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Sunday, December 4, 2011

BD impressions: Die Another Day

1:50 PM / BD Impressions / 10 Comments

The film:

** THUNK! THUNK! THUNK! **

Sorry, that was the sound of me pounding my head off my desk repeatedly. In the eloquent words of Roger Moore: "I thought it just went too far - and that's from me, the first Bond in space! Invisible cars and dodgy CGI footage? Please!"

DIE ANOTHER DAY was, until yesterday, the only Brosnan Bond film I'd never seen. (Though I hasten to add that it's been several years since I saw GOLDENEYE, TOMORROW NEVER DIES or THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH, so I won't be commenting on them till I get the opportunity to give them a reappraisal.) Brosnan was doing his schtick at the time when I was first becoming properly interested in film, and thanks to the fact that he was the encumbent Bond at the time he sort of became the de facto version of the character for me. That's not to say that I liked him any more or any less than the other two Bonds I was aware of - Connery and Moore - but I suppose I just automatically took Brosnan's interpretation of the character to be an accurate rendition of the source material.

It wasn't until I happened to catch the final hour of LICENCE TO KILL on TV one evening, and had my introduction to Timothy Dalton, that I realised how wishy-washy Brosnan was. He comes off as a sort of "greatest hits" Bond, combining elements of the previous incarnations while mastering none of them. There's a bit of Moore's easy charm, a sprinkling of Connery's self-assuredness, and occasionally - just occasionally - the vaguest hint of Dalton's steely-eyed menace. To be fair, I don't think this is strictly speaking Brosnan's fault. The script seems to be pulling him in every possible direction, going straight from being tortured in a North Korean jail for over a year (Dalton would have excelled in this role, I feel) to swanning into a hotel in his pyjamas. One thing you do get a sense of is that Brosnan is very comfortable in the role by this stage, to the point of it seeming like second nature to him. He never comes across to me as an imposter in the way that Moore did in his first film, or Lazenby in ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE. I never find myself thinking "Who's this man telling everyone he's James Bond?" So no, whatever problems DIE ANOTHER DAY has, I'm not inclined to believe BROSNAN is one of them: it would have been equally shit with Connery, Lazenby, Moore, Dalton or Craig in the role.

This has a reputation for being the worst Bond film, and despite only having watched half the films in the series in recent memory, from the evidence I've seen I'm inclined to agree. The thing is, it's not SO much worse than LIVE AND LET DIE that this was always a surefire thing. For a while, as I was watching Brosnan swanning around Havana and trading lukewarm double entendres with Madonna, they were pretty much neck and neck... Then the ice surfing scene came along and it was a done deal. The trouble is, it actually starts with a lot of promise: the opening titles may be accompanied by THE WORST BOND THEME EVER, but the whole idea of Bond spending over a year in a North Korean jail, only being rescued because his masters believed he'd cracked under torture and was haemorrhaging state secrets, is exciting material and seems like setup for a far darker, more morally dubious film than we eventually get. Alas, the North Korean prologue is brushed aside very quickly in favour of a breezy globetrotting yarn filled with ridiculous gadgets, surreal science, ropey visual effects and a clichéd "I want to destroy the world" megalomaniac for a villain. It feels like a bad Roger Moore film, except Moore never had to contend with anything as stupid as an invisible car or effects as bad as that computer-generated tidal wave.

It doesn't truly hit rock bottom until Bond gets to the ice palace, but that's not to suggest that what precedes it is any good. While Halle Berry and Rosamund Pike are not the disasters I'd been led to expect, there's nothing remotely interesting about either of them and they will surely go down in history as being among the most lukewarm Bond girls ever. The editing is rather obnoxious, filled with the sort of quick cutting and annoying speed ramp effects that feel like part of a concerted effort to turn Bond into some sort of XXX clone... ironic, when you consider that the film's director, New Zealand filmmaker Lee Tamahori, later helmed XXX 2: THE NEXT LEVEL. But oddly enough, none of these are the single worst thing about the film: that would be it is BORING with a capital "B". I've felt that a number of the previous Bonds have been overlong, but this one manages to outstay its welcome by almost its entire 133-minute running time... and then has the nerve to treat us to a reprise of that awful theme song the moment it finally gives up the ghost.

Bearing in mind that I've never actually seen the bulk of Roger Moore's output (or Connery's YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE and DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER), I'm not discounting the notion that there might well be worse Bonds out there, but if so, then they would have to be dreadful indeed. 3/10

Image quality: A bit of a mixed bag, this one. Unlike the previous Bonds I've reviewed, this one hasn't been treated to a Lowry restoration. As a result, it looks considerably more film-like than anything between DR. NO and LICENCE TO KILL (I haven't had a chance to look at the only other Brosnan Bond released on BD, THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH, so I don't how it compares). At times, it actually looks better than any of the pre-Daniel Craig releases in terms of detail and film-like texture.

That's far from true of the film as a whole, though. There is a fair degree of ringing in certain shots - particularly during the North Korean prologue (see Example 8), which fares worse than just about any other sequence in the film. In fact, the whole prologue looks like it belongs in a different movie, suffering from a pronounced lack of definition (see Example 15). As soon as Bond wakes up in his hospital bed, things improve substantially, and while there are certainly blips along the way, the overall standard remains high for the remainder of the film. According to the IMDB, DIE ANOTHER DAY received a partial digital intermediate, which may explain the inconsistent look. Certainly some of the effects shots show the tell-tale drop in resolution normally associated with optical compositing, with the occasional shot (e.g. Example 28) looking almost SD-like in terms of its lack of detail. On the whole, though, it's a strong presentation - it's just those early North Korean scenes that drag the score down. 7.5/10

Die Another Day
label: 20th Century Fox/MGM; disc country: UK; region code: ABC;
codec: AVC; aspect ratio: 2.39:1

The tally:

• DR. NO - 7/10
• FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE - 8/10
• GOLDFINGER - 8/10
• THUNDERBALL - 6/10
• ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE - 7/10
• LIVE AND LET DIE - 4/10
• FOR YOUR EYES ONLY - 6/10
• LICENCE TO KILL - 8/10
• DIE ANOTHER DAY - 3/10
• CASINO ROYALE - 8/10
• QUANTUM OF SOLACE - 5/10

Next I'll be revisiting CASINO ROYALE and then QUANTUM OF SOLACE. The latter left me very cold the first time I saw it, but I'll be curious as to whether I warm to it on a rewatch.

10 Comments

 
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