To its credit, "Die Another Day" starts out reasonably well, even the much maligned title song actually isn't terrible. Then it gets worse, and worse, and worse. You know, there's ridiculousness that's enjoyable, like in "GoldenEye", then there's "Die Another Day", a movie so caught up in its complete silliness it forgets to realize it, thinking its overzealous use of gadgetry, its hilariously bad Robo-villain (cut me some slack, I couldn't think of a better nickname), and Halle Berry. Miss Berry is easily among the very worst Bond girls, and the fact that she's alongside Rosamund Pike, who manages to do such a good job with what little she's given, doesn't really help at all.
In "Die Another Day", there's not a second of humor that works. All the one-liners will have you cringing, albeit less than any attempt at actual serious dialogue this pathetic mess makes, as the script is completely ludicrous from start to finish, which is a continuation of the 'good writers writing terribly' theme in Bond history, where genuinely good writers write horrible messes like this, mainly because it seems they're lazy. I do find it humorous that the biggest fans of "Casino Royale" who claim it is by far the best Bond film conveniently ignore the fact that it was written by the same writing crew (with the addition of script-polisher Paul Haggis) which gave us the last three installments of the Bond franchise. Writers do what they're asked to do, and my guess is that "Die Another Day" is as much the producers' fault as the writers'.
Lee Tamahori is a completely bizarre choice for director, and a terrible one at that, seeing how he has never made an especially good film. David Arnold's score is again very good but he can't save the film and though I really like Brosnan's Bond the direction the series was going in at this point was truly dangerous and could've resulted in the end for Bond if allowed to go on. There was no reason to stop- "Die Another Day" was a massive financial success, the highest grossing of Brosnan's films and actually about as well-reviewed by major critics as the last two films in the series, but audience feedback and hopefully common sense led to the reinvigoration of the franchise in "Casino Royale". Thank heavens for that.
3/10
