Review: Tomorrow Never Dies

James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) teams up with Chinese secret agent Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh) to take down media baron Elliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce), who is trying to start a war between Britain and China for profit and ratings boosts (He wants his services broadcast in China). A personal beef between Bond and Carver comes in the form of his sultry wife Paris (Teri Hatcher, looking immaculate), a former lover of Bond’s. Gotz Otto plays Carver’s chief torturer Mr. Stamper, Ricky Jay is Carver’s tech whiz Gupta, and Vincent Schiavelli plays efficient if pompous hitman Dr. Kaufman. Look for cameos by a chubby Hugh Bonneville, Gerard Butler, and Michael Byrne.

This good-looking 1997 Roger Spottiswoode (The solid “Deadly Pursuit”, the mediocre “Tango & Cash”, the dreadful “Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot”, and the not-bad “The 6^th Day”) flick was the first Bond movie I ever saw, followed closely by “Dr. No”, which is my favourite Bond film. I liked it then and it’s still one of my favourite Bond films, and certainly the best of the Pierce Brosnan entries.

The gun barrel theme is hardly the series best, but after Eric Serra’s disastrous score for “GoldenEye”, composer David Arnold (“ID4”, “Shaft”, “Quantum of Solace”) is at least smart enough not to dick around much with what works. He gives us the standard version minus the guitar. I’m a staunch anti-smoker, but Bond chastising someone for their ‘filthy habit’ reminded me too much of the PC stuff that was a little too heavy-handed in the previous “GoldenEye”. Still, the Russian/Nuclear missiles-themed opening scene is certainly action-packed and Brosnan once again proves to be the next best thing to Connery. Unfortunately, whilst k.d. Lang’s brilliant ‘Surrender’ (written by Arnold) is relegated to the end credits, we get the pretentious Sheryl Crow attempting and failing to be sultry, singing one of the worst Bond songs of all-time (And it wasn’t written by Arnold). That decision was a real cock-up, most people tend to agree in hindsight that Lang’s song is vastly superior and certainly more Bond-esque. Crow is embarrassing, you’re much better suited to singing about diners and Malibu barflies or whatever the fuck that song was about, sweetie. You ain’t Shirley Bassey. The titles design is an interesting screen-based montage that deserved a better musical accompaniment.

It’s pretty obvious early on what the film’s chief flaw is: Jonathan Pryce. Playing Stromberg from “The Spy Who Loved Me” re-imagined as Rupert Murdoch, the idea of the character is actually clever. In fact, it’s still quite a relevant character today. Lacking in any menace, panache, physical threat, or compelling psychosis, Pryce’s performance is lightweight and not very convincing. His piss-take of Wai Lin’s martial arts is also embarrassing and should’ve been resigned to the cutting room floor. Watching Pryce you can’t help but wonder what Malcolm McDowell, Tim Curry, Terence Stamp (who should’ve played Pryce’s role in “Something Wicked This Way Comes” if you ask me, Pryce wasn’t any good there either), or even David Thewlis would’ve been like in the role. Tim Curry as a Bond villain is one of cinema’s real missed opportunities I think. Apparently Sir Anthony Hopkins was initially cast but walked early on due to the pressure of the shoot. I was going to say he’d be much better than Pryce, but he played a slightly similar role in “Freejack” and was pretty terrible in it, so maybe not. To be fair, it’s not entirely Pryce’s fault, as the character seems to have been written in a half-hearted, half-kidding fashion that doesn’t work. He’s almost like a “Batman” villain, just less outlandish. Is Pryce’s Carver a bad Bond villain? No, just not an especially memorable one in a film that otherwise happens to bring a lot to the table. In fact, I’d still place him ahead of the likes of Goldfinger, Largo, Drax, Zorin, and a couple of others. But he does hurt the film and prevent it from being even better than it is.

Picking up Pryce’s slack are the Bond Girls, and they’re a pretty solid pair if you’ll excuse the irresistible pun. Teri Hatcher was (and still is) rumoured to be a nightmare to work with, but as Carver’s mistress and Bond’s ex Paris Carver she’s a bit underrated. Apparently the producers turned down Monica Bellucci for the part (a decision both Pierce Brosnan and myself find insane), but Hatcher’s fine all the same. Although “Heaven’s Prisoners” showed us they were real but not spectacular, Hatcher’s still gorgeous and the only drawback is that she’s not in the film enough. You’ll still remember her though, which isn’t something you can always say about a Bond Girl. Even better is Hong Kong actress Michelle Yeoh in her Western breakthrough role. Well, it would’ve been a breakthrough if Hollywood had followed up with anything much with her. I’m still pissed that she’s never quite broken out, especially when she’s absolutely a scene-stealer here. Fuck you to whoever is responsible for it not happening. Hell, she runs off with the whole film here, one of the best Bond Girls of all-time. They’ve tried to give Bond a female equal before in films like “For Your Eyes Only” and “Licence to Kill”, but in my view Carole Bouquet and Carey Lowell have been at the bottom of the list of Bond Girls. Here with Ms. Yeoh, they’ve gotten it right, she’s my third favourite Bond Girl of all-time behind Ursula Andress and Dame Diana Rigg. An obvious experienced hand in the action department (she does most of her own stunts), a looker in the er…looks department, she can also act considerably well too. She has it all, and her Wai Lin is one of the series’ most memorable and accomplished female characters. Like Hatcher’s Paris Carver, Yeoh’s Wai Lin probably isn’t in the film as much as you’d like, and there’s not exactly a great deal of romantic chemistry between her and Bond, but you do wish the series had kept her on as a character. If she and Brosnan’s Bond were able to be paired up in future films, perhaps they’d develop that romantic chemistry. I’m not even sure if that’s entirely important though.

Journeyman director Spottiswoode proves to be a good director of action and Yeoh serves him and the film (which moves at a better clip than “GoldenEye” and is mercifully much shorter) well in that department. There’s a really fun motorbike scene with a handcuffed 007 and Wai Lin that proves to be one of the best action scenes in the entire franchise. Wai Lin even deploys a throwing star at one point. A throwing star, people. Come on, how can you not love that? The best bit though, is a brilliant action scene where Wai Lin truly does show that she’s every bit as capable (possibly more so) in a fight. About 10 guys are set upon here, and whilst Bond takes his sweet arse time racing to help her, he manages to…stop the last guy after Wai Lin has already kicked everyone else’s arse singlehandedly. Great stuff, especially if you enjoy martial arts. She makes Carole Bouquet and Carey Lowell look like tomboy pretenders.

While I’m not entirely impressed with Jonathan Pryce’s villainy, a couple of henchmen do their bit to help out. Gotz Otto gets to follow in the fine tradition of Aryan Bond henchmen as the muscle-bound, square-jawed Mr. Stamper. He’s not brilliant but he does prove to be a more than decent physical menace. Even better is the late, great Vincent Schiavelli in a performance that almost steals the show from Yeoh. Playing Carver-aligned expert marksman and assassin Dr. Kaufman, Schiavelli plays the part predominantly for laughs and in his one scene he certainly gets them. Some may not like that it’s a comedic performance, but he’s unforgettable and one of my favourite henchmen in the entire franchise. Legendary magician and actor Ricky Jay is fine too, but isn’t given a whole lot to do. In small turns, look out for the always enthusiastic Joe Don Baker returning once again as CIA man Jack Wade, and the great Al Mathews still playing military hard arses ten years after “Aliens” as a Master Sergeant here.

Dame Judi Dench returns as M, and even gets to act alongside her TV husband Geoffrey Palmer, playing Admiral Roebuck. Dench and Samantha Bond as Miss Moneypenny have grown into their roles by this point, helped by screenwriter Bruce Feirstein (“GoldenEye”, “The World is Not Enough”) not going so heavy-handed on the PC/feminism angle. Moneypenny is much less snippy and more flirty this time around. The writers clearly learned their lesson from the previous film, though they set it up enough in the previous film that they don’t need to worry about it as much this time anyway. I appreciate what they were going for in the previous film, but they tried too hard. Here the characters and dialogue feel more natural and less indicative of the writers’ agenda. Desmond Llewellyn’s Q is in perfect form, a funny scene for him here.

As for our hero, Pierce Brosnan gives for me the best of his performances in the character. He’s cynical, jaded, and apparently a bit of a biter in the sack. In all seriousness, he plays the hard edge to the character without forgetting to be suave, romantic, sexy, funny, and cool. He really is the heir apparent to Sir Sean. I like that his Bond has zero problems killing a sumabitch. That’s something Roger Moore was clearly never comfortable with. That’s fine, he knew what he was good at and what he wasn’t. However, I prefer my Bond to have a bit of everything, and that means having a Licence to Kill. The film also boasts one of my favourite Bond cars, the tricked-up, female-voiced (!), remote-controlled BMW leads to one of the more interesting and hair-raising action scenes in a Bond film. Even the one-liners in this one are a significant upgrade from previous films, aside from the groan-worthy smoking line and M’s eye-rolling ‘Don’t ask, Don’t tell’. I particularly liked the one about ‘hostile takeovers’ from Yeoh’s Wai Lin, and of course Moneypenny’s infamous accreditation to Bond’s linguistic skills will always get a chuckle out of me. The score from Arnold contains a bit too much techno for my liking, in that it contains techno to begin with. There’s really not that much, thankfully. However, the one thing that makes Arnold a good Bond composer is that his scores are always eclectic enough to include something for everyone, and he always finds opportunities to play the classics. Like me, he loves the twangy guitar on the Bond theme. He even manages to incorporate a few notes of k.d. Lang’s end song towards the end, leading into the song itself. That was nice, and it’s a mostly traditional Bond score.

Slick-looking, action-packed, relatively brief Bond adventure is one of the best in my view. The villain isn’t much chop, but just about everything else works here and the pace never lags. Michelle Yeoh is an absolute star. Shame they didn’t reverse the order of the Bond songs, though.

Rating: B-