TND under-rated
discovolante
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Whenever people talk about the PB years, it's almost always the same thing: TWINE was great, GE was good, but flawed, DAD was not good, and nobody ever mentions TND. Why is that? I thought Michelle Yeoh was good, Terri Hatcher was good, there were great stunts, and PB looked really bondian. Sure, Carver wasn't a perfect villian, and the PTS could have been better, but overall a good Bond film, and one of PB's best performances. Anybody agree?
Comments
Also another problem it has is that it's sandwiched in between two very memorable and almost classic Bond's GE and TWINE with new and fresher plots than TND's almost all recycled plot, which also adds to it being overlooked.
Overall, I think TND's a very forgettable entry in the Bond series.
Pierce Brosnan is just fine in the film, again insisting on a greater presence of Bond's character, and some chemistry for his character. He gets this in some parts, like Bond alone in the hotel room, or most of his scenes with Paris, but overall the film really doesn’t explore much of Bond's character. He is the man of action with occasional feelings. I suppose the best way to say it is it laid a good foundation for further exploration and character chemistry with Bond and Elektra in The World Is Not Enough, but this relationship lacks the development in the story to make it interesting.
The finale of this film was re-written while shooting, and it shows. I really don't like the idea of Bond running around like a Terminator blowing everything up in sight. There is no skill to that, no excitement, merely explosions and clichéd dialogue. Again, while the action in this film is impressive, it covers up a plot with little development in character, and is mostly recycled from You Only Live Twice and The Spy Who Loved Me.
That's not to say the film doesn’t have pluses. The pre-titles, title's sequence and song are some of the best in the whole series: suspenseful, sexy, and fitting of the film. I really enjoyed them. Michelle Yeoh is a fine choice for a Bond girl, but again, we get these melodramatic stares between Brosnan and Yeoh as if we're supposed to understand that because they've gotten shot at together they're falling for each other. I realize this isn't the first time 007 films have made that leap, but that doesn’t make it excusable, especially when Brosnan is insisting on more character chemistry in his films.
Nevertheless, Brosnan is good, as is David Arnolds score, and the sense of national alarm is one of the best things the plot has going for it. It even beats out Thunderball in that regard. Yet with mostly uninteresting characters, a good cast, and what could have been a good story is wasted on impressive stunts and a bunch of things we've seen before.
I'd give it a 7/10
The good:
1)Brosnan's performance.
2)The scenes with Moneypenny.
3)The car chase.
4)The scene involving Dr Kaufman.
5)The fight at the party.
6)The idea that a villain has his pain/pleasure centres reversed.
The bad:
1)Wai Lin-An obnoxiously equal of Bond whom I wanted to shoot.
2)Carver-the first terrible villain of the Brosnan films.
3)Stamper-Nothing was made of his unique trait.
4)The plot-Too derivitive. Films like YOLT had done it better.
5)The title-Enough said.
6)The music-Who sang the theme song?
7)The PPTS-Has been done before, and much better.
8)The action scenes-I love action, but none of the action scenes in TND were particularly memorable.
9)Paris-Not as bad as many people say she was but after Tracey, why should I care about the death of a woman whom I've only just met and wasn't overly memorable?
10)As JFF said, it was sandwiched between two great films (GE and TWINE) and it was nowhere near as fresh and interesting as either of them.
I will give it 5.5/10
DAD did have some revolutionary scenes, mainly the capture and torture sequence. I really don't want to remember anything after that. Even Brosnan seems to be playing Pierce Brosnan playing Bond. Unlike his earlier performances when he was growing into the role of James Bond, in DAD he seems to be playing a parody of these early roles.
There are bad points like the tailing off towards the end and Jonathan Pryce for some reason not quite working out, but it's the Brosnan I'd always choose to watch.
I'm a big DAD detractor but I rate some scenes very highly. The scenes in the hotel at the start were great. Meeting M at the secret location for deactivated spies. The swordfight. Its some of these concepts that make the whole terribly disappointing, it could have been so much better.
On topic, I just found TND overlong and noisy. Again it had some decent ideas, but I just get bored of it long before the end.
I'm certainly not a fan of TND for many of the same reasons as others;
The PTS is too forgettably narrow. Nowhere near as memorable as GE, or as passionate as TWINE.
The plot was dry, with lack of direction or exciting originality.
The film plays like they had devised set action pieces, and THEN written a basic plot around them.
The entire film is too American - Bond uses many American phrases, and the gadgetry and the emphasis on action makes the film feel like any old 90's action film.
The less said about Sheryl Crow's theme the better.
The title smacks of clique and is purely unimaginative.
Teri Hatcher's Paris could be cut from the film and you probably wont be too bothered - Wa Lin is just as forgettable and is badly written for and poorly conceived through out the film.
Elliot Carver I liked - for about the first hour, then you realise he's just a spoilt old man. He's not menacing or convincing - just annoying.
Overall by my standards its no classic, a forgettable 2nd film that doesn't have the classic stamp of GE or the epic standard of TWINE but at least its not the complete embarrassment of DAD.
Paris, I feel was a missed opportunity, there was no chemistry between Hatcher and Brozzer.
Another negative was Stamper. Was he Necros (TLD) brother?!
While I'm nearly certain this will lead us to agreeing to disagree, I was making a comparison to Die Another Day because the films suffer from the same structural problem in my opinion. There are parts of each film that are done very well, have good characterization, colorful set pieces (or well choreographed action) and are very memorable. But the problem with the story in both films is instead of making the more suspenseful, character filled scenes constant throughout the movie, the stories fade in-between that approach and a "business-as-usual" 007 that borderlines on parody in some instances.
The contrast between the first and second half of Die Another Day really demonstrates this point, perhaps more than any other film. The first hour or so is excellent. The locations look colorful, crisp and vivid. The imprisonment and torture of 007 is well in the spirit of Fleming, and could even be reflective of that unknown period between the novels of You Only Live Twice and The Man With the Golden Gun when Bond is captured and tortured by the USSR. This also is highlighted by the having the beginning of the film take place in North Korea, the final frontier of the Cold War.
Brosnan's Bond was also given some of the best material to work with in the first half. For the first time, Bond has to reach inside, confront a traitor and reclaim his life. This inspires a whole new level of ruthlessness that Brosnan exudes amazingly in the first half. The Cuba scenes remind me of Fleming's travelogue style, and his hard hitting fight with Zao is proof positive than Brosnan's Bond can throw a punch. Zao was also building up to be the best henchman since Red Grant, more than just a muted moron, but a character with motivations and a back story.
Yet all of these positives were not followed through on in the second half. Instead of keeping with the travelogue, realistic yet colorful look of the first half, we get special effects, Matrix looking second half. Sorry, but black and ice just don't appeal to me in the way the colors of the Caribbean do. The acting becomes reduced to clichéd performances and dialogue, and most disappointingly, Bond's quest for revenge takes a back seat to a much less interesting Icarus-plot.
While that’s not to say the last hour is all bad (I'm a big fan of the car chase and Moneypenny scene), the point that the film lacks a consistent tone makes parts of the film better and more developed than the overall adventure; A flaw that speaks to both even-numbered adventures of the Brosnan era.
I especially think that Carver is one of the most underrated Bond villians. He's very mencacing and has great Bond villain dialogue.
As for Brosnan's performance, its at its best! For instance, the scene in the hotel room with Bond and Paris is fantastically delivered by Brosnan. Its very Fleming.
Well, Bond getting captured was pretty good. The sword fight I liked. The car chase and Ice palace.
TND does remind me a little of DAD in the regard. I like some of the smaller moments, but the over all product is sub par.
And no one's mentioned how good the M, First Lord of the Admirlty (was that Palmer's role?) were.
The film looked American in the trailer, same grey blue colour scheme, explosions, even the pts similar in theme, Bond at an arms bazaar shooting his way out on a hijacked vehicle, only a hovercraft not a jump jet. More Americans in the film, Halle Berry this time not Teri Hatcher.
Of course, the film turned out to be infinitely worse...
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I really disagree with you on this because IMO the first half was almost as bad as the second half. My first problem was that Bond got captured. As someone who hasn't read the novels and is more interested in the cinematic approach, it doesn't warm my heart to see Bond captured and tortured. However, accepting that, what annoys me even more is that he didn't escape. What I would have loved was for Bond to escape and for the film to be about his seeking revenge for his capture. Instead, he got out because of a deal which suggests that if the deal hadn't taken place, he would still be in captivity, or worse.
To make matters even worse, he went to Cuba where we met Jinx! X-( I still have nightmare about the sex scene.
There is also the PTS. Obviously it was different (for good or bad) with Bond's being captured but I remember watching DAD recently on TV and almost falling asleep during the PTS. The PTS of course had a unique twist, but it was pretty similar to TND's which was pretty similar to GE, neiher of which IMO were nearly as good as GE's. In fact it seems to me that during the Brosnan films there were two PTS's; GE's which was copied in TND and DAD, and TWINE's.
Finally there are the theme song, Brosnan's dirty beard when he went into the hotel, the fact that Bond's being captured and tortured was forgotten as soon as he went to Cuba, the interplay between Bond and Jinx and Graves himself. If the end of the fencing scene signals the point in which DAD became an absolute disaster (although IMO it was already bad enough) then in that scene we were introduced to Graves, one of the all-time worst villains IMO.
So in conclusion let me say that IMO the first half was almost as bad as the second. I do consider the second half to be inferior, but when I think of what the first half has given us (the only three good things about the first half IMO were Brosnan's performance, the sword fight and the "Say goodbye to him from us" line) I would argue that the first half was enough to make DAD one of the worst Bond films of all time.
Why do you object to the beard? It's what makes the gag so good.
What; really? He walks into a classy lobby full of extrememly rich and well dressed people sopping wet in pyjamas with an enormous untidy beard, but acting as if he was dressed in a five grand suit with the Bond theme blaring out- did you really not find that funny?
That was a different scene in which Bond was clean shaven and wearing a Hong Kong tailor's ripoff of a Brioni suit. Can he get much neater?
True, but it was part of the same sequence of scenes as the first one. My point is that of the hotel scenes (three in total) that line was IMO the highlight. Bond was neat in that particular scene but not when he walked into the hotel; which annoys me.
A true James Bond should never be funny, it should be about real threats to humanity that Bond has to overcome. Connery's Bond was never funny, but wry and VERY serious (at least in the first four). Bring that back and bring Flemings Bond to the screen. If you want funny spy, go and watch Austin Powers DVD's, Bond should never belong in that genre!
Because you've shown no sign that you even understood it as a joke- you seem to be more hung up on the 'problem' that Bond isn't wearing a smart suit in every scene. Perhaps that's not how you feel; but it's how you present yourself: read your above posts back to yourself. You seem to be quite uptight about your tight rules as to what Bond can or can't look or act like. You can't really make twenty films about a character who only does only a small number of strictly prescribed actions and who can't have the freedom to wear a beard.
I thought it was very funny that Bond is soooo classy that he behaves like he's well groomed and dressed even when he isn't. He behaves to type regardless of circumstances. I would like to have taken that scene and plonked it in a better film really.
I have no problem with my rules, if you want to call them that. You may consider them to be tight but that's not my problem. Yes, I am annoyed that Bond wore a beard like that, but I have never said that other have to share my annoyance. Why can't I have annoyances that others might not agree with?
Anyway, as I said, when will you understand that my not laughing at the scene is purely because I don't consider it to be funny? You know, you criticise me because I put out the (unintended) perception that if I don't consider it to be funny, then nobody else can, well, when will you accept that not everybody laugh at the same things? I didn't find the scene to be funny which has nothing to do with my rules and which doesn't mean I don't 'get' the joke. (Although even if it were to do with my rules, that would by my problem, not yours.)
Humour isn't objective. I consider the 'christmas' line in TWINE to be hilarious, while other hate it. My point is that you found the scene to be funny and I didn't. As Words said, perhaps I just don't find that type of thing amusing.
I didn't find it funny either, but then Tamorahi didn't really seem like a humorous director, he couldn't set up a normal gag imo. Doesn't help that Brosnan looks so paunchy and beardy either...
Roger Moore 1927-2017