What surprised me was Ricky Jay who played Henry Gupta, was in real life a magician of many years and his speciality was card throwing. Apparently he can throw them and they stick doors, walls etc. Scenes of his card throwing were filmed but never used which was a pity they looked good.
Agree! Those are among the few deleted scenes I've seen that I really wished were included in the final cut.
The innuendo between Money Penny and Bond is weak. "Cunning Linguist", "You'll have to pump her for information"
Disagree! Great to see some fun banter between them after the "sexual harrassment" politically correct BS in Goldeneye.
Anyway, I think it was M who said that and Moneypenny added, "Decide how much pumping is necessary."
So what else the motorbike chase is good although I'm not sure a helicopter pilot would undertake what the helicopter does in that sequence. When you watch the behind the scenes you find out the blades were all cgi.
Agree! One of the weakest parts of TND is the idea that the helicopter would use its own rotors as a main weapon. Seriously WTF
My current 10 favorite:
1. GE 2. MR 3. OP 4. TMWTGG 5. TSWLM 6. TND 7. TWINE 8.DN 9. GF 10. AVTAK
Anyway back to TND. I loved the briefing with M in the back of the Limo travelling at high speed. The innuendo between Money Penny and Bond is weak. "Cunning Linguist", "You'll have to pump her for information"
To me the limo, the dialogue all highlight the lame cheesiness of the film.
Anyway back to TND. I loved the briefing with M in the back of the Limo travelling at high speed. The innuendo between Money Penny and Bond is weak. "Cunning Linguist", "You'll have to pump her for information"
To me the limo, the dialogue all highlight the lame cheesiness of the film.
Sorry Chrisisall {:)
Cheese is a Bond staple. Lack of cheese results in films like Skyfall. )
I consider TND to be the 90s version of TSWLM. Thats probably why i enjoy it.
Pros:
.Brozza, IMO, gives his best performance.
.I really like the look of this movie. Cinematography and production design.
.David Arnold's score.
.While i prefer Surrender, I've grown to like Sheryl Crows song.
.Hamburg was an interesting location.
.The action heavy second half has never bothered me.
.Carver is a total loony tune.
.Bond girls were hot. I dont mind Teri Hatcher but it would have been more shocking to see Natalya have the same fate.
.Stamper was the last great henchmen until Hinx. 18 YEARS!
.Love the BMW.
.Includes some of the best action of the Brozza era.
Cons:
.Truly cringeworthy sound effects during the fight scenes.
.Wai Lin yelling yah every time she shoots.
PS. I wish they would have kept the deleted scenes. Especially the jaguar gag and Guptas card tricks.
Had another watch of this last night, thoroughly enjoyed it.
Pros:
- PTS/action sequences are very, very well done - some of the best in the series IMO.
- Brosnan is comfortable in the role and seems to enjoy the films tone more-so than the others (while I still believe TWINE to be his pinnacle).
- Brosnan's suits are outstanding.
- British feel of the film (Britpop in full swing in late 90s).
- Plot, maybe minus the media thing, is still somewhat relevant.
- Hamburg.
- BMW/Ericsson phone - gadgets are good.
- HALO jump.
- Stamper.
- Arnold's score.
- General fun, confident stride of the film.
Cons:
- Some of the production design lacks a bit - especially seen on BluRay.
- As Remington has pointed out the sound-effects for punching noises, I also noticed quite a few other instances where effects were used too heavily.
- Carver is OTT and played well but largely forgettable, overshadowed by Stamper.
- Overuse of machine guns, especially during the Saigon chase.
- Clearly using UK locations in place of Germany.
- The drinks in the back of the car in London is probably my biggest gripe, Robinson has a spill mark on his suit.
- Lack of chemistry between Paris/Bond, their scenes is poorly written, feels as if it has little relevance to the Bond world. Kaufman falls into the same category. It's as if they're trying to be too profound and to make memorable characters.
- Finale is boring, too much gun action.
- Saigon chase is impressive but dumb. The helicopter chopping up the street is ridiculous.
- Use of slow-mo.
Change of opinions:
- I enjoyed the title song and titles more this time around. Previously I had just thought they looked like a Spice Girls video and horribly dated. While they're not Kleinman's best, they're quite dreamy in a great 90s way.
- Wai Lin isn't great, but I enjoyed her this time around - she's really not that annoying.
- Wade actually works here and isn't annoying. Has some good lines about US involvement.
- The writing is fairly tight.
I still don't rate this one very highly but I can see why it has its fans. It's fun, reminiscent of the older style, doesn't have self-referential guilty trappings and is truly 90s. Despite its flaws, it's a damn good action movie with some great Bond moments within.
Tomorrow Never Dies was the first Bond film I saw in the cinema. I've always been fond of it, but after just viewing it, it has fallen from 9th to 15th in my ranking.
Like most of the films in the Brosnan era, parts of it feel like one excessive action scene after the next, especially in the finale. The car chase is great though and so is the motircycle chase.
The relationship between Paris and Bond adds some texture to the film and character, even if it is only briefly. The cast is great too. Price gives a nuanced performance as an egomaniac, and Michelle Yeoh is a great partner for Bond.
What I dislike most is Arnold's score. Most of his scores feel very cluttered and it's very evident here. Barry and earlier composers knew that films need space in the soundtrack. Arnold ignores this, at least in the Brosnan era. He also overuses the Bond theme here. Yet, there are moments, like the spy scenes in Germany, that are brilliant.
An enjoyable film but the excessive action and cluttered score spoil it a little.
I completely disagree about the score, which I love.
Agreed -{ . It's like trying to find faults in a relatively solid film.
If there is any major problem with the film, it's that I cannot get the extended soundtrack, even if it was available in the DVD (?, on that one, it's uploaded fully on YouTube by some fellow)
What I dislike most is Arnold's score. Most of his scores feel very cluttered and it's very evident here. Barry and earlier composers knew that films need space in the soundtrack. Arnold ignores this, at least in the Brosnan era. He also overuses the Bond theme here. Yet, there are moments, like the spy scenes in Germany, that are brilliant.
I agree. TND is my least favourite of the Arnold scores. As you say IcePak, it does have some good moments "Hamburg Break In", "Company Car" and the beautiful Saigon track but the rest of it is too much for my ears.
TWINE is a big jump and IMO much more Bondian but with an original style (Arnold's signature action theme and romance theme reused in DAD). TND to me comes across that Arnold was trying a bit too hard to make the cues from the Barry era and blend with electronics, that's why he gets it right in places, but not overall.
I don't even mind her in it. The only thing that I can say annoys me in the slightest- the most machine gun fire in any Bond. And even then, I understand why.
I loved GE, but when TND came out I was THRILLED with all the Barry-esque beauty!
It makes a huge difference for me too! But the music isn't just ripping off Barry, for better or worse. it has enough classic Bond sound for both GE and TND!
I loved GE, but when TND came out I was THRILLED with all the Barry-esque beauty!
It makes a huge difference for me too! But the music isn't just ripping off Barry, for better or worse. it has enough classic Bond sound for both GE and TND!
A personal favourite of mine would be the printing-press escape and the arrival to his hotel room.
It was the last purely "fun" Bond film, as in Bond films weren't becoming obsessed with looking inward and psychological even though there are hints of it in TND's.
I love the overwhelming familiarity of the Roger Moore era in TND. With the exception of LALD, I can see references from the other 6 RM films.
TMWTGG: Sailing in Thailand. There is a shot in TND that looks almost identical to the closing scene of GG. The thugs giving Brosnan a beatdown also reminds me of the fight scene in dancer's dressing room. "I've lost my charm!"
TSWLM: Bond in Naval uniform. Military themed stuff in general. On board the stealth boat is pretty similar to the tanker.
MR: Bond & Girl sliding down Carver banner reminds me of Bond & Girl sliding down the cable car with the chain.
The scene with Bond testing Wai Lin's gadgets and weapons is almost a carbon copy of Bond with Holly. "Standard CIA equipment."
The stealth ship is like Drax's space station. Once they disable the cloaking system it appears on radar and can thus be destroyed by the military.
FYEO: Diving in the Devonshire and surfacing to find their boat has suffered a hostile takeover.
OP: Similar PTS. Bond flying, missile coming….
AVTAK: Meeting the villain at his party and baiting him with conversation. Roger did the sport fishing bit and Pierce did the "I'd be lost at sea..adrift." about writing a novel.
My current 10 favorite:
1. GE 2. MR 3. OP 4. TMWTGG 5. TSWLM 6. TND 7. TWINE 8.DN 9. GF 10. AVTAK
Only criticism after rewatch is that Bond blows his cover too early when speaking with Carver at the party, otherwise I really enjoyed and give it a 10/10.
Note: I had an issue with my Blu-ray copy for this film as well, but bought a digital copy to replace it.
"Hostile takeovers. Shall we?"
New 2020 ranking (for now DAF and FYEO keep their previous placements)
1. TLD 2. TND 3. GF 4. TSWLM 5. TWINE 6. OHMSS 7. LtK 8. TMWTGG 9. L&LD 10. YOLT 11. DAD 12. QoS 13. DN 14. GE 15. SF 16. OP 17. MR 18. AVTAK 19. TB 20. FRWL 21. CR 22. FYEO 23. DAF (SP to be included later)
Bond actors to be re-ranked later
PROS
- Score sounds like a proper Bondscore, and both Sheryl Crow and k.d.lang deliver what sound like proper Bond songs.
- Original (for a Bondfilm) villain's plot, inspired by Randolph Hearst, and more true than ever in todays world.
- Jonathon Pryce really hams it up.
- Carver is killed by the same evil machine that opens the movie. Bonus points whenever that happens!
- More pastiching from some very good source material:
- Plot structure follows the Spy Who Loved Me very closely.
Bond and Paris ordering each others drinks is a clever variation on classic tSWLM dialog.
- The search of the sunken vessel is from Thunderball, but even moreso from a similar scene in For Your Eyes Only where (1) Melina joined Bond for the search and (2) Kristatos was waiting on the surface to capture them.
- The revealing of the stealth boat to the outside world is from Moonraker (remember, thats why Bond and Holly took the elevator to Orbital Communicator Level 10!!).
- M has a bar in her limo, and she's the only one having a drink during that meeting. She was drinking in her office in the previous film: is DenchM a bit of an alky?
- Some very good action sequences.
- The escape and lengthy chase while handcuffed is my favourite action sequence from the Brosnan films. It starts off like the 39 Steps, then almost immediately turns into an acrobatic circus show with intricate choreography and good use of the local geography.
- The bit where Bond and Wai Linn escape the collapsing ship is another very good action sequence, again good use of geography and very scary.
The difference between this and most of the other action sequences is I actually care what happens next.
- Michelle Yeoh does some amazing stunts and in the second half it is always worth watching what she is doing, even as the action setpieces drag.
- Dr Kaufmann is a highlight of the movie even with his brief screen time. Or maybe because his single scene is not dragged out like every other scene in the film: it's all in the dialog and acting, no action setpiece required!
- The story of Paris Carver has so much potential and would have made for a good BondNovel.
- Terri Hatcher delivered the most famous closing line in Seinfeld history.
- The "girl from Bond's past" was never a plot in any Fleming, but was used in the Climax Mystery Theatre version of Casino Royale!
- Unseen Mission: so when and where did Bond meet Paris before?
- Of course Bond's past affairs are all in his MI6 file, that only makes sense, and of course his bosses would exploit the knowledge. This really is the most interesting idea in the film, and had so much potential...
CONS
- Title was a typo.
- I think this is the first film with absolutely no Fleming. tSWLM and aVtaK at least had brief concepts or dialog from other novels.
- The k.d. lang song seems to have more elements in common with the score and should have been used as the main theme.
- Paris's tragedy would have meant more if we really had seen her before. But because Brosnan was new and there was that six year gap, there's not really any actual previous Bondgirls they could have brought back.
- Maybe there should have been a pre-credits set nine years earlier like in the previous film, showing us their relationship?
- Maybe when Bond first sees her at the party there should have been a Casablanca style flashback? (then he could have used the pun "We'll always have Paris")
- I laughed out loud when Paris said "What was it James? Did I get too close?".
Paris is a good idea for a character, but Terri Hatcher cannot deliver the dialog. She's just too brittle.
(of course it's lousy dialog to begin with)
- Five minutes after Paris' death, Bond himself is laughing having discovered the fun of the BMW's remote control. I don't think her name is ever mentioned again. Very poor script.
- Action scenes drag on and on, and on and on and on, obscuring what little plot there is.
- I personally lost track as to whats going on in the stealth boat and don't care enough to pay closer attention. Endless machine gun fire and explosions. And that is one long closing action setpiece.
- Brosnan always has a machine gun in his hand, which he sprays indiscrimately (at least usually at bad guys in this film, as opposed to the local police in the previous film).
At the end he has one in each hand, and is not watching where either of them is shooting. That's his entire repetoir, and we never see him out-think his opponents.
- At the same time, Wai Linn is performing all these amazing stunts, accentuating Brosnan's dependence on those machine guns.
- If they'd written James Bond out of the story, and made it a Wai Linn solo adventure, it'd actually be a better movie.
- Wai Linn and Bond have no chemistry and that final clinch seems to come out of newhere.
- Wade is channeling Pepper rather than Leiter
- "Don't ask" "Don't tell" is a very forced political reference that barely makes sense within the dialog, and instead draws attention to how poor the dialog is in general.
The refence is to Bill Clinton failing to protect the rights of gays in the military, thus completely inappropriate to the dialog's context in the film, and all the more insensitive to its real life meaning.
- M and Moneypenny in general.
In the previous film they were both scolding Bond for being a heterosexual.
Now he's being cynically exploited to specifically use his mojo superpowers to save the world, and the two of them are licking their lips and making lewd puns about this job he is being forced to do.
He should have complained to H.R. that they were treating him like a sex-object and all they wanted him for was his body!
- Bond delivers the newspaper to the war-room and explains it's suspicious Carver printed the story before it had actually happened. Then they all immediately drive away in M's limo, and she already has prepared all the research on Carver, Bond's plane tickets and reservations, and has dug up the background on Bond and Paris and decided the specifics of Bond's mission.
When the deuce did she have time to do all that if they just made the Carver connection in the scene immediately before?
- Bond is till driving a standard issue yuppie-mobile for the job even though his personal car is the Aston.
- In general, this is my least favourite of the four Brosnans. Die Another Day at least had more solid material in its first half, this one quickly abandons any interesting ideas in favour of never-ending action setpieces.
- Aside form a few of the better action scenes, the Dr Kaufman scene is the only keeper.
-Yesterday Never Tomorrows is probably a better movie.
Comments
Agree! Those are among the few deleted scenes I've seen that I really wished were included in the final cut.
Disagree! Great to see some fun banter between them after the "sexual harrassment" politically correct BS in Goldeneye.
Anyway, I think it was M who said that and Moneypenny added, "Decide how much pumping is necessary."
Agree! One of the weakest parts of TND is the idea that the helicopter would use its own rotors as a main weapon. Seriously WTF
1. GE 2. MR 3. OP 4. TMWTGG 5. TSWLM 6. TND 7. TWINE 8.DN 9. GF 10. AVTAK
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
To me the limo, the dialogue all highlight the lame cheesiness of the film.
Sorry Chrisisall {:)
"Better make that two."
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
Pros:
.Brozza, IMO, gives his best performance.
.I really like the look of this movie. Cinematography and production design.
.David Arnold's score.
.While i prefer Surrender, I've grown to like Sheryl Crows song.
.Hamburg was an interesting location.
.The action heavy second half has never bothered me.
.Carver is a total loony tune.
.Bond girls were hot. I dont mind Teri Hatcher but it would have been more shocking to see Natalya have the same fate.
.Stamper was the last great henchmen until Hinx. 18 YEARS!
.Love the BMW.
.Includes some of the best action of the Brozza era.
Cons:
.Truly cringeworthy sound effects during the fight scenes.
.Wai Lin yelling yah every time she shoots.
PS. I wish they would have kept the deleted scenes. Especially the jaguar gag and Guptas card tricks.
9/10 -{
Pros:
- PTS/action sequences are very, very well done - some of the best in the series IMO.
- Brosnan is comfortable in the role and seems to enjoy the films tone more-so than the others (while I still believe TWINE to be his pinnacle).
- Brosnan's suits are outstanding.
- British feel of the film (Britpop in full swing in late 90s).
- Plot, maybe minus the media thing, is still somewhat relevant.
- Hamburg.
- BMW/Ericsson phone - gadgets are good.
- HALO jump.
- Stamper.
- Arnold's score.
- General fun, confident stride of the film.
Cons:
- Some of the production design lacks a bit - especially seen on BluRay.
- As Remington has pointed out the sound-effects for punching noises, I also noticed quite a few other instances where effects were used too heavily.
- Carver is OTT and played well but largely forgettable, overshadowed by Stamper.
- Overuse of machine guns, especially during the Saigon chase.
- Clearly using UK locations in place of Germany.
- The drinks in the back of the car in London is probably my biggest gripe, Robinson has a spill mark on his suit.
- Lack of chemistry between Paris/Bond, their scenes is poorly written, feels as if it has little relevance to the Bond world. Kaufman falls into the same category. It's as if they're trying to be too profound and to make memorable characters.
- Finale is boring, too much gun action.
- Saigon chase is impressive but dumb. The helicopter chopping up the street is ridiculous.
- Use of slow-mo.
Change of opinions:
- I enjoyed the title song and titles more this time around. Previously I had just thought they looked like a Spice Girls video and horribly dated. While they're not Kleinman's best, they're quite dreamy in a great 90s way.
- Wai Lin isn't great, but I enjoyed her this time around - she's really not that annoying.
- Wade actually works here and isn't annoying. Has some good lines about US involvement.
- The writing is fairly tight.
I still don't rate this one very highly but I can see why it has its fans. It's fun, reminiscent of the older style, doesn't have self-referential guilty trappings and is truly 90s. Despite its flaws, it's a damn good action movie with some great Bond moments within.
"Better make that two."
Like most of the films in the Brosnan era, parts of it feel like one excessive action scene after the next, especially in the finale. The car chase is great though and so is the motircycle chase.
The relationship between Paris and Bond adds some texture to the film and character, even if it is only briefly. The cast is great too. Price gives a nuanced performance as an egomaniac, and Michelle Yeoh is a great partner for Bond.
What I dislike most is Arnold's score. Most of his scores feel very cluttered and it's very evident here. Barry and earlier composers knew that films need space in the soundtrack. Arnold ignores this, at least in the Brosnan era. He also overuses the Bond theme here. Yet, there are moments, like the spy scenes in Germany, that are brilliant.
An enjoyable film but the excessive action and cluttered score spoil it a little.
8. TMwtGG 9. AVtaK 10. TSWLM 11. SF 12. LtK 13. TND 14. YOLT
15. NTtD 16. MR 17. LaLD 18. GF 19. SP 20. DN 21. TB
22. TWiNE 23. DAD 24. QoS 25. DaF
If there is any major problem with the film, it's that I cannot get the extended soundtrack, even if it was available in the DVD (?, on that one, it's uploaded fully on YouTube by some fellow)
I agree. TND is my least favourite of the Arnold scores. As you say IcePak, it does have some good moments "Hamburg Break In", "Company Car" and the beautiful Saigon track but the rest of it is too much for my ears.
TWINE is a big jump and IMO much more Bondian but with an original style (Arnold's signature action theme and romance theme reused in DAD). TND to me comes across that Arnold was trying a bit too hard to make the cues from the Barry era and blend with electronics, that's why he gets it right in places, but not overall.
"Better make that two."
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
Pros: EVERYTHING ELSE.
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
It makes a huge difference for me too! But the music isn't just ripping off Barry, for better or worse. it has enough classic Bond sound for both GE and TND!
TMWTGG: Sailing in Thailand. There is a shot in TND that looks almost identical to the closing scene of GG. The thugs giving Brosnan a beatdown also reminds me of the fight scene in dancer's dressing room. "I've lost my charm!"
TSWLM: Bond in Naval uniform. Military themed stuff in general. On board the stealth boat is pretty similar to the tanker.
MR: Bond & Girl sliding down Carver banner reminds me of Bond & Girl sliding down the cable car with the chain.
The scene with Bond testing Wai Lin's gadgets and weapons is almost a carbon copy of Bond with Holly. "Standard CIA equipment."
The stealth ship is like Drax's space station. Once they disable the cloaking system it appears on radar and can thus be destroyed by the military.
FYEO: Diving in the Devonshire and surfacing to find their boat has suffered a hostile takeover.
OP: Similar PTS. Bond flying, missile coming….
AVTAK: Meeting the villain at his party and baiting him with conversation. Roger did the sport fishing bit and Pierce did the "I'd be lost at sea..adrift." about writing a novel.
1. GE 2. MR 3. OP 4. TMWTGG 5. TSWLM 6. TND 7. TWINE 8.DN 9. GF 10. AVTAK
Note: I had an issue with my Blu-ray copy for this film as well, but bought a digital copy to replace it.
New 2020 ranking (for now DAF and FYEO keep their previous placements)
1. TLD 2. TND 3. GF 4. TSWLM 5. TWINE 6. OHMSS 7. LtK 8. TMWTGG 9. L&LD 10. YOLT 11. DAD 12. QoS 13. DN 14. GE 15. SF 16. OP 17. MR 18. AVTAK 19. TB 20. FRWL 21. CR 22. FYEO 23. DAF (SP to be included later)
Bond actors to be re-ranked later
- Score sounds like a proper Bondscore, and both Sheryl Crow and k.d.lang deliver what sound like proper Bond songs.
- Original (for a Bondfilm) villain's plot, inspired by Randolph Hearst, and more true than ever in todays world.
- Jonathon Pryce really hams it up.
- Carver is killed by the same evil machine that opens the movie. Bonus points whenever that happens!
- More pastiching from some very good source material:
- Plot structure follows the Spy Who Loved Me very closely.
Bond and Paris ordering each others drinks is a clever variation on classic tSWLM dialog.
- The search of the sunken vessel is from Thunderball, but even moreso from a similar scene in For Your Eyes Only where (1) Melina joined Bond for the search and (2) Kristatos was waiting on the surface to capture them.
- The revealing of the stealth boat to the outside world is from Moonraker (remember, thats why Bond and Holly took the elevator to Orbital Communicator Level 10!!).
- M has a bar in her limo, and she's the only one having a drink during that meeting. She was drinking in her office in the previous film: is DenchM a bit of an alky?
- Some very good action sequences.
- The escape and lengthy chase while handcuffed is my favourite action sequence from the Brosnan films. It starts off like the 39 Steps, then almost immediately turns into an acrobatic circus show with intricate choreography and good use of the local geography.
- The bit where Bond and Wai Linn escape the collapsing ship is another very good action sequence, again good use of geography and very scary.
The difference between this and most of the other action sequences is I actually care what happens next.
- Michelle Yeoh does some amazing stunts and in the second half it is always worth watching what she is doing, even as the action setpieces drag.
- Dr Kaufmann is a highlight of the movie even with his brief screen time. Or maybe because his single scene is not dragged out like every other scene in the film: it's all in the dialog and acting, no action setpiece required!
- The story of Paris Carver has so much potential and would have made for a good BondNovel.
- Terri Hatcher delivered the most famous closing line in Seinfeld history.
- The "girl from Bond's past" was never a plot in any Fleming, but was used in the Climax Mystery Theatre version of Casino Royale!
- Unseen Mission: so when and where did Bond meet Paris before?
- Of course Bond's past affairs are all in his MI6 file, that only makes sense, and of course his bosses would exploit the knowledge. This really is the most interesting idea in the film, and had so much potential...
CONS
- Title was a typo.
- I think this is the first film with absolutely no Fleming. tSWLM and aVtaK at least had brief concepts or dialog from other novels.
- The k.d. lang song seems to have more elements in common with the score and should have been used as the main theme.
- Paris's tragedy would have meant more if we really had seen her before. But because Brosnan was new and there was that six year gap, there's not really any actual previous Bondgirls they could have brought back.
- Maybe there should have been a pre-credits set nine years earlier like in the previous film, showing us their relationship?
- Maybe when Bond first sees her at the party there should have been a Casablanca style flashback? (then he could have used the pun "We'll always have Paris")
- I laughed out loud when Paris said "What was it James? Did I get too close?".
Paris is a good idea for a character, but Terri Hatcher cannot deliver the dialog. She's just too brittle.
(of course it's lousy dialog to begin with)
- Five minutes after Paris' death, Bond himself is laughing having discovered the fun of the BMW's remote control. I don't think her name is ever mentioned again. Very poor script.
- Action scenes drag on and on, and on and on and on, obscuring what little plot there is.
- I personally lost track as to whats going on in the stealth boat and don't care enough to pay closer attention. Endless machine gun fire and explosions. And that is one long closing action setpiece.
- Brosnan always has a machine gun in his hand, which he sprays indiscrimately (at least usually at bad guys in this film, as opposed to the local police in the previous film).
At the end he has one in each hand, and is not watching where either of them is shooting. That's his entire repetoir, and we never see him out-think his opponents.
- At the same time, Wai Linn is performing all these amazing stunts, accentuating Brosnan's dependence on those machine guns.
- If they'd written James Bond out of the story, and made it a Wai Linn solo adventure, it'd actually be a better movie.
- Wai Linn and Bond have no chemistry and that final clinch seems to come out of newhere.
- Wade is channeling Pepper rather than Leiter
- "Don't ask" "Don't tell" is a very forced political reference that barely makes sense within the dialog, and instead draws attention to how poor the dialog is in general.
The refence is to Bill Clinton failing to protect the rights of gays in the military, thus completely inappropriate to the dialog's context in the film, and all the more insensitive to its real life meaning.
- M and Moneypenny in general.
In the previous film they were both scolding Bond for being a heterosexual.
Now he's being cynically exploited to specifically use his mojo superpowers to save the world, and the two of them are licking their lips and making lewd puns about this job he is being forced to do.
He should have complained to H.R. that they were treating him like a sex-object and all they wanted him for was his body!
- Bond delivers the newspaper to the war-room and explains it's suspicious Carver printed the story before it had actually happened. Then they all immediately drive away in M's limo, and she already has prepared all the research on Carver, Bond's plane tickets and reservations, and has dug up the background on Bond and Paris and decided the specifics of Bond's mission.
When the deuce did she have time to do all that if they just made the Carver connection in the scene immediately before?
- Bond is till driving a standard issue yuppie-mobile for the job even though his personal car is the Aston.
- In general, this is my least favourite of the four Brosnans.
Die Another Day at least had more solid material in its first half, this one quickly abandons any interesting ideas in favour of never-ending action setpieces.
- Aside form a few of the better action scenes, the Dr Kaufman scene is the only keeper.
-Yesterday Never Tomorrows is probably a better movie.