Die Another Day, the fourth Bond outing with Pierce Brosnan in the lead role as 007, is the only Bond movie that is special effects driven, specifically CGI, over character and plot driven. The previous Bond flick,
the World is Not Enough, while definitely not one of the best Bonds in the series, retained back to a focus on it's characters, even though the action didn't let up. The plot is so overworn in
Die Another Day and the action is overbearing. The movie starts out with Bond's imprisonment in North Korea, where he's held as a captive and tortured for 14 months. First of all, wasting a year of Bond's life as a Communist prisoner doesn't work at all. By this point, Brosnan is too old for the Bond series, though his charisma and style remains strong. Once we get passed the North Korean scenes,
Die Another Day becomes a personal vendetta picture similar to
License to Kill and
Quantum of Solace. I have stated a number of times in other Bond movies that Bond movies do not work good as revenge pictures. However, the vendetta portion of
Die Another Day, while not evenly played out, is still fortunately believable. Then we get to the Ice Castle in Iceland. Here's where things really start to mess up. Everything from then on becomes so action and special effects dominated completely, and it's just so unbelievable. The end fight aboard the flaming plane is fun, but completely unrealistic. I'm sorry to say it, but not even Bond could have survived that. Just watch the movie and see for yourself.
Had
Die Another Day erased the overblasted CGI effects and lowered the level of action in it's second half, then it wouldn't have been such a bad Bond film afterall. But director Lee Tamahori just had to see what it would be like to throw in a lot of CGI into the picture. That's alone what ultimately caused
Die Another Day's downfall into absurdity.
** ½ /5
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