Die Another Day

DIE ANOTHER DAY

Die Another Day is a preposterous cartoon that stockpiled everything wrong with the Bond franchise and killed it dead, forcing the franchise to start over entirely. Die Another Day started out promisingly and uniquely, with Bond captured by North Korea, disavowed by MI:6, and tortured for years in a gulag. Then the atrocity of a theme song by Madonna, the worst Bond song ever, kicked in. It all spirals out of control from there. We get: a Korean villain who is genetically altered into a pasty-white Englishman, yet somehow becomes rich and knighted in the span of a few years; Bond driving an invisible car, given to him by John Cleese as the new Q, through a melting ice castle; Madonna making a pointless, attention-whoring cameo. Bond is written as so dimwitted, he is shocked to find out which MI:6 agent is a traitor, despite the treacherous but fetching Rosamund Pike present as the only other MI:6 agent in the movie. And the dialogue; the ceaseless barrage of awful, ear-bleeding double entendres! Her ability to model the Ursula Andress tribute bikini aside, the less said about Halle Berry as Jinx the better. Aging gracefully, Pierce Brosnan was still very game as 007 but the franchise imploded around him and forced the end of his tenure. Fortunately, Casino Royale allowed James Bond to live another day.