing M's eternal trust in Bond, and his understanding that although having been burnt, MI6 needs him- so he must get on with the job. Perhaps this scene subconsciously appeals to me because it is the last decent conversation between the two actors. One thing I always liked was M's ever-so-subtle smirk when Bond reveals the Cuban clinic is no more.
    Murdock wrote:
    I actually enjoy the Bullet wizzing through the Gunbarrel, It was so unexpected and the loud sound of it passing through is just so intense. It actually gets me pumped to watch it surprisingly.
    I enjoy the bullet too, and the fact that it could only have worked in that particular film. Although, thinking about it now, perhaps it could've worked in a more serious film *provided* the gun barrel leads directly into the song like CR, and the bullet is then seen from behind travelling through the title sequence not unlike in QOS.
  • Posts: 15,106
    jobo wrote:
    The exact moment where DAD goes from being a very good Bond film to much lesser Bond film is... the gun barrel scene. Up to that point it's decent...

    My thought exactly. When you see that bullet going off in slow mo...
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