At the Movies - 'Die Another Day'

The Associated Press

Perhaps it's time to say goodbye to Mr. Bond.

Not that there's anything wrong with Pierce Brosnan. After four films as James Bond, the role fits him like a perfectly tailored tuxedo.

But to keep up with younger, hipper imitations, "Die Another Day" -- the 20th installment of the spy franchise -- is about crashes rather than character development, explosions over exposition.

The double entendres clang like feeble frat-party flirtations. And references to gadgets and plot lines from Bond films past, intended as loving homage on the series' 40th anniversary, only make us long to be shaken and stirred like we were watching the Sean Connery films from the 1960s.

As the latest Bond girl, an American agent named Jinx, Halle Berry emerges gloriously from the ocean, just as Ursula Andress did in the first movie, "Dr. No." (She even wears a bikini similar to Andress' with a knife sheath on her hip.)

Jinx is tied down and tortured with a laser, like Connery's Bond was in "Goldfinger." Later, she endures a claustrophobic near-drowning, similar to Denise Richards' fate in "The World Is Not Enough."

And the plot has glimmers of "Diamonds Are Forever," with a villain stocking up on diamonds to pay for a deadly laser satellite.

By now, it would be hard for a new Bond film not to refer to an earlier one; the franchise has been parodied (in the "Austin Powers" movies) and reinvigorated (in the summer blockbuster "XXX") so many times, there's nothing original left.

Here, when Bond snowboards down a mountain trying to escape an avalanche, it's reminiscent of a stunt Vin Diesel pulled in "XXX" -- itself a rip-off of Roger Moore's daring skiing chase in "The Spy Who Loved Me."

That avalanche scene, by the way, brings us to another problem with this newfangled Bond: It relies too heavily on fake-looking computer-generated effects.

The best scene in the movie features a beautifully choreographed fencing duel between Bond and Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens, Maggie Smith's son), a pretty-boy adventurer and megalomaniac who announces from his frozen palace in Iceland that he's created a second sun, which he calls Icarus.

Based on that name, you know something has to fly too close to the device and burn its wings. That something would be a jumbo jet, which Jinx tries to prevent from crashing -- when she's not engaged in a duel of her own with Graves' right-hand woman, Miranda Frost (a Grace Kellyesque newcomer, Rosamund Pike), while Bond and Graves duke it out in another section of the plane.

OK, you have to walk into a James Bond movie expecting a certain level of improbability -- he's never functioned in reality, and that's much of the allure. But director Lee Tamahori's action sequences are bombastic in the beginning and grow increasingly ridiculous, to the point where you're laughing out loud instead of oohing and ahhing.

And just when you think that's the climax, the movie has to go back to North Korea, where Bond was imprisoned in the beginning, to blow up all the remaining land mines.

Beavis and Butt-head would have loved this movie. Explosions! Chicks! Heh, heh-heh.

Who wouldn't get excited over Berry, though? She's strong and sexy, a great match for the dashing Brosnan -- so much so, that MGM already is planning a film based on her character, which has never happened before with a Bond girl. She's more than that, though; she's his partner and every bit his equal.

The movie also gives Madonna the chance to redeem herself after the disastrous "Swept Away." She performs the electronica-heavy theme song, and makes an unbilled cameo as a fencing instructor; dressed in a black leather corset left over from her "Erotica" days, she quips to Bond, "I see you handle your weapon well."

At least Madonna will appear in one successful movie this year -- for no matter what critics say, Bond will survive another day at the box office.

"Die Another Day," an MGM release, is rated PG-13 for action violence and sexuality. Running time: 130 minutes.

Two stars out of four.