Mission Summary

While on a diamond smuggling mission in North Korea, James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) is set up by someone in MI6 and is captured and held for 14 months. He is released in a trade for North Korean prisoner Zao (Rick Yune), and Bond is disavowed from MI6. He begins his search for Zao in Havana and discovered he is being financed by diamond mogul Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens). With the help of NSA agent Jinx (Halle Berry), Bond uncovers a bigger plot in Iceland than just smuggling African conflict diamonds.

Analysis

Rank: 13

As the 20^th Bond film and released 40 years after "Dr. No," this film was supposed to please both young and old Bond fans. However, it seems that the writers managed to upset both groups at the same time. While I appreciated the references to the previous 19 films (there is a list on the IMDB), it seemed forced at times and really unnecessary. This film also marked a bunch of "firsts" for the franchise and for the mot part, I found them disappointing as well.

As is the case with most of the later films, the plot of this film is pretty complicated. Whatever happened to Bond battling a larger-than-life villain over world domination? The first half of the film is basically setting up the second half, and as a result, it switches locations way too fast and characters appear and are gone in the next scene. On the flip side, the few minutes the cast spent in those locations were fabulous and haven't been used previously: North Korea, Havana and Iceland.

For all the pitfalls of the modern Bond film, you can never complain about lack of action. On the whole, they were pretty good this time around, with the pre-credits sequence on hovercrafts being especially cool. The car chase on ice was a novel idea, but the fact that Zao's car had gadgets like Bond's car ruined the enjoyment of Bond eluding the henchmen. Also, this was the first Bond film to use computer-generated effects, where all previous stunts were performed by humans and made the films much more exciting. The sequence where Bond water-skis with a parachute clearly used CGI and it looks awful and out of place. You'd think that the producers would make it look realistic, but it looks like it belongs in some B-level action movie. The stunts in the Bond series have been responsible for making the franchise on of the most successful in history and to see CGI make its ugly debut was disappointing and upsetting.

A lot was made about casting Berry as a Bond girl and how brining in an Academy Award-winning actress would bring a sense of respectability to the film. While she is talented as well as beautiful, she unjustly steals the spotlight from Brosnan, which isn't supposed to happen to Bond. Brosnan's final turn as Bond was a decent performance, and the sequence where he was tortured in North Korea was about as much emotion as we've ever seen from him. Sadly, this was the first film since "Dr. No" not to feature Desmond Llewelyn as gadget-master "Q," who was replaced by John Cleese. I really liked the character Miranda Frost (Rosamund Pike) and found her more interesting than Berry's Jinx character. Lastly, Stephens' portrayal of Graves was reminiscent of the charismatic villains of the Connery days and was a welcome flashback.

In what was dubbed the anniversary Bond film, it deviates more from the standard mold than honoring old traditions and failing for the most part. I really didn't like how this film was really the first "buddy" film, where Bond shares screen time with an ally and almost felt like a Berry vehicle for future projects. I think many fans felt the way I did and that's what the producers decided to dump Brosnan and look for a new direction for the franchise.