From: Adam Kempenaar
To: Sam Hallgren; Eric Baker
Subject: Still better than 'XXX'
When Eric first raised the idea of discussing 'Die Another Day', I objected on the grounds that there were too many more "important" films playing in Chicago for me to spend my time and money on than the latest Bond opus. But there's perhaps an even better reason. Bond films, like any movie made explicitly for entertainment only, especially a popular franchise, is absolutely critic-proof. Criticize any Bond movie for being predictable, having a stupid, convoluted plot, and bad acting and you'll get the same response -- "Nobody is going to a Bond flick to see great acting or artistic cinematography, etc...It's just about having fun!" The Deacon proves my point in the Feedback Forum when he mentions a time that the two of us, along with Eric and a few other chums, went to see the first Pierce Brosnan effort, 'Goldeneye', when we shared a flat together in London. Here's how he tells it: "...during the pre-credits sequence Adam actually says out loud - "No Way!" when Bond motocycles off the cliff and skydives into a plane -- I mean really, who questions the astrophysics of a Bond movie?" So there you have it. You can't criticize any of the ridiculous stunts in a Bond movie because, well, that's what a Bond movie is all about. As pure entertainment goes, you could do a lot worse than 'Die Another Day' -- like, say, 'XXX'. If you believe the hype, then you know that Vin Diesel has supposedly rendered Bond obsolete, but the key difference is that 'XXX' director Rob Cohen is such a terrible filmmaker that he makes any rotating Bond helmer look like Steven Spielberg. There's probably no sense in discussing the plot since every Bond flick essentially follows the same storyline -- Bond thwarts madman bent on world domination -- with new villains and hot chicks rotated in. 'Die' has something to do with North Korea, DNA replacement therapy, a gigantic "laser" that harvests the power of the sun like something out of 'Superman IV', and the more I thought about the plot later, the more I realized how little sense it actually made. But again, who goes to a Bond film for a sensible plot? One thing I did like about 'Die' is that we get to see a haggard, torutured James Bond; one who actually thinks he is about to die. I don't know, but I'm guessing that's a first for the franchise. And for what it's worth, I think it's possible that Brosnan is, in fact, the best Bond ever, despite all those so-called purists who say "Sean Connery" simply because they think it makes them cool to do so. But Brosnan brings a certain acuteness and intelligence to Bond that none of his predecessors had. Furthermore, unlike Roger Moore and Timothy Dalton, Brosnan is a halfway-decent actor. I also didn't mind the token madman, a rich egomaniac named Gustav Graves, played by Toby Stephens. (Which reminds me...during our time in London, Eric, The Deacon and I saw Mr. Stephens on stage playing Shakespeare's 'Coriolanus'. He's a talented actor, though he playes Graves with the same childish temperament that he imbued Coriolanus with. As our former English prof, the venerable Ed Moore, so aptly put it: "Coriolanus doesn't CRY!!") Among my criticisms: 1) With a few more performances such as her turn here as Jinx, an American spy who teams up with Bond, Halle Berry may just deserve to have her Oscar taken away. She's just plain awful trying -- laboring, I shold say -- to play a sexy, bad-ass. It's like you can see the strings attached to her mouth as she talks, especially through all of the sexual innuendo which Brosnan has mastered. I've heard talk about spinning her character off into her own series and I personally think this is a great idea because the Unintentional Comedy potential would be unlimited. 2) The token goofy-looking henchman, Zao (Rick Yune), has a properly goofy look -- shaved head, albino skin, bright blue eyes with fragments of shrapnel stuck in his face -- but so what? He's not nearly scary enough as he doesn't really boast any interesting fighting skills. 3) Finally, as much I hate to fall back on this criticism, can anyone honestly say that at 2 hours 10 minutes the movie isn't at least 20 minutes too long? There came a point after one of the big set pieces -- and all this movie is is brief moments of dialogue stuck inbetween large set pieces -- where I simply didn't care what was going to happen next. I felt a little like Malcolm McDowell in 'A Clockwork Orange' after his little forced viewing session. 'Die Another Day' didn't excite or offend; it just left me numb.
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