Search - Die Another Day (Widescreen Special Edition) on DVD

K. K. (GAMER)
Reviewed on 5/12/2022...

Pierce Brosnan steps right into 007 Bond, James Bond perfectly! It's a shame that he did not make more movies!

Keith A. (Keefer522)
Reviewed on 5/8/2014...

Pierce Brosnan's 4th and final 007 adventure teams him up with a hotty American agent (Halle Berry) and pits them both against a North Korean terrorist who wants to destroy the West with a solar satellite weapon.
This is the weakest of Brosnan's Bond films but there's still lots of silly, over the top fun to be had.

1 of 1 member(s) found this review helpful.

I think I am going to be sick

Ricardo C. | 04/26/2010

(1 out of 5 stars)

"Maintaining great quality in a long running movie series is near impossible and falling off the ball will eventually happen. I can understand how the writing and direction will slide after years, natural and understandable. One thing I can't understand is how a film can be created were it becomes a stereotype of the series it is from, Die Another Day in the James Bond film series is one. DAD marked the 20th film and 40th anniversary of the series. You would think a celebration of the Bond film franchise will inspire something truly grand, instead loyal fans get slapped in the face. The very worst of Bond is glorified in the abortion that is Die Another Day. All the bad stereotypes of Bond films are here; An over flow of bad one liners, highly over the top plot, and a one dimensional and bland villain who tries to be sophisticated and menacing. This is the only Bond film I can safely say is directly aimed at the fourteen and under crowd.

The movie starts off good with something unexpected and actually interesting at the end of the pre-title sequence, Bond is captured and tortured in North Korea thanks to the evil Colonel Moon by Will Yun Lee. The torture itself is nothing to speak of really; You barely see it in the title sequence because it's being drowned in CGI effects and a Madonna song to offend to ears. The material girl also makes a few mercifully short cameos in the films. Anyway After the swirl of CGI title sequence vomit, Bond, who still has the energy to make bad quips after allegedly under going horrible pain for quite some time, is arrested by MI6 after being accused of leaking secrets during his capture. In a rather clever escape he swims to his yacht club which happens to be mere moments away from the ship he was being held on. Yes, it does get worse people. MI6 must be a rather lazy organization because Bond freely travels to Cuba and then to London of all places without any detection at all. After a series of lame one-liners and various stupid events, Bond confronts his villain-o-matic dubbed Gustav Graves played by Toby Stephens. He is in fact Colonel Moon who had DNA transplant *groan* to become a childish white guy who has a neat robo-cop suit that controls a giant sun lamp. I honestly can't even say much of this is original either.

The lines and moments are mostly recycled from all the old Bond movies and they are not even used right. One excellent example of screwing up the old material was Jinx's (Halle Berry) first appearance on the beach; This scene was copied from Honey Rider's famous entrance in Dr.No. The reason why Honey's entrance was so grand was because it was beautifully subtle; Honey naturally walks up on the beach and it didn't feel forced. Jinx's entrance was not only slow motion, which felt incredibly forced, but it was obvious the director told her to act like she was being shot by a camera; Ergo ruining the beautiful subtlety of what could have been a well done homage. The main plot is a combination of Diamonds Are Forever and Goldeneye with a giant space based satellite weapon called Icarus aka the sun lamp of doom. Many another moments were cut and paste into this film from past Bond adventures including a plot twist about Miranda Frost's (Rosamund Pike) true identity which was in fact stolen from the previous Bond turkey, THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH. I could be mistaken but I think incompetent Jinx character, who kills no one of any value to the film and is constantly captured, was based on the bungling Mary Goodnight from THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN.

So what is original in this film ? I guess the fact that the major villains are not even 35. That Pierce Brosnan was the heaviest actor to play Bond, no major offense of course I rather have a fat Bond then the skinny wimp in GOLDENEYE. Ah yes, the virtual reality simulation ! Yes Bond gets his own holo-deck in this film for basic training and is exploited once more at the end of the film for a lame gag involving Bond going hog wild over Moneypenny.

When this wretched film finally ends you wonder what happened to the series after 40 years, why it had become a follower instead of a leader by making kids play villains with Matrix-style action sequences. Shame on the producers for thinking so low of it's audience and the fan-base."