Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Brosnan's worst Bond, 3 Nov 2008
The history of the latter Bond films is one of false dawns, with sporadic good or near-great Bond films promptly followed by horribly disappointing ones. OHMSS was followed by the lazy Diamonds Are Forever, The Spy Who Loved Me by Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only by Octopussy, and sadly Pierce Brosnan's enjoyable Bond debut GoldenEye remained true to form in being followed by another clunker. Tomorrow Never Dies was a famously troubled shoot, with a constantly rewritten unfinished script the most visible of its many problems. It's that classic `inbetween good Bonds' film that just feels like its treading water while they recharge their creative batteries for the next one. The premise may sound absurd - Jonathan Pryce's media mogul tries to start a war in Asia to boost circulation and viewing figures in return for local TV concessions - but it's a scam that William Randolph Hearst pulled for real in the Spanish-American War with his infamous telegram to a reporter "You supply the pictures and I'll supply the war." True, he didn't use a Stealth Ship or a guided drill-torpedo to do it, but the film almost pulls it off as a framework for a Bond movie. The problem is that, aside from David Arnold's excellent score, not much else really works.
Pryce isn't exactly a threatening supervillain and his henchmen are a rather bland bunch with the exception of Vincent Schiavelli's master assassin, who opts for broad overacting rather than menace. It may be an inspired idea to cast Michelle Yeoh as the leading lady, but with only one brief fight it seems rather pointless hiring one of the best action stars in the world if she doesn't get to do much. Worse, the action scenes are distinctly hit-and-miss. The pretitle sequence is terrific and the remote-controlled car chase one of the more enjoyable gadget showcases, but somehow the motorbike vs. helicopter chase through the streets and rooftops of Saigon never works nearly as well as it should: the footage is good but there's something almost haphazard about the editing that robs it of much of its potential. The film's big finale is little short of disastrous. Reputedly intended to be on a larger scale but scaled down because the effects shots wouldn't be ready in time for the film's opening date, there's literally nothing at stake by this point - with WW3 safely averted, all that's left for a somewhat bored Bond to do is walk around a badly designed and unappealingly photographed set shooting extras like he was in a bad video game before killing an old man with glasses.
Throw in lazy plotting and some of the worst dialogue in the series history and even the few promising ideas thrown up along the way tend to get lost in the hurry to get something releasable in the can. While Die Another Day is most Bond fans' choice for Brosnan's worst Bond, that at least threw up some good ideas in the first half - this feels like a film where no-one had a decent idea between them but were contractually obliged to deliver a movie in time for Christmas anyway. Horribly disappointing.
There's not a great deal of in the way of new extras to justify an upgrade if you have the previous special edition - aside from the extras carried over from that, there's a featurette on Moby's Bond theme remix, some redundant clips from the movie and some weak deleted scenes. Among them is an extended briefing scene in M's car where everyone is drinking cocktails that is so clumsily executed (every shot ends with them raising a glass to their lips) that it looks like an outtake from the old Thunderbirds TV series, so the film could clearly have been even worse, but that's scant consolation. As per all of the Brosnan Bond DVDs, there's no proper making of documentary either, just the odd puff-piece from its first release. One for the Bond completists only, really.
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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Junk Bond No. 8, 28 Jun 2009
Pierce Brosnan's second effort in the Bond series was seen as a roaring success when it first appeared, but watched it the cold light of day it does not strike one as a particularly good film; in fact, in a lot of respects, it is an absolutely terrible one. Jonathan Pryce, one of the most naturally languid actors in history, is possibly the weakest villain Bond has ever faced. Brosnan's scenes with Michelle Yeoh lack any chemistry at all, and Teri Hatcher (in the fallow period between her early success in Lois and Clark and her re-invention in Desperate Housewives) doesn't bring much of a spark to her scenes as Bond's `old flame'. Worst of all is the poor performance of Gotz Otto as Pryce's henchman; his line `We die together, Mister Bwand' is cheese personified. Overall, dire.
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2 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
classical Bond, 30 April 2009
This could possibly be a flagship in newer Bond films: action saturated more than packed, with the due amount of suspence and rhythm, with spectacular stunts and gadgets, beautiful women and two (plus a third minor one) bigger than life villains.
The plot is the usual, indifferent pretext: a media mogul, duly crazed, wants absolute power and is efficiently portrayed by a Jonathan Pryce who seems to be having tons of fun.
The comparative novelty is that the enemy power is not Russia but China, but this is little change: the only consequence of import is that one of the two female leads is beautiful -and quite athletic- Michelle Yeoh who, for once, is nearly as deadly as Bond himself in the role of a Chinese secret service colonel. She makes the most of her role (not well served by a superficial script) and is beautiful to look at: no one could legitimately ask for more.
The other female lead is the aristocratic beauty of Teri Hatcher, a former lover of 007. Hers is perhaps the only well rounded character: her love for Bond seems genuine and once in a while James seems to return her affection. She's a competent actress and the filming director makes the most not only of a flawless body but also of her sensitive face.
This not a masterpiece for sure, but fans will hardly find anything wrong in a film that begins with a breathtaking opening sequence and runs to its end without skipping a single beat.
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