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By
STEVEN D. SEGAL
In order to fully qualify why I think the 20th James Bond movie "Die Another Day" is a rousing, spectacular train wreck, it might help to know that
I'm one of those snooty Bond geeks who refuses to name a singular favourite 007 flick. Every Bond aficionado worth his weight in 24k gold knows that
there are two classic, prototypical and pretty-much-irreproachable 007 films: "From Russia With Love" and "Goldfinger". Both define the James Bond
series in equal parts, yet they're virtual opposites: "Russia" with its steely tension and no-nonsense grit (love ya, Terence Young); "Goldfinger"
with its flying circus of sly camp (love ya too, Guy Hamilton, but for different reasons). It could be argued that the producers have merely been
remaking both films over and over ever since (with varying ratios of tonality), but you can't deny their flair for consistently upping the ante with
bigger and better Bondisms. Alas, never before has the collision of "gritty 007" with "campy 007" left James Bond feeling so schizophrenic.
Plot in a nutshell: Bond (Pierce Brosnan, ever sharp in his fourth outing) is betrayed and captured by the North Koreans; is disowned by MI-6; goes after the
person who set him up; teams up with superfluous but ever-fabulous female super-agent, Jinx (Halle Berry); surrenders half his spotlight to said
female super-agent's fierce antics in a studio ploy intended to help kick-start a "Jinx" movie spin-off. Beneath an ostensibly simplistic scenario
about betrayal, revenge and potential tent-pole franchises lies an incoherent mess about gene therapy, smuggled conflict diamonds, triple-agents and a
space-laser satellite taken right out of "Diamonds Are Forever" and put into the clutches of a snarling fop with a RoboCop suit and a Daddy Complex.
The first half, dealing with Bond's incarceration and subsequent fall from M's graces, is tense and atmospheric. Pure Ian Fleming, very "From Russia
With Love". Then we cut to Iceland -- which is also atmospheric, but now we're in a different world, one with its own baffling comic-book laws of
logic and physics. Welcome to planet "Moonraker." Here's where it all starts to meltdown, with outlandishness galore and an over-reliance on John
Woo-esque digital under-cranking and slo-mo effects (called "speed ramps," an ill-considered tactic employed to jazz things up for the
attention-deficit set); with more plot contrivances and, even worse, editing blunders than you can shake a martini at (lip-sync spotters will have a
field day keeping track of all the bad cutaways here); and with the filmmakers' brave but feeble attempt to deploy an untested arsenal of CGI effects
(i.e., the all-digital "action figure Bond" that pops up during the unnecessary para-surfing stunt; even on the small screen, this much-derided bit
looks as dodgy as a video game). As "Q" himself might scoff with pompous indignation, the producers oughtn't to fiddle with gadgets they cannot grasp.
And don't get me started on David Arnold's way-too-portentous score. I applaud Arnold for bringing back the brassier, stringier elements of the best
John Barry themes, and I don't even mind so much his insistence on melding the orchestral sound with techno synthetics, but too much of Arnold's music
in "Die Another Day" is just too dour to be fun. And, just checking, Bond movies are supposed to be fun right?
Well, yes. And thanks to Pierce Brosnan's spot-on read of Ian Fleming's scarred-but-irrepressibly-suave secret agent -- a boy with toys and a
self-destructive shadow complex -- the over-produced behemoth that is "Die Another Day" is saved from the crush of its own weight and manages to squeak
by as a colorful, crazy, cracked-out Bond adventure. That it plays like a greatest hits package is purely intentional, as the producers consciously
inserted as many in-jokes and paid as much homage to previous 007 flicks as possible. In covering forty years of cinematic ground, it's no wonder the
movie never settles on a consistent tone. The ride is bumpier than it should be, but it's a testament to the filmmakers' sheer professionalism and
infectious exuberance that they can make it all look so relatively smooth.
The DVD is a double-disc affair. Disc 1 contains the film, which is almost fully letterboxed (not quite as wide as the 2.40:1 logo on the cover
claims; a 1.33:1 crop-and-chopped version is also available separately) and looks razor-sharp with glorious colors, rich shadows and no discernable
compression artifacts. Alternate viewing options for the film include a pop-up-trivia track and two informative but essentially dry feature-length
audio commentaries (one with director Lee Tamahori and co-producer Michael G. Wilson; the other with Pierce Brosnan and Rosamund Pike). The Dolby
Digital EX and DTS ES 5.1 tracks offer a giddily dizzying 360-degree aural assault, but listeners using Bedrock-era 2.0 systems will have to suffer
through one of the worst down-conversion mixes I've ever heard, with fluctuating directional separations (the bang and whiz of the 3-D bullet fired
during the gun barrel opening are supposed to be louder -- not softer -- than the music!).
Disc 2 contains the usual breadth of behind-the-scenes making-of materials, collated by topic, plus: oodles of trailers; photos; storyboards; the
Madonna music video along with its making-of; a preview of the "007 Nightfire" videogame along with its making-of and other DVD-ROM features (which,
for some undetermined reason, aren't accessible on my new PC, natch).
Finally, a big, sour, sloppy, splattery raspberry to MGM Home Video for replacing most (but not all) of the optical titles throughout the film with
low-rez video captions of such poor quality I'm convinced these guys are using a Fisher-Price title generator. The James Bond films are only the
shimmering jewels in their frickin crown, why do they repeatedly treat them with such carelessness? Such reckless disdain? That advance review copies
were sent out with the original burned-into-the-film subtitles intact makes this ever-more-cynical DVD'er suspicious of high connivery on the part of
the unnamed boneheads who summarily decide to disregard the absolute integrity of the theatrical version of a film. Any film. Especially a James Bond
film. Even one as scattershot as "Die Another Day". |
