Here's the recipe for making the longest running movie series in cinema history. Take one sexy, debonair British secret agent and throw in several beautiful, often exotic women for him to bed. Add a dash of bosses who only use initials for names, and mix in a secretary (now personal assistant) named Moneypenny. Stir in liberal amounts of cool gadgets, cars, and exciting stunts. The yield: One James Bond movie.
For the past thirty-five years, audiences have delighted in watching Bond beat the bad guys, seduce the women, and always manage to escape a wide variety of dangers to return again and again for more international action-adventures. That pretty much sums up this, the eighteenth installment of the Bond series, "Tomorrow Never Dies," and this latest offering should please its fans.
Pierce Brosnan returns for his sophomore outing as 007, and seems more at ease with the role than he did in 1995's "Goldeneye." While the argument will never cease regarding who is or was the best at playing Bond, Brosnan is the man now, so everyone out there accept it and give it a rest. Still -- and quite amazingly for the series -- he's the sixth actor to inhabit the role (after Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton and...David Niven in the Bond spoof "Casino Royale" -- at least we didn't include Woody Allen who played Jimmy Bond in that same film) and he's definitely one of the best.
Brosnan proves again that he's much better than the previous Bond -- Dalton -- who was too serious and often looked stiff playing the secret agent. What he brings to the screen is more of a human Bond, one that does get beaten and scuffed up, and who needs a drink after a serious fight. Of course that doesn't mean he's sore or bruised afterwards, but at least he's not so much the impervious agent as in the past. Interestingly, had it not been for contractual problems back in the 80's, this would probably have been Brosnan's fourth time playing 007, but his role on the TV show "Remington Steele" got in his way. Being such a good fit in the part, however, Brosnan probably has the role to himself until he grows tired of playing it.
Teri Hatcher and Michelle Yeoh fill the shoes of the likes of Ursula Andress ("Dr. No"), Maud Adams (three Bond films), Jill St. John ("Diamond Are Forever"), Britt Eckland ("The Man With The Golden Gun") and many other women Bond has seduced or been seduced by over the years. Hatcher (of TV's "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman") isn't given much to do other than look pretty, and surprisingly leaves the picture rather early on.
Yeoh, on the other hand, pumps some new energy into the series. A Hong Kong actress with plenty of action/martial arts films under her belt, she's best known in the U.S. for co-starring with Jackie Chan (and doing her own stunts) in "Supercop" (where she went by the name Michelle Khan). As she proved with Jackie, not only can she hold her own, but she's probably the most beautiful female action star in the business. Hmmm, I wonder why they picked her for a James Bond movie.
Judi Dench and Desmond Llewelyn return as the characters "M" and "Q" respectively, with Dench returning with Brosnan for the sophomore take, and Llewelyn making this sixteenth appearance as Bond's gadget and weapons expert. With "Q" come the gadgets, and Bond's best for this movie is a remote controlled new BMW. Equipped with a literally shocking security system, Bond can drive the car from both inside as well as outside it. In one of the film's more thrilling moments, Bond tries to drive the car out of a parking garage (using just a touch pad remote control) while avoiding the many bad guys -- most of the time from the backseat.
Being a Bond film, there also have to be many wild stunts, and this film is certainly filled with them. Most fun is a sequence where Brosnan and Yeoh -- who are handcuffed to each other -- must drive a motorcycle through the streets of Saigon while avoiding gunmen and a pursuing helicopter. Since they're connected at the wrist, they must ride with both driving with one hand each, or with her straddling his lap watching for the pursuers behind them. The sequence is quite thrilling and funny at the same time. With the appearance of Yeoh, some martial arts scenes had to be added and they're quite exhilarating as well, and would certainly make Jackie Chan proud.
There are also some humorous moments, with the film taking obvious pot shots at real-life media mogul Rupert Murdoch (head of rival movie studio, 20th Century Fox) with Carver having lines such as "There's no news like bad news." You can almost see him thinking of a Fox-like exploitive TV show, "When Animals Attack James Bond." Microsoft's main man, Bill Gates, is not beyond reproach either, and one moment skewers him as well. When Carver asks a computer programmer whether a software program is ready for delivery, the man says that it is, but it's also purposefully filled with "bugs" so that users will have to upgrade year after year. There are also a few double entendres and lines of sexual innuendo, but surprisingly not as many as in previous efforts.
What's more evident are the obvious product placements (another way a movie can get necessary production funds). Besides the obvious BMW plugs (in motorcycle and car form -- the latter from Avis Rent A Car), there's Bond's Ericcson phone, his Smirnoff vodka, and brief glimpses of an Omega watch as well as Heineken beer. What's missing is the Visa check card (recently seen in heavy co-promotional TV ads), although at one point Bond does ask Wai Lin whether a person who wants $5,000 accepts checks.
Helmed by director Roger Spottiswoode (who's last well known theatrical release was Sly Stallone's "Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot"), the film certainly isn't as good as the old classic Bond films with Connery or yes, even Roger Moore (the early ones). The plot, with Jonathan Pryce as a media mogul wanting to start a war just to get a higher audience share is a bit thin and silly. Nonetheless, it serves its purpose for moving the story along and allowing all of the traditional Bond elements to be utilized.
Being the eighteenth installment, and with nearly every variation of villain, story, and gadget having previously been used, the film has its work cut out for it. Yet "Tomorrow Never Dies" still manages to be entertaining. Perhaps that's because the audience knows what to expect from a Bond film and as long as it delivers a close semblance of that, we'll be satisfied. Sure it's goofy, outrageous, and nowhere near realistic. That's what makes it so much fun, however, and fans of the series should find this to their liking. We give "Tomorrow Never Dies" a 7 out of 10.