director
Roger Spottiswoode
screenwriter
Bruce Feirstein
based
on characters created by
Ian Fleming
producers
Barbara Broccoli
Michael G. Wilson
cinematographer
Robert Elswit
music
David Arnold
editors
Michel Arcand
Dominique Fortin
cast
Pierce Brosnan (James Bond)
Jonathan Pryce (Elliot Carver)
Michelle Yeoh (Colonel Wai-Lin)
Teri Hatcher (Paris Carver)
Ricky Jay (Henry Gupta)
Joe Don Baker (Jack Wade)
Vincent Schiavelli (Dr. Kaufman)
Judi Dench (M)
Desmond Llewelyn (Q)
Samantha Bond (Miss Moneypenny)
mpaa rating: PG-13
running
time: 119m
u.s.
release: 12/19/97
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
other james
bond films
reviewed on this website:
- casino
royale (2006)
- die another day
- goldeneye
- the world is not enough
|
Late
in Tomorrow Never Dies, the eighteenth James Bond film,
my familiar question at every Bond movie arose -- though it was
my friend, not me, who posed it. When Bond (Pierce Brosnan) and
his new sidekick Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh) had just finished mapping
out their strategy, my friend turned to me and said, "Okay,
I'm lost -- what are they gonna do?" Then he answered
his own question: "They're gonna go stop the bad guys."
Maybe I'm slow, but one of many reasons I'm not a big Bond fan
is precisely this: the writers concoct complicated plots (Who's
in cahoots with whom? What country are we in now? What exactly
does the arch-villain want?) to cover the fact that the
007 films are just a bunch of stunts strung together.
So, okay: As a bunch of stunts strung together, Tomorrow Never
Dies isn't bad. The series has found a serviceable 007 in
Brosnan, who doesn't make Timothy Dalton's mistake of taking
these films too seriously. At the same time, this series serves
as a depressing commentary on the state of megabudget action
fare: As the genre has gotten cruder and more brutal, so have
the Bond films. Long dead is the elegance found in Sean Connery's
slow-moving but still entertaining 007 entries. The series has
reached the point where a Bond film's simplest, most satisfying
moment comes when good old Q (Desmond Llewellyn) breaks out his
cool gadgets.
Partly, too, Mike Myers is to blame. I find it hard to buy into
007, even on his own outrageous, borderline campy terms, after
Austin Powers so thoroughly
lampooned Bond and his imitators. This movie's Dr. Evil is Jonathan
Pryce as Elliot Carver, a media mogul who likes to provoke wars
and then command full media coverage of the carnage. These post-Cold
War villains are getting rather sad, their motivations progressively
bland. (No recent Bond villain has matched Adrian Veidt in Alan
Moore's 1986 comic book Watchmen, who killed off half
of New York with a fake alien landing in order to avert nuclear
war.) And let's face it: as a target for satire, the media is
so riddled with holes by now that it whistles in a strong wind.
Bond reacquaints himself with old flame Teri Hatcher, who --
well, don't get too attached to her, put it that way. He also
benefits (as does the movie) from the two-fisted help of Michelle
Yeoh, an international superstar who gained U.S. cred two summers
ago in Supercop. It's great
to see Yeoh, but it's also a little discouraging to see her playing
a sidekick, however skilled and autonomous, to some mere guy.
Give this powerful woman her own movie and let a guy be her
sidekick.
Tomorrow Never Dies was directed with no particular flair
by Roger Spottiswoode, a once-promising talent (Under Fire)
who has resigned himself to impersonal Hollywood stuff. His staging
of the action sequences is competent but lacks the snap Martin
Campbell brought to GoldenEye.
Perhaps the series' most valuable addition is Bruce Feirstein,
the humorist who wrote Real Men Don't Eat Quiche and has
also worked on the last two Bonds. Feirstein lets characters
like Q and Bond's supervisor M (Dame Judi Dench, a welcome injection
of cool, intelligent estrogen in this testosterone-drunk series)
roll their eyes at Bond's fixation on gadgets, derring-do, and
womanizing.
As for that media-evil villain: For a while, Jonathan Pryce seems
to be having fun hamming it up, but past a certain point he can't
come up with anything fresh, and his performance sputters out.
Comparably esteemed British actors can drop into a piece of Hollywood
entertainment, relax, and amuse us by amusing themselves (Anthony
Hopkins and Jeremy Irons come to mind); perhaps Pryce has trouble
letting himself go. He outclasses the movie, and I felt that
the vulgar way he's killed off (c'mon, I'm not giving anything
away; maybe tomorrow never dies, but Bond villains always do)
is fairly insulting. If a villain lives by the media, he should
die by the media, not by some big stupid thing that looks like
Pac-Man on steroids. |