Not stirred, not shaken
Dec. 1st, 2002 09:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynReview of Die Another Day, no more spoilery than any usual movie review
So, I'm not a Bond fan. It definitely makes any attempt at objectivity much more difficult. I've never fully understood the appeal of the casual misogyny disguised as nudge-nudge wink-wink lighthearted sexism, the interest in the lame double entendres and sexual innuendo, the fascination with the over the top moustache-twirling bad guys. I mostly went to see this one because I hadn't yet seen one of the Pierce Brosnan Bond films, and felt I should, and Will Yun Lee was in it (who plays Danny on Witchblade and on whom I have a major crush), and it was directed by Lee Tamahori, a real director who made one of the more powerful films about the subsumption of native cultures by whites, called Once Were Warriors, that I admired a lot.
And his touch on the film showed, for the first hour at least. This is the first time I can remember Bond facing consequences in the first part, not coming out on top in the before-the-credits action sequence. Admittedly I haven't seen more than half the Bond films, but my companion at the movie, who has seen all of them, agreed with me. There was a real story here -- North Koreans using conflict diamonds to fund their despotism and personal abuse of power, Bond being thrown in prison and tortured endlessly for over a year, the effects of that upon his release. For once I actually felt the humanity of James Bond, I felt like there were consequences, both personally and globally, to his spying, and that this would leave a mark upon him.
Even when he's technically back in the bosom of MI6, he's abandoned by them, his double-oh status revoked, his life revoked, and he's told he's no longer relevant. This made the Bond story resonate for me in a way none of the movies ever have except the only one I've ever liked before, which is universally reviled as the worst of the Bond movies -- On Her Majesty's Secret Service. What I enjoyed about that film was that Bond suffered enormous emotional consequences there too -- he fell in love with a woman (and of course, who wouldn't fall in love with Diana Rigg playing a variation on her ultimate cool Emma Peel persona?), married her, she was killed, and he suffered for it. Man, I liked that. So I was enjoying Brosnan actually getting out his acting chops and using them, for the hints that his experiences will haunt him, and for showing that there really are consequences to the spy games they play usually without any ramifications whatsoever.
Then after the first hour it falls right back into standard Eurotrash bad-guy destroying the world, with the familiar overlong action sequences that signify nothing, and the "surprise" twists that are lame but actually seem to surprise people (who must simply not ever go to movies or else not pay attention when they do, because you can see all the pieces coming together a mile away). There's a nifty boys and their toys car chase that seems like nothing so much as a glam ad for all-wheel traction cars, and a bloated and stupidly drawn out airplane action scene that exists solely so that the two babes can strip down to as little as possibly and have an edged-weapon fight to the death (don't get me wrong, I love edged weapon fights and deeply enjoyed the fencing and saber fighting between Bond and Gustav Graves, the baddie, earlier in the movie) while their airplane is heading for a crash (and really, wouldn't you save the fight until after the plane had been stabilized and you could be certain there'd be some time to fight? But maybe that's just me), and some other fun little duels, but it left me frustrated because the story of what happened to Bond earlier had been abandoned and it was all standard issue fare at that point.
The bigger the explosions, the longer the fights, the more elaborate the chases, the less it holds my interest, because that usually means the story has gone out the window, if there was any to begin with. Anyone could make this part of the movie, but the first part, that required an actual storyteller and an actual actor. It was great as always, though, to see Judi Dench, with her fascinating mix of flinty warmth, as M, and of course John Cleese as Q, with all the little throwaway Monty Python jokes they made, and the jokes on previous Bond films. Halle Berry's a fun spy, but she seemed to exist in a separate movie at times, I thought, rather than as a part of the Bond universe and two people working on the same side. They worked nicely together, but there was no real zippy chemistry together, although they certainly seemed to be having fun. Michael Madsen has a throwaway role as a blowhard American (there are no other kinds, judging from this) CIA chief.
I've always disliked the pointy-titted babes writhing over the main credits, but here they twisted that in with Bond's torture in prison, an interesting take. But personally, as an old-skool feminist who doesn't think that the female pulchritudity is "empowering" for the actresses when there's no corresponding male pulchritudity, I think that if we're going to have lots of Halle Berry booty, the women who go to these things to see some male actor or other whom we like deserve a little Bond booty as well, or any other particularly nice male form. This is the one thing I hate most about Bond films, and again, they ignore the female audience in favor of that outmoded sixties sexuality. Halle Berry in the least amount of clothing possible? Great! Any more of Pierce than his shirtless chest? No! And after three Austin Powers movies lampooning the lame double entendres, it's hard to listen to the conversations about "thrust" and "equipment" and not hear Austin's nasal twang, and expect an "oh, beHAVE" afterwards.
I'd also love to see some creativity in the titles. Honestly -- I can't even remember which of the movies I've seen because since the early sixties ones, the names have become increasingly generic (at least you kind of knew that Goldfinger would be about... well, a guy named Goldfinger, or From Russia With Love would be about Russians). There's no sense of the... quiddity of the film, I suppose, or what the story is about, in titles such as The Living Daylights or Die Another Day, which I guess isn't that surprising, since there really seems to be no story there anyway.
I can think of worse ways to spend a Saturday, definitely, but it hasn't succeeded in making me want to see another Bond film in this decade (unless, of course, they give the next job to Clive Owen). It's above average for the first half, standard fare for the second.
(One tiny spoiler for Will Yun Lee fans: If you're hot for Danny from Witchblade and you plan to see this for him, be careful -- he's in it so little, and only at the beginning, so you'll spend the rest of the movie without him. But he does get one really delicious line and some fighting scenes.)s
So, I'm not a Bond fan. It definitely makes any attempt at objectivity much more difficult. I've never fully understood the appeal of the casual misogyny disguised as nudge-nudge wink-wink lighthearted sexism, the interest in the lame double entendres and sexual innuendo, the fascination with the over the top moustache-twirling bad guys. I mostly went to see this one because I hadn't yet seen one of the Pierce Brosnan Bond films, and felt I should, and Will Yun Lee was in it (who plays Danny on Witchblade and on whom I have a major crush), and it was directed by Lee Tamahori, a real director who made one of the more powerful films about the subsumption of native cultures by whites, called Once Were Warriors, that I admired a lot.
And his touch on the film showed, for the first hour at least. This is the first time I can remember Bond facing consequences in the first part, not coming out on top in the before-the-credits action sequence. Admittedly I haven't seen more than half the Bond films, but my companion at the movie, who has seen all of them, agreed with me. There was a real story here -- North Koreans using conflict diamonds to fund their despotism and personal abuse of power, Bond being thrown in prison and tortured endlessly for over a year, the effects of that upon his release. For once I actually felt the humanity of James Bond, I felt like there were consequences, both personally and globally, to his spying, and that this would leave a mark upon him.
Even when he's technically back in the bosom of MI6, he's abandoned by them, his double-oh status revoked, his life revoked, and he's told he's no longer relevant. This made the Bond story resonate for me in a way none of the movies ever have except the only one I've ever liked before, which is universally reviled as the worst of the Bond movies -- On Her Majesty's Secret Service. What I enjoyed about that film was that Bond suffered enormous emotional consequences there too -- he fell in love with a woman (and of course, who wouldn't fall in love with Diana Rigg playing a variation on her ultimate cool Emma Peel persona?), married her, she was killed, and he suffered for it. Man, I liked that. So I was enjoying Brosnan actually getting out his acting chops and using them, for the hints that his experiences will haunt him, and for showing that there really are consequences to the spy games they play usually without any ramifications whatsoever.
Then after the first hour it falls right back into standard Eurotrash bad-guy destroying the world, with the familiar overlong action sequences that signify nothing, and the "surprise" twists that are lame but actually seem to surprise people (who must simply not ever go to movies or else not pay attention when they do, because you can see all the pieces coming together a mile away). There's a nifty boys and their toys car chase that seems like nothing so much as a glam ad for all-wheel traction cars, and a bloated and stupidly drawn out airplane action scene that exists solely so that the two babes can strip down to as little as possibly and have an edged-weapon fight to the death (don't get me wrong, I love edged weapon fights and deeply enjoyed the fencing and saber fighting between Bond and Gustav Graves, the baddie, earlier in the movie) while their airplane is heading for a crash (and really, wouldn't you save the fight until after the plane had been stabilized and you could be certain there'd be some time to fight? But maybe that's just me), and some other fun little duels, but it left me frustrated because the story of what happened to Bond earlier had been abandoned and it was all standard issue fare at that point.
The bigger the explosions, the longer the fights, the more elaborate the chases, the less it holds my interest, because that usually means the story has gone out the window, if there was any to begin with. Anyone could make this part of the movie, but the first part, that required an actual storyteller and an actual actor. It was great as always, though, to see Judi Dench, with her fascinating mix of flinty warmth, as M, and of course John Cleese as Q, with all the little throwaway Monty Python jokes they made, and the jokes on previous Bond films. Halle Berry's a fun spy, but she seemed to exist in a separate movie at times, I thought, rather than as a part of the Bond universe and two people working on the same side. They worked nicely together, but there was no real zippy chemistry together, although they certainly seemed to be having fun. Michael Madsen has a throwaway role as a blowhard American (there are no other kinds, judging from this) CIA chief.
I've always disliked the pointy-titted babes writhing over the main credits, but here they twisted that in with Bond's torture in prison, an interesting take. But personally, as an old-skool feminist who doesn't think that the female pulchritudity is "empowering" for the actresses when there's no corresponding male pulchritudity, I think that if we're going to have lots of Halle Berry booty, the women who go to these things to see some male actor or other whom we like deserve a little Bond booty as well, or any other particularly nice male form. This is the one thing I hate most about Bond films, and again, they ignore the female audience in favor of that outmoded sixties sexuality. Halle Berry in the least amount of clothing possible? Great! Any more of Pierce than his shirtless chest? No! And after three Austin Powers movies lampooning the lame double entendres, it's hard to listen to the conversations about "thrust" and "equipment" and not hear Austin's nasal twang, and expect an "oh, beHAVE" afterwards.
I'd also love to see some creativity in the titles. Honestly -- I can't even remember which of the movies I've seen because since the early sixties ones, the names have become increasingly generic (at least you kind of knew that Goldfinger would be about... well, a guy named Goldfinger, or From Russia With Love would be about Russians). There's no sense of the... quiddity of the film, I suppose, or what the story is about, in titles such as The Living Daylights or Die Another Day, which I guess isn't that surprising, since there really seems to be no story there anyway.
I can think of worse ways to spend a Saturday, definitely, but it hasn't succeeded in making me want to see another Bond film in this decade (unless, of course, they give the next job to Clive Owen). It's above average for the first half, standard fare for the second.
(One tiny spoiler for Will Yun Lee fans: If you're hot for Danny from Witchblade and you plan to see this for him, be careful -- he's in it so little, and only at the beginning, so you'll spend the rest of the movie without him. But he does get one really delicious line and some fighting scenes.)s
