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Die Another Day (Widescreen Special Edition)

Die Another Day (Widescreen Special Edition)

List Price: $14.95
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Don't die another day... do it now!
Review: This is one of the worst Bond movies I have ever seen. The plot was not all that bad, which is why I give it two stars, but the acting... my God, could it be any worse? I mean, Halle Berry had won an Oscar a year ago: why did she need to take on such a lame role? Sure she's got the looks, and she looks great, but that's about it: the dialogues between her and Brosnan are stuck in the same place of those cheesy ambiguous conversations between the super-agent and former Bond girls, only that it's been 20 movies now, and we're in 2003.

There are a few pieces of contemporary action with effects that go in line with today's technology, yes. But what's up with the Robocop suit the villain wears toward the end? Or the Darth Vader-like performance??? All in all, it was a waste of money. You're better off going with some of the earlier Sean Connery Bond movies, if you absolutely must see one of these. Don't die another day, Bond... do it now, please!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A good romp, but only halfway through
Review: First off, I'm not a die hard Bond fan. I dont memorize every single line in the movies, or own the entire series on DVD. Nor am I a complete non Bond fan who says, "M who?" I'm in the middle of the fan world.

I was very curious to see how Bonds 20th adventure would turn out. So we got the DVD, popped it in, and watched the film. It was good, but I have serious gripes about the first half of the film.

First off, the first half of the movie is quite dissapointing for me. Bond infiltrates North Korea to do...well...uh...stop some evil rich kid from getting diamonds...I think. Then of course, things go wrong and he defeats approximatly 140 million bad guys with exposions, mines, flame throwers, and machine guns going off like mad, and of course he gets through it withought a scratch. Then things go terriably wrong, and he is in a sense, betrayed by his agency. Then he decides to go on a quest for revenge.

During his quest, Bond travels to exotic locales, such as North Korea, Hong Kong, Cuba, Spain, Britan, and Iceland. However, his trips to the first 5 places are quite boring (Aside from Korea). Yes, there are guns, explosions, and semi-naked women, but they just dont feel right. The lab fight in Cuba seems kind of put on, and is there just to fill time. Liekwise, the sword fight in Britan seems to go on for...ev....er.

However, the 2nd act of the movie (Which begins when Bond heads to Iceland) really makes up for the rest of the film. Here, the action sequences dont feel tackled on, and are exciting to watch. The car chase is really cool, along with the Uber-ray of death.(Really cool). The location for the final action scene (Which I wont ruin here), is one of the best in the series, rivaling the nuclear sub at the end of the last move, and the action that takes place is top notch.

Hale Berry does a good job as the agent Jinx, and does quite well for a supporting charachter, especially during a sword fight. She also has some funny lines, ("I guess we'll die rich!"). The main villians are boo hiss types, and do a good job at being evil. John Cleese also does a bang up job as Q, and is quite funny. The special effects are quite good, especially near the end, with explosions galore. I also enjoyed all the refrences to previous films (Lasers, hovercraft, etc.)

However, there are some severe flaws in logic and other things. For example, if the sun is approximatly 1.9 trillion degrees in temperature, then how come its heat (Minor story spoiler) cannot melt the ice palace in seconds? (End minor story spoiler). The dialoge can also be a bit hard to understand in places withought subtitles. And Bonds mission at the begining of the movie is never really explained. What was he supposed to do?

Overall, the first half of the film is a bit of a dissapointment, but the 2nd act of the movie really makes up for it. I would recomend this move for action fans, and Bond fans alike.

The good:

Lots of explosions, guns, and semi naked women
Phenominal final action sequence
Halle Berry is good as Jinx
lots of locations

The not so good:
First half of movie is dissapointing
some dialoge is a bit hard to understand
at times, the action scenes can reach a "Yeah right" level
some wierd logic flaws involving big hot death rays

Summary:
The second half is great, but the first half is not so good.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Bond Movie
Review: I got a chance the other day to see the new James Bond movie, Die Another Day. I thought it was great. Halle Berry was a great costar, obviously; she also has legit action movie credentials, having been in the X-Men movies. I haven't actually seen a lot of Bond movies, but I think this one generally fit the bill: sexy ladies, car chases, gadgets, goof-ups, miraculous finishes and the like. Generally entertaining, although a bit long at two hours and twenty minutes. There was a cameo by Madonna (which I didn't understand; she was in the movie for all of 2 minutes, what's the point?), as well as John Cleese, who made a short but hilarious impact on the film. Incidentally, I think Pierce Brosnan is a great Bond; before he even got the part, that was how I generally pictured him in my mind.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Winning is all that Counts these Days
Review: Two discs and counting. After two very good James Bond films, TOMORROW NEVER DIES and THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH which gave greater depth into the motivations and psyche of 007, DIE ANOTHER DAY comes off as a major disappointment. Brosnan as 007, after several good scenes, is turned into a spectator and takes backseat to a barrage of shoddy looking computer generated special effects depicting car chases, tidal waves, explosions and the like. Toby Stephens as Gustav Graves is one of the weakest villains thus far and Halle Berry as Jinx is one of the most unappealing Bond girls to date. Berry's approach to her character lacks femininity and more importantly lacks a sense of morality in carrying out her mission. Apparently, it is no longer a factor of how you play the game. Winning is all that counts these days. That's part of what's wrong with this film. James Bond has always been a blunt instrument of his government but there was always a sense of gallantry in how he carried out the mission. It's not that Bond has given up these qualities, but instead the film suppresses them in a glossy world where winner takes all. This approach actually undermines the notion that James Bond is supposed to be the hero of this film. The character of James Bond is relegated to being just one of the set pieces, just a cog in the works. The 2 disc set does make it all a little more easy to go down. The movie does seem to play better on tv, however the extras are just not that special.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Brosnan's best since Goldeneye
Review: I'm a really huge fan of goldeneye, but what can I say other than it kicks butt...As for this movie it ties with Goldeneye. I admit that the past Pierce Brosnan movies haven't been that great but don't let this movie fool you. It's a great action/adventure filled with a BUNCH of extras, deleted scenes, etc. As for the story line, alot of it is unrealistic but its worth watching. Although I can do without Madonnas theme song which really gets annoying after awhile but thats what the fast forward button is for. It's definately worth buying if your a Bond fan or just getting into the Bond movies.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: The elements are there, but ....
Review: But the whole package doesn't seem to satisfy. What made the other Bond films succeed is not just the action, but the style. And it's getting increasingly hard to find style in the Bond series. There are some reasons for this:

First, Pierce Brosnan. Whatever else can be said about Roger Moore, it never really seemed like he was trying too hard: to be cool, ruthless, sexy, etc. With Brosnan, you always get the sense that he's trying too hard. His face grits and contorts and the viewer thinks, okay, we get it; you're a tough guy. Moore (who never really received the credit he deserved) understood that less was more.

Connery is, of course, Connery. And even George Lazenby was kind of funny. "This never happened to the other fellah." Timothy Dalton, I'll admit, lacked the presence necessary to the Bond franchise. But I'd rank Brosnan behind the rest.

Second, a lack of imagination. For example, in Die Another Day, I'd hoped for a bit of interesting, dark quirkiness when I saw Michael "Mr. Blonde" Madsen. But no, he was totally wasted and not one good line came out of him, I suspect, for fear that it would upstage Brosnan. Halle Berry was also pretty much wasted. Her portrayal as the American agent "Cleopatra Jones" like Jinx was one note and bordered on insulting. ("Your mama!")

And the foreplay dialogue between her and Bond was just witless. Grown people in the act of seduction simply do not talk like that. Even in a movie that's more or less fantasy, the dialogue should be believable. Contrast Berry and Brosnan's eye rolling "there's a mouthful" exchange with Connery and the beautiful French agent standing outside the chateau. She says, "Anything else our office can do for you?" And he looks at her as if she were a delectable meal and says with a sly grin, "Later, perhaps." One is subtle and chauvinistic and clever, and the other just makes you groan.

Third, the action.

Swordfight between Bond and badguy could have been better. The director should have studied the swordfight in "The Great Race"; I think it would have been more effective had it been more subtle and spent less time smashing things up. Also, it would have been more effective if Bond simply had not displayed any emotion throughout. As it was, the scene was okay though when badguy grabbed the Japanese sword and ran at Bond I couldn't help but think of those hilarious fights between Inspector Clouseau and Kato in the "Pink Panther" films.

There was something unsatisfying about the car chase too. Beautiful vehicles, but I wish it had been more raw. The gadgets, in my view, always endanger a decent car chase. Too much and it just becomes a matter of you show me yours, I'll show you mine. The best chases in the Bond series almost always don't involve gadget cars. Think of Moore driving the pathetic Citroen in "For Your Eyes Only". He uses his wits in dispatching the bad guys in their considerably more powerful Peugots. Or, picture that small chase with Bond in the stolen Alfa Romeo GTV6 in "Octopussy". Short, but pretty gripping. The problem with high tech Aston Martins is they put all the money and effort into building them and then they're forced to use them to the full in the film to justify the expense.

For my money, I rank the footchase in "For Your Eyes Only" where Bond runs up the steps in the tunnel to cut off the fellah trying to get away in the Mercedes 450SEL as one of the most well choreographed action scenes in all the movies. It ends with Bond catching the man, shooting him through the windshield, then booting him and his disabled car off the cliff. In so doing, it demonstrates what makes Bond Bond. Determined and ruthless when he needs to be. And the scene did not require the use of one gadget.

All in all, the Brosnan Bond films are not bad, per se. But they're lacking overall. I think the producers need to stop and think about changing the formula. In this one, they demonstrated some courage in putting Bond behind bars. But it didn't go anywhere from there. I think it's time for a "From Russia with Love" or "For Your Eyes Only" type bona-fide spy story.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Lost some classics but still exotic to watch.
Review: Without any doubts, Die Another Day is a genuine grand movie by unlimited budget backing up. It is tremendously entertaining for new Bond's fans. This is the 'Bond film by the book,' containing destructive actions, beautiful girls, creative evils and martini. There are few twists to make the movie called 'spy' but they are not enoungh to a classic Bond.
Halle Berry is very sexy and very American just as director Tamahori wanted her to be. Rosamund Pike is 'gorgeous' but too innocently beautiful to be an evil lady if to be compared with Sophie Marceau in The World is Not Enough (that's why it's out of print). Picture and sound qualities are perfect, the dvd comes with 6.1 sound. Overall this dvd is worth adding to your collection.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Unbelievable? How dare you call it unbelievable!
Review: As with any Bond movie, the film/fan community's pretty split on "Die Another Day," which for me was way too much sex, not enough foreplay. If the movie's villain wants undergo radical, identity changing plastic surgery, fine. But don't give us a marbled-mouthed Cuban exporter whom we can hardly understand to explain it.

Things just....happen in this Bond movie. And they happen for more than two hours. The movie is one event after another, no time for drinks or golf, or even gadgets; whereas Q (now John Cleese) used to get a full ten minutes or so to show us the spy stuff, he now only gets three shoehorned in. Even Moneypenny (Samantha Bond) gets tossed aside. We might as well not even have a second Bond girl in the movie; although there is one in Miranda Frost (Rosamund Pike) she does little more than look guilty and keep score.

And for whom were they pushed out of the picture? Why, Halle Berry, who looks fantastic but hasn't spoken such stupid dialogue since "B.A.P.S." Berry plays an American spy named Jinx, although the movie waits a good hour before actually spelling it out. Again, there...just...isn't...any...time...we...must...get...to...the...next...scene.

What is there time for?

Two painfully goony villains in Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens) and Zao (Rick Yune), who are so smug and devoid of humor, or even pathos, that their deaths are a relief, not a release.

A long, drawn-out plot about North Korea, DMZ land mines and a space weapon right out of "Spies Like Us" to blow them up.

The most obligatory, lame sex scenes, especially with Berry, in Bond history, save a 'virtual" tryst between Bond and Moneypenny that actually feels...human.

The worst action scene in a Bond film (that'd be the one where Bond parasails off an iceberg to escape the oncoming tidal wave that was formed....oh, what difference does it make).

Another bitter-beer-face performance from Judi Dench as M.

The longest, most will-it-ever-end car chase sequence I've ever seen (if they go around one more corner of that ice palace...)

It was a terminally boring experience, but the biggest disappointment is Berry, who, when compared to, say, Thandie Newton from "Mission: Impossible 2," looks like she just walked out of stock model factory. There are few women in the world this drop dead beautiful, but numerous interviews over time have shown Berry to be one of the standup, insecure, mannered women of Hollywood (car crash notwithstanding) and she is not particularly well equipped to get down and bawdy like a Bond girl should. Denise Richards was better, for crying out loud.

"Die Another Day" also looks cheap. Why? Was it spent on Berry? On the giant ice palace? What? The CGI certainly isn't worth a salt.

I've left out Pierce Brosnan purposefully, because he seems without much control over this plane crash. The man says his lines, a bit more sternly than he used to, he dances his dance and then fires his gun. The movie opens with Bond's capture in North Korea and his eventual 14-month torture before he's released. He carries that grudge through the whole movie, and never has the role been less fun.

I can appreciate a darker 007. Every so often, it has to go there, as it did in the underrated "License To Kill," which is still the best Bond movie in 20, 25 years. But darker, to me, means a more conventional plot, which "License To Kill" featured (drug lords, vendettas, dark, stormy nights). This Bond is dark, and it's ludicrous. It's like being trapped in the circus house with a bunch of miserable, stiff freaks.

May the series never tread this ground again.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: oh my goodness
Review: when i watch a James Bond movie, i want espionage and for stuff to go boom, but i want something thats at least R E M O T L E Y beliveable. this stuff about invisible cars and massive sattelites that grant its weilder godlike powers is just... no. im sorry, but this is a terrible movie. avoid at all costs. now if you are a die hard james bond fan go cry softly into a pillow.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Pierce Brosnan's reply to the naysayers
Review: So what does Brosnan do in response to "experts" who say he doesn't have what it takes to play James Bond? He makes like an athlete and improves his game. I can't believe people who compare these movies to the Austin Powers series, when it's clear that the Powers flicks are an intentional parody of 007. In this movie, we have a fanatical North Korean Colonel who builds a weapon that isn't a laser, per se--it amplifies solar energy to use as a heat ray. And he uses it to clear the minefield in the DMZ in a way Stalin never considered--Ole Joe said you clear a minefield by marching men through it. There's just one problem, though. The Colonel is son to a high-level General who thinks he's been killed in an earlier commando attack by Bond, but the mainstream Korean military isn't into whatever comes next. For example, what if South Korea asks the U.S. to fire nuclear missiles? There's the usual array of high tech gadgets, like turning Bond's Aston Martin into a stealth car. Also the Colonel's flying jumbo jet command post, but Bond's cold-start of a chopper that he and Jinx escape from the jumbo in freefall defies credibility. John Cleese as Q's successor is just as fussy and has just as low a threshold for Bond's child-at-play treatment of his inventions as the original Q had. Judi Dench as the modern M is still nowhere near as supportive of her agent as the original M was, which means as supportive as she should be. If I had a job as dangerous as Bond's but had a boss as unappreciative as this M, I'd be spending time at placement services between missions. Halle Berry's role as American agent Jinx is a keeper in terms of more Bond films, but as far as a Jinx series, no way. Berry has too many credentials as an actress to settle for what would end up as a B film series that would wind up on USA Network. My main critique is with the menu setup for the extra features. It's a bit too thematic, to the expense of viewers being able to tell what we're going to be getting when we click onto a selection. I'm not saying it has to be as basic white-on-blue-just-the-facts as the built-in menus on our VCRs, but there's such a thing as too clever. The good news is that we didn't buy this item for that stuff, we bought it for the movie itself, right?


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