This is a tough one for me. In 2002 I was starting a new chapter in my life having been in a bad place for a couple of years. Before it started I had seen Star Trek Insurection and TWINE. I loved both films. As I was enjoying my change of direction, I was really looking forward to seeing Star Trek Nemisis and DAD, so they could gatepost the end of that bad point in my life. I hated both films to the extreme!
DAD has changed in my eyes, but only after someone pointed out its key flaw. First half Connery era, second half Moore era. It doesn't try to do anything truly stand alone outside of the PTS. Jinx should have been a brilliant character, and has all the right physicality and function, but the dialogue is awful. It goes against her as an action heroine. The same is true of the Q scene. It should work, but everything thrown in from 40 years is blatant, and Cleese is given jokes he clearly had no input on. Perhaps the biggest problem is Toby Stephens as Graves. I have a very hard time matching his performance to Moon at the start, he lacks energy and conviction, looking either gaunt or bored at times. Bond is outlaw one moment, key operative the next. The film has so many disjointed jumps it doesn't flow very well, and that problem only eases with multiple viewings. You know when the pace will change, so you are ready for it.
It's clear director Tamori was desperate to do something new and different and it simply doesn't work. The CGI feels excessive and fake (ruining the stunts are real tradition in the process of the earlier and later films), and the levels of hype in promoting the film were far too much.
However, there are individual pieces that are clever. The Vanquish is one of the best Bond cars, and the use of the ice palace is big scale and opulent, both for the party scenes and the car chase. David Arnold's top notch music. The locations used as nicely done and the miniatures work harks back to the glory days of the Moore era. The Icarus orbital weapon is true to YOLT, DAF and MKR in technological scope. Using North Korea as the framework of the baddie has Smersh / Spectre touches to it and Mr Brosnan does have a couple of good scenes with Dame Judi's M, as well as the chap in Cuba, and Mr Chang in Hong Kong. Rick Yune knows he is joining the Rosa Klebb, Oddjob and Jaws brigade, and brings a workable level of physical and even psycho menace to Zao. Finally, Rosamund Pike does a good job of making Frost unlikeable before she is revealed as the turncoat. (Incidentally, Her comments on the audio commentary are charming, insightful and often damned funny too!)
All of these things I discovered and appreciated through the DVD and my telly, not the cinema screen. Which for a Bond film is simply out of place. DAD will always be an experiment that went wrong a bit like QoS did six years later. But like the later film it does have redeeming qualities that I find genuinely enjoyable.
Star Trek Nemisis however, will never be so fortunate.
Last edited by Thunderbird 2 (9th Feb 2015 22:55)
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