Director: Lee Tamahori
Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Halle Berry, Toby Stephens, Rosamund Pike
Have I Seen It Before: Yes, but you know what? I’m reasonably sure this was the only Bond film since Goldeneye (1995) that I didn’t see in the theater. I actually followed the production a little bit, it coming about in that era when one could passively take an interest in a developing film. And yet, when the film came out, I was probably dealing with just a little bit too much disappointment and heartache that winter—I’m looking in your direction, Star Trek Nemesis (2002)--to even bring myself to a second-run theater.
Did I Like It: It’s Brosnan’s worst film, right? One could make an argument for The World Is Not Enough (1999) but all of those arguments feel wrong. But as much as I can complain about the film and lament it as a dissonant note for the Irishman to leave on, there is plenty to like here.
The opening plot developments—which see 007 (Brosnan) captured on a mission to North Korea—are pretty brilliant on two fronts. First, it lays Bond low so that he can spend the rest of the film clawing his way back. Right there you have some forward momentum that can separate the pretty good Bond adventures from the positively dreary ones. Second, without dwelling on the matter too much, it gives a rationale for a post-9/11 Bond story by implying he was a prisoner during that moment in time.
His eventual release from the North Korean prison gives Brosnan some of his best moments as the character. Never has a man had such (embarrassingly aspirational) swagger as when he uses the power of his mind to overcome long-term scorpion venom exposure, very real PTSD, and malnutrition to escape a British prison and check in to the finest hotel in Hong Kong while still dripping wet and wearing hospital clothes. There is something so quintessentially Bond about him walking into that hotel like he owns the place that I’m almost prepared to view the whole film positively.
But then things go differently. The film’s in a spot of trouble by the time we get a needle drop of “London Calling” (I tend to imagine a British audience rolling their eyes, and I am right there with them). A scene with Q (John Cleese) serves more as a wacky obituary for Desmond Llewelyn. Then there’s Madonna. I don’t get Madonna. I never have. I’ve certainly never bought her in any film role outside of maybe A League of Their Own (1992). I even kind of like her theme song—and feeling the theme song will paper over large parts of some other films in the series—but the moment she shows up in the film as a fencing instructor, we are firmly in Roger Moore territory. Then there’s an Ice Hotel, an invisible car, and a parasailing sequence that I can’t imagine anyone would have been happy with twenty-plus years ago. It was almost as if Joel Schumacher had directed the whole thing*.
Which is right about when this film becomes clear in my head. The first half is a pretty good Fleming-heavy Connery film made with some allowances for modern audiences. The second half is a love-fest for Moore, which was never going to play with me. That’s not the worst notion to have when considering how to celebrate the series 40th anniversary. If they could have only managed to blend the two elements a bit better, the film wouldn’t feel as if it were lurching in tone. As EON looks to Bond 26, there’s room for flashes of Moore-fun in the post-Craig era. Just leave the parasailing behind. Please.
*I’m strangely not reflexively opposed to the impossible idea of Schumacher directing a Moore film in the 80s…