Tomorrow Never Dies

(Here be spoilers if you are yet to see the James Bond movies...)

The Mission
James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) is given 48 hours to investigate the murder of British sailors by the Chinese army in the South China Sea. He's pointed in the direction of Elliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce), a media entrepeneur whose news outlets had the story in record time, and soon finds himself racing against time to avert WW3.

Jimmy Bond Yo!
Brosnan continues to give a confident and charming performance as the steely-nerved secret agent, evidently enjoying himself as he hits a real stride. He gets to push the 'Bond range' a little, especially in the scene where he discovers Paris' body or when he's put into increasingly dangerous situations. He even actually screams (the first Bond scream?) when he falls down the side of a skyscraper.

M (Judi Dench) says it's Bond's job to be heroic, highlighting the character's professionalism in the face of adversity. His codename is 'White Knight' and he's seen in his naval uniform when rendezvousing with American forces. He seems to be more reckless than ever, mostly just because he enjoys it - no matter how dire the situation he never gives up and always finds a way out. He knowingly quips that smoking is a "filthy habit" (highlighting the modernisation of previously broke off his relationship with her because she got too close.

Bond knows about Carver by reputation, and aggravates the media mogul by making puns about his suspected criminal activities. He seems rather pleased about being able to drive his car by remote control without any practice, and later takes great delight in completely destroying the car altogether. He drinks straight vodka to wind down.

Villainy
Elliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce) is a news magnate planning to launch a groundbreaking satellite media network. The only problem is that his lust for being the first to report tragic news drives him to invent and manipulate grounds for a war between China and the UK. He does this by orchestrating a faux-Chinese attack on a British ship in the South China Sea, and then uses his unprecedented access to the event to break and control the news on it. He openly wants to dominate the media as a turant of information, and compares himself to William Randolph Hearst (though a more accurate comparison would be Robert Maxwell or Rupert Murdoch). He embraces tragedy with gleeful abandon, has no regard for human life, and is possibly the smarmiest villain Bond has ever had to face down. Jonathan Pryce portrays him as a stereotypical "little man", and comes across as almost comical at times (witness the scene where he racistly impersonates Wai Lin).

Carver's main associates are Henry Gupta (Ricky Jay); an elite techno-terrorist for-hire, Stamper (Gotz Otto); a tall, blond German thug who fulfills the stereotype of your usual Bond villain's henchman, Dr. Kaufman (Vincent Schiavelli); an eccentric hitman who's also a forensic professor, and General Chang (Philip Kwok); a rogue Chinese General who wants to go to war with the UK for unspecified reasons (this character barely features, he's just referenced toe xplain the presence of the Chinese agent Wai Lin).

Of these characters, Dr. Kaufman stands out the most - professional, ameniable, and evidently of a more well-bred background than most Bond thugs. He's played by the gaunt and under-utilised character actor Vincent Schiavelli, who unfortunately only gets one (memorable) scene.

Buddies and Babes
Michelle Yeoh leads the supporting cast as Wai Lin, a Chinese agent investigating the same incident as Bond. She's more of less Bond's spy-equivalent, echoing Amasova's role in The Spy Who Loved Me, though their relationship isn't as developed and Wai Lin comes across as a lot more professional. Lin is amused by Bond and says she grew up in a rough neighbourhood, she repeatedly tells him "not to get any funny ideas" but eventually warms to him after he saves her life. Unsurprisingly (as she's played by Michelle Yeoh), she's no slouch when it comes to martial arts.

Teri Hatcher appears as Paris, Carver's trophy wife and a former girlfriend of Bond's. She looks the part but her role is fairly underdeveloped and she doesn't really have any chemistry with Brosnan. She's trapped in a loveless marriage and turns informer on her husband once Bond re-ignites their relationship.

M has softened a little (but not much) since her appearance in GoldenEye. She resents the military taking over her operation in the film's prologue, and has an antagonistic working-relationship with her military counterpart, Admiral Roebuck (Geoffrey Palmer). She's more protective of Bond this time around - now a firm believer in his great abilities as an MI6 operative.

Moneypenny (Samantha Bond) now has a rather mannish haircut that makes her look less attractive, and both her and M enjoy making double entendres regarding Bond's sexual prowess, suggesting the political correctness of their workplace has softened a little since GoldenEye. Q (Desmond Llewelyn) appears undercover as a car rental insurance man, and whows an affectionate level of irritation when dealing with Bond. Llewelyn is starting to really show his age at this point.

CIA agent Jack Wade (Joe Don Baker), previously seen in GoldenEye, once again fills the void left by Felix Leiter but it's a fairly thankless cameo. He still wears loud hawaiian shirts and has an overly familiar manner.


Locations
The film's prologue is set somewhere near the Russian border (but actually filmed in France), and a lot of the film's remaining time is divided up between Hamburg, Germany (which barely registers as an exotic location) and Vietnam. The Vietnam sequences look great and are a lot of fun (bustling city streets, shanty buildings and such) but are actually filmed in Thailand.

Gadgets and Tricks of the Trade
Bond gets given his most amazing car yet - a talking BMW equipped with machine guns, rockets, GP3, gas sprays, metal jacks that burst tires, and a wire-cutting device. The car also comes with a remote control and tires that re-inflate. The wire-cutter is probably a step too far in terms of believability... the way that it's used seems way to specific. It pops up to cut a single wire but really, how can such a situation be foreseen by Q division? And even if they did forsee it, how did they know what height the wire would be at?

The car's remote control device also doubles as a mobile phon and can deploy an electric shock designed to short circuit electronic locks. Bond also has a watch that can activate special grenades by remote control.

Licence to Kill
Lots. 007 blows up scores of mercenaries in the prologue but, to be fair, they're all about to be blown up anyway by a British strike so it barely counts. During the same mission he also ejects a man out of his plane, causing an enemy plane to explode. He later drops a guy into a printing press, shoots Dr. Kaufman at point blank, and machine guns at least two men in Carver's Vietnamese office. Whilst trying to escape a helicopter in the streets of Saigon he causes it to explode - killing at least 3 or 4 people. During the final two-man raid on Carver's stealth boat he machine guns at least 6 to 8 men. He also fires their own mini-missiles at them but it's hard to tell how many die in the resulting explosions. Finally, he kills Carver rather brutally with a torpedo-sized drilling device, and pins Stamper's leg under a missle that later explodes.

Shag-Rate
Bond is seen getting coital with a Danish professor (Cecilie Thomsen) near the film's beginning. He later gets with his old flame Paris when they re-meet after a long absence. He then rounds off the trifecta by finally warming Wai Lin's cold 'commie' heart in the wreckage of Carver's stealth-ship, with the film fading out as they embrace.

Quotes
LIN: Trapped.
BOND: Never.

RUSSIAN OFFICER (referring to stolen Russian equipment): There's enough plutonium in there to make Chernobyl look like picnic.
ADMIRAL ROEBACK: Bloody hell, can't you people keep anything locked up?

CARVER: The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.

ADMIRAL ROEBACK: With all due respect, sometimes I don't think you have the balls for this job.
M: Perhaps. The advantage is I don't have to think with them all the time.

CARVER: There's no news like bad news.
PARIS (to Bond): You know, this job of yours - it's murder on relationships.

BOND (on phone, while laying with foxy Danish professor): I'm just up here in Oxford, brushing up on a little Danish.
PROFESSOR INGA BERGSTROM: Little?
MONEYPENNY (on other end of phone): You always were a cunning linguist James.

Q: I am not interested in your sordid escapades!

BOND (after dropping guy into a printing press): They'll print anything these days.

WADE (on behalf of the U.S.): We have no interest in WW3, unless we start it.

PARIS: Tell me James, do you still sleep with a gun under your pillow?

How Does It Rate?
Tomorrow Never Dies continues the franchise's exploration of James Bonds' transition into the modern world. The political correctness and psycho-analysis is toned down to make way for an examination of concepts like media manipulation and 'techno-terrorism' (or particular note is the film's exciting title sequence, which mxies the modern with the kitsch to create a kind of Bond techno chic). Carver represents a new order of villainy where "words are the new weapons, satellites the new artillery", helping push the Bond series into some fresh territory. This is apparent right from the outset, opening on a shot of an enemy base shown through digital surveillance footage.

On the downside, Tomorrow Never Dies lacks the wow-factor of GoldenEye. It breaks some new ground but som aspects just don't work as well as they should It was a nice touch to show Carver already ankle-deep in his deadly plans for media domination, and we get lots of shots of his silhouetted profile alone in half-lit rooms full of TV screen. But whilst this last part suggests a level fo menace appropriate to a Bond super-villain, Pryce's characterisation of this man as comical victom to a pathological inferiority complex doesn't really reconcile with what the director seems to want from him.

It's not a poor Bond film by any stretch though, it has a sense of fun about it and contains not one but two highly inventive chase sequences (including some very dangerous and convincing-looking stuntwork involving a motorbike and a helicopter). It's easily the second-best Brosnan Bond film. Yeoh might just also be the first case of a Bond girl being cast for reasons other than her looks too, with her martial arts skills put to considerable use. The 'kiss' between her character and Bond at the film's climax is a great heroic (and slightly mythic) moment for 007 as well.

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DIRECTOR: Roger Spotswoodie
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Bruce Feirstein. Based on the characters created by Ian Fleming.
KEY ACTORS: Pierce Brosnan, Jonathan Pryce, Michelle Yeoh, Judi Dench, Teri Hatcher, Gotz Otto, Samantha Bond, Desmond Llewelyn, Vincent Schiavelli, Geoffrey Palmer, Charles Salmon, Ricky Jay, Joe Don Baker.

RELATED TEXTS:
- Well, I think the film it owes the most to is obviously GoldenEye. The success of the previous James Bond film meant that the creative team were keen to repeat that success, so not much is changed in terms of formula.
- For further Bond Vs. Red Asia shenanigans, see Die Another Day.

AWARDS
Golden Globes - nominated Best Original Song.