Bond vs. the Media

 

Tomorrow Never Dies

1997

D: Roger Spottiswoode

**********

Pros: Action, Music, Some Good Character Moments

Cons: Disappointing Third Act, Questionable Villain, Formulaic Plot, Bad News Puns

      As a child of the 90’s, I grew up with the Pierce Brosnan Bond movies.  Although many now write off these films in the same faddish way they write off Tim Burton’s Batman because now  that we have trendier movies, I think Brosnan was definitely one of the better Bonds.  GoldenEye, my second favorite movie in the franchise, has stood up to my adult expectations.  It did a great job of balancing the suave, charming side of the character with his dark, brutal character.  Unfortunately, the Brosnan Bonds steadily lost their edge, becoming softer and sillier until Die Another Day.  Having not seen Tomorrow Never Dies in a while, I was curious as to how it would hold up.

      The intro takes place on the Russian border.  Bond is spying on a terrorist arms bazaar where hacker Henry Gupta (Ricky Jay) is buying a military GPS encoder.  After the British fire a cruise missile at the scene and tell Bond to leave, he discovers that a Russian plane is carrying nukes.  To avert nuclear catastrophe, he decides to hijack the plane and fly it to safety.  Although it looked like a BAe Hawk at first, it was actually an L-39 Albatross.  It’s a pet peeve of mine when they try to pass off domestic aircraft as Russian fighters, but at least this trainer is from behind the iron curtain.  The action scene begins with an example of how Bond was getting softer during this time.  Bond lights a goon’s cigarette and punches him, commenting on how it was a nasty habit (in the books, Bond smoked enough cigarettes to kill a dragon).  He knocks out the navigator on the plane and takes off, only to be pursued by another fighter.  His passenger comes to and tries to strangle him with a wire, but Bond pulls the passenger ejection seat lever.  Fortunately for Bond, the movie forgets that the guy had a wire around his neck which should have cut his head off.  Somehow the man and the ejection seat bust through the bottom of the other plane and displace its own passenger seat without mangling themselves beyond recognition.  The enemy plane crashes, the bazaar is blown up and Bond escapes.

See that guy in the back?  He just came crashing through the bottom of the plane.

      After the intro, a British frigate (which doesn't seem to have any running lights on) finds its way into Chinese waters.  Working for media mogul Elliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce), Gupta uses the GPS encoder to make them think that they’re still in international waters.  Now, I know that in the Navy they have something called dead reckoning, which might help the sailors know something was up.  Also, at some point, the GPS readings would jump and not add up.  You’d think that their proximity to China might make them err on the side of caution.  When the Chinese retaliate, Carver’s men fire a remote control digging mole into the frigate from a stealth ship that looks like a larger version of Sea Shadow.  While the ship may be completely invisible to radar one wonders how neither the bridge crew nor the lookouts see the massive craft sitting by them not even a mile away when it’s not even fully dark out.

How do they not see it?  IT'S RIGHT F---ING THERE. 

After the frigate sinks, Carver tells his henchman Stamper (Gotz Otto) to makes sure that he murders the survivors with Chinese ammo, and Stamper uses an American M-60.  While the British Navy mobilizes for a counterattack, MI-6 sends Bond to investigate Carver, who has stupidly released news of the event suspiciously early.  Carver’s plan is to provoke a war naval battle in which he will launch a stolen British missile into a location where these China’s highest-ranking officials are gathered in one place at the behest of corrupt military leader General Chang (Philip Kwok), who will conveniently miss the meeting and take over control of the country.  Carver will then be given the exclusive broadcasting rights denied to him by China.  He’s really that petty. 

     While Pryce gives a solid performance, Carver has been criticized as a transparent straw version of Rupert Murdoch.  At one point, he says that he will provide “cool, objective coverage” of the Sino-English war he’s causing.  Personally, I’ve always thought it was supposed to be Ted Turner (you know, Carver = Tuner).  Turns out he’s actually based on this guy.  In fact, after he dies, M (Judi Dench) fabricates a cover story that’s a reference to Maxwell’s real life death.  Keepin’ it classy, it seems.  Carver isn’t the first Bond villain to be based off a celebrity.  LeChiffre was (somehow) based on Aleister Crowley.  Raoul Silva is basically an awesome version of Julian Assange (I personally think that Assange deserves to be depicted as a villain).  Even my favorite Bond villain, Trevelyan, is based off an infamous censor who was an annoyance to the producers of this film series.  The problem with Carver is the lack of subtlety.  As if the reference to some news mogul isn’t obvious enough, the writers had to keep putting bad news puns in the movie, and there’s even a swipe at Bill Gates and Windows.  Overall, the execution isn’t well done, but I do like the prospect of watching someone slam Ted Turner into a drill saying, “Give the people what they want!”

Bond was not happy about the cancellation of SWAT Kats.

     Still contemporary references age like fine wine.  Today's cringe trend chasing is tomorrow's interesting time capsule trivia (give the title credence).  This is good because this is the movie's biggest flaw.  
     While Bond’s development is not really as good as it was in GoldenEye, it’s still got some strengths.  He has some good conversations with Moneypenny, and the first half of the movie focuses on his former relationship with Carver’s wife, Paris (Teri Hatcher).  When he confronts her in Hamburg for information, they discuss their former relationship, which helps add depth to the movie.  While Bond retrieves the encoder, Carver has Paris killed by Dr. Kaufman (Vincent Schiavelli), who steals the scene before Bond quickly kills him.  While this does give the movie some substance, Paris is pretty much another woman who sleeps with/informs Bond and is immediately killed for it.  A tiresome Bond cliché.  After that pesky “emotion” and “character development” stuff is put out of the way, we can have a typical Bond movie. In the chase almost immediately following Paris’ death, Bond seems to have rebounded impressively.  

Dealing with bereavement seems to be one of Bond's strengths.

      This chase scene is the best part of the movie, and it’s possibly the best I’ve seen in the franchise (my other favorite being the one in Quantum of Solace).  While the Aston Martin DB5 is the quintessential Bond car, the runner-up is definitely the real star of this movie, the BMW 750iL.  Due the nomenclature of this German car, I suppose I can use the authority vested in me as an internet critic to treat you to a song I enjoy. In addition to being elegantly minimalistic and distinctively German in styling, it boasts some of the best features in the Bond car lineup.  In addition to the weaponry expected with these machines, it also has GPS (which I guess was special in the 90’s).  The badge on the hood raises to reveal a device comes in handy for an oddly specific occurrence during the chase.  Most importantly, the car features a remote control.  Q describes it as “surprising difficult to drive,” which seems natural considering how illogical and unintuitive the control style is.  Using a cell phone as the remote, the user moves his finger sideways to make the car go forward while moving vertically to turn the car.  Naturally, Bond masters it on the first try.  The chase scene is clever, featuring Bond controlling the car remotely from the back seat.  Editing is very good, free of any pesky modern gimmicks like racking, shaky cam or gratuitous CGI (we see some poorly rendered CGI satellites earlier in the movie, though).  Bond evades Carver’s thugs through a car park and sends the car falling off the top of the building.  I’m not sure what that accomplishes other than wrecking his nice car, endangering civilians and complicating his exit by attracting bad guys to the street outside.

     He returns the encoder to CIA agent Jack Wade (Joe Don Baker) and executes a HALO jump into the sea to investigate the wreckage of the frigate.  He finds that a missile is missing, and runs into Colonel Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh), a Chinese spy he has had some passing encounters with earlier in the movie. The Chinese government has also noticed something suspicious about Carver’s stupidity indiscretion.  Wai Lin is ostensibly a cool action girl, but she is constantly at a disadvantage to Bond.  In the first scene she doesn’t do much other than introduce herself to the characters and audience.  In Hamburg, she actually gets Bond into a chase because she trips an alarm.  In the final battle, she ends up chained underwater and Bond gives her the Underwater Kiss of Life.  Of course, she has to get banged by him at the end of the movie, too.

     They finally team up in earnest in the South China Sea when they are captured and brought to one of Carver’s headquarters in Ho Chi Minh City.  They are threatened to be tortured to death by Stamper, who reveals that he’s angry with Bond because Dr. Kaufman was a father figure to him.  This vendetta doesn’t amount to much outside a few lines of dialogue.  Stamper is a borderline Bond henchman who doesn’t have any particularly memorable gimmicks outside platinum blond hair and a cold, precise demeanor.  Bond and Wai Lin escape from the building and are chased by a helicopter in the streets.  It’s an impressive chase scene where the two have to figure out how to drive a motorcycle handcuffed and it culminates in some impressive stunts.  Also, it’s one moment where Wai Lin seems to equal Bond.

     After this escape, they regroup in Wai Lin’s secret hideout where they dispatch some bad guys with goofy slapstick.  They proceed to sneak onto Carver’s stealth ship while it disembarks to aggravate the confrontation between the Chinese and British fleets.  This act of the plot is disappointing.  The two aforementioned chase scenes raised my expectations, but the gunfights on board the ship seem forgettable and sanitized.  It does bring the movie down a little as a popcorn film.  Long story short, Bond and his girl win, the bad guys die, and World War III is averted.

     The music is very good.  Sheryl Crow’s intro song is enjoyable, with heavy piano notes giving a distinctive feel to parts of it.  The visuals of this sequence involve creative use of CGI.  This movie marks David Arnold’s debut as the composer for this series.  It effectively mixes a classic Bond sound with techno and some distinctive themes.  Moby also provides a good techno remix.  It’s a noticeable improvement over Eric Serra’s techno score for GoldenEye which, like most techno scores, alternates between sounding atmospheric and outright goofy.

     Tomorrow Never Dies is enjoyable entertainment, but isn’t a classic.  It has its moments of characterization near the beginning, but it succumbs to tired Bond movie formulas.  Its biggest contribution to Bond canon was a cool car and that it's the movie where Bond switched from a Walther PPK to a Walther P99 for a while.  Still, it has good music and a solid cast and is worth checking out if you want to see some refreshing moments of pre-Matrix action at its best. It's also more vindicated now that journalists are becoming more obviously the enemy.              

        

                       

MEMORABLE QUOTES

MONEYPENNY: James, where are you? 

BOND: Oh, Moneypenny, um, I’m just here at Oxford brushing up on a little Danish.

GIRL: “Little?”

MONEYPENNY: I’m afraid you’re going to have to kiss off your little lesson, James.  We’ve got a situation here at the Ministry of Defense.  We’re sending the fleet to China.

BOND: Uh-huh.  I’ll be there in, uh, an hour.

M: I believe you once had a relationship with Carver’s wife, Paris.

BOND: That was a long time ago, M.  Before she was married.  I didn’t realize it was public knowledge. [glares at Moneypenny]

MONEYPENNY: Queen and Country, James.

Q: Your new telephone.  Talk here.  Listen here.

BOND: So that’s what I’ve been doing wrong all these years.

750iL: Please shut door now.

BOND: [in German] Don’t let her push you around.

CARVER: I think we should set an appointment for my wife with the Doctor.

BOND: It won’t look like a suicide if you shoot me from over there.

DR. KAUFMAN: I am a professor in forensic medicine.  Believe me, Mr. Bond, I could shoot you from Stuttgart und still have the proper effect.

DR. KAUFMAN: My art is in great demand, Mr. Bond.  I go all over the world.  I am especially good at the celebrity overdose, but I’m afraid, Mr. Bond, that our… [static] AH! Stamper!  Stop yelling in my ear, ja?

STAMPER: Sir, they can’t get into the car.

DR. KAUFMAN: Oh, you can’t be serious.  Did you call the autoclub?

STAMPER: Do you want to call them?  Make him tell you how to open it.

DR. KAUFMAN: Oh-o-okay, I ask.  This is very embarrassing.  It seems there is a red box in your car.  They can’t get to it.  They want me to make you unlock the car.  I feel like an idiot.  I don’t know what to say. 

DR. KAUFMAN: I am to torture you if you don’t do it.

BOND: You have a doctorate in that, too?

DR. KAUFMAN: Hmf, no-no-no-no.  This is more like a hobby, but I am very gifted.

BOND: Oh, I believe you.

[Goons are blocking Bond’s way in the car chase]

750iL: Reduce speed.  Pedestrians in roadway.

750iL: Reminder: Unsafe driving will void warranty.  

BOND: You were pretty good with that hook.

WAI LIN: It comes from growing up in a rough neighborhood.  You were pretty good on the bike.

BOND: Well, that comes from not growing up at all.

BOND: [acquiring a Walther P99] Ah, the new Walther.  I asked Q to get me one of these.

BOND: You forgot the first rule of mass media, Elliot.  Give the people what they want!