TOMORROW NEVER DIES (United Artists) Starring: Pierce Brosnan, Jonathan Pryce, Michelle Yeoh, Teri Hatcher. Screenplay: Bruce Feirstein. Producers: Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli. Director: Roger Spottiswoode. MPAA Rating: PG-13 (adult themes, violence, profanity, sexual situations) Running Time: 125 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
Michelle Yeoh is ultimately the best thing about TOMORROW NEVER DIES, the 18th installment in the phenomenally popular series based on Ian Fleming's James Bond (Pierce Brosnan). And in a strange way, she also points out its most glaring weaknesses. You see, Bond may be a brand name, but as I noted in my 1995 review of GOLDENEYE, the franchise no longer has the market cornered on high-flying, globe-hopping action. When the alternatives to the latest Bond adventure include watching the dazzling Jackie Chan battle international espionage with considerably more imagination, TOMORROW NEVER DIES starts to look rather bland and uninspired. The presence of Yeoh, Chan's capable sidekick in SUPERCOP, only serves as a reminder that there are new kids on the block. Brosnan may look appropriately dapper, but the series just looks old, cruising on its place in cinematic history.
The premise has a kind of perfunctory Bond-ian grandiosity about it, despite an extremely lackluster villain. Jonathan Pryce plays Elliot Carver, an international media mogul just about to launch a new satellite news network. Operating on the principle that it's easier to create news than to hunt it down, Carver and his operatives begin making their own headlines by instigating a conflict between the British navy and China, one which results in a downed British battleship and talk of war. Enter Bond, assigned to determine the dirty details of Carver's operation. Ably assisted by Chinese government agent Wai Lin (Yeoh), Bond must stop the presses before Carver's meddling results in all-out war between England and China.
The ho-hum megalomania of Pryce and his obligatory, inhumanly resilient henchman (Gotz Otto) are only part of an extremely familiar package which prevents TOMORROW NEVER DIES from ever getting off the ground. Token attempts at adding depth to Bond's romantic conquests (he _really_ cares about old flame Teri Hatcher...no, really, he does) fall flat, but that's no great surprise. The real disappointment is the quality of the action set pieces -- a few flashes of creativity chaotically directed by Roger Spottiswoode (AIR AMERICA, TURNER AND HOOCH) to lend the illusion of real energy. The gunplay is routine, the chases are routine, even Q's gadgets are routine (a car that drops little spikey things to flatten the tires of the car behind you...what will he think of next?). Even peppering the action with traditional Bond quips doesn't help, especially when most of the audience is baffled into silence by a reference to Carver's "edifice complex."
The only real change of pace is Yeoh, who provides the Bond series with its best, most exciting leading lady in years (with all due respect to Maud Adams and Grace Jones). She's such a match for Bond -- just as resourceful and even more physically capable -- that it's a shame to see her reduced to damsel-in-distress status. Watching Yeoh fly through an acrobatic martial arts fight sequence conjures images of the more inventive stunt wizardry of Jackie Chan's films. Chan has been out-Bonding Bond for years now, a detail it's hard to overlook while TOMORROW NEVER DIES is punching and exploding its way through two hours on automatic pilot.
Pierce Brosnan once again provides Bond with an appropriate ruthlessness, but he's also burdened with the anachronistic he-man antics. Much of the continued appeal of the series can be attributed to the fact that the more things change, the more James Bond remains the same -- in the liberated, safe-sex, designated driver 90s, he's still an unabashed chauvinist who sleeps around, drinks his vodka martinis and kicks ass for queen and country. That sense of familiarity may be the series' greatest financial strength, but it's also its greatest impediment to quality. Once upon a time, the James Bond series was a bi-annual festival of "can you top this?" The goal is simpler now; the producers aren't even trying to compete with the big-budget big boys. They rely on one secret weapon not provided by Q: nostalgia. TOMORROW NEVER DIES never once tries to play "can you top this?" It's a film content to offer "do you remember this?"
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 Bond futures: 4.
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