Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
Seen on 31 December 1997 with Tony for free at the Loews Village VII
As 007 movies go, *Tomorrow Never Dies* provides is a lively entry with the sexually appealing Pierce Brosnan in his second outing as the fourth James Bond to grace the series. For reasons that are not completely clear to me, I have seen a lot of action/adventure movies this year, but this is the one that *intentionally* made me laugh. Unlike American pictures, the Brits prove once again that a keen whit can coexist with explosions. I was laughing within the first five minutes, and the mile-high flames ensued about three minutes afterward.
In general, if you've seen one 007 movie, you have seen them all. What separates them is the strength of the characters and the execution of the formula. Here, media mogul Elliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce) engineers the makings of World War III between China and the UK by rearranging GPS signals, forcing the Chinese to think their waters are being breached, while manipulating the British into thinking they sank their destroyer, when he sank it himself.
Like most 007 movies, the movie makes the most of location shooting, with a parking garage car chase in Hamburg and a helicopter-motorcycle chase in Bangkok, after a spectacular fall from an office tower.
As James Bond, Pierce Brosnan is probably the most sexually appealing of the actors to play the role of the British agent. He is prone to wearing open denim shirts than tuxedos and suits like his predecessors. The "Bond Girls" this time around are the horrible Teri Hatcher as Carver's wife "Paris," and the formidable Michelle Yeoh as Chinese agent Wai Lin. Luckily, Hatcher disappears after the first reel, and seeing Yeoh and Brosnan handcuffed together on a motorcycle while being chased by a helicopter was very entertaining.
The villains are equally good. Pryce is perfectly cast as the billionaire maniac, a 1990s *Dr. No*, assisted by the evil Stamper (Gutz Otto), an able successor to 007 villains like Jaws or Odd Job. Carver's visage appears in a variety of places throughout the movie, projected on TV screens and hanging from the side of a skyscraper, much like Big Brother in *1984*. Also requisite is the 007 gadgetry, and they outdo themselves this time as Q (Desmond Llewelyn--who has played Q since 1964's *Goldfinger*) presents Bond with a car he can operate with a finger on a touchpad on his cellular phone. Judi Dench continues nicely as Bond's boss tough M, as does Samantha Bond as Moneypenny. Joe Don Baker appears briefly as a buffoonish American military man.
More movie reviews by Seth Bookey, with graphics, can be found at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2679/kino.html
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews