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007 Die another Day

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This is a little better than your typical Bond movie. As one of the few people who have seen each and every one of them, I'd rank this one somewhere near the top 1/3. As for Peirce Brosnan Bond movies, I'd put this one second, behind Goldeneye and just a little bit ahead of Tomorrow Never Dies. Although the outcome is rather predictable, it was not as boring and run of the mill as The World is Not Enough was.

Reviews of Bond movies always fall into the following categories:

Opening Theme Song: Good! It ranks up there with "Tomorrow Never Dies" and "A View to a Kill", but no Bond song will ever hold a candle to Carlie Simon's "Nobody Does It Better". B+

Opening Sequence: Any good opening sequence from Bond movies has silouhettes of naked women and guns. This one has computer generated ice and fire women, and shows Bond getting tortured by North Koreans. Not much to look at. Goldeneye's opening sequence was much better. C

Bond Women: There are 2 women who Bond gets with in this film, Jinx, played by Hally Berry and Miranda Frost, an Mi-6 agent who betrays Bond, since she is under the control of the villain, played by Rosamund Pike. Jinx is witty and tells stupid puns, just like Bond, tho hers are a tad funnier than Bond's, though that's not saying much, because both of them are below even Spider-Man's level. Her character is a similar to Michelle Yeoh's role was in TND, but a little sexier. Frost does not stand out at all. But at least she is not as bad as Mayday (the worst Bond girl ever, played by Grace Jones.) I miss the days when Bond Girls had sexual innuendos as their names: like Pussy Galore, and Holly Goodhead. Jinx: A Frost: B

Villains: Rick Yune plays Zao, the right hand man of Colonel Moon, and a North Korean secret agent, who is involved in an accident with diamonds and C4 which permanently embeds diamonds into his face. After being captured by the CIA he is exchanged for Bond in a prisoner trade. He goes under "turn me white surgery so that he can be undetected, but it is interrupted prematurely by Bond which is why he has that weird look. (Blue eyes, pale skin, bald head, diamonds on his face) Colonel Moon is played by Will Yun Lee son of General Moon. He studied at Oxford and Harvard so that he could get a better understanding of the West. Later he undergoes "turn me white" surgery to become Gustav Graves, played by Toby Stephens. Their plans are to create a gigantic magnifying glass out of diamonds and attatch it to a sattelite to make a weapon which focuses sunlight into a concentrated beam, which they plan to use to take over South Korea, then vanquish Japan, then after that, who knows. Zao: B+ Moon/Graves: C+

Gadgets: Bond has a laser watch, a ring which breaks bullet proof glass with a sonic charge, and a car with a cloaking device and machinge guns and ejector seat and missiles and all that other good stuff. Gadgets: A

Overall: Not boring, yet not overwhelmingly good. Rick Yune + Sportscars = slightly better than mediocre movie. B

Okay now here is where I add my take.

1. Korean activists found fault with this film because it portrayed Korea as a backward nation, showing the countryside and farmers walking cows down dirt paths, and failed to show Seoul at all. They also found fault with Bond making love in a Buddhist temple. Well I think these people need to get out of Seoul and visit the countryside. You can see farmers walking cows in Korea today, yes it is true. I saw one last week when I was riding the train from Pusan to Taejon. As for the sex in the temple thing, I was not terribly offended, tho I can see why Buddhists might be. But I also think they were digging deep to find fault with the movie, so it only takes away from it a bit.

2. The information on Korean language is lacking. Almost everyone knows that Zao is not, and can not possibly be a Korean name. It isn't even phonetically possible to say it in Korean since there is no Z sound. With so many Korean American actors and language specialists it took to make this movie, you would think someone would have told them.

3. Almost all the Korean spoken in the movie, though correct, is heavily accented, and not just by Graves. Zao has an accent, General Moon does too. They could have easily found Korean-American actors who can at least get the accent right. The only one who speaks Korean well was Colonel Moon.

4. Colonel Moon speaks English with an American accent at first. After going thru "turn me white" surgery, he speaks like a brit. He also loses his accentless Korean ability. Moon couldn't kill Bond with 50 soldiers helping him. But after turning into Graves, he is a formidable foe. Not a good message at all. I was very dissapointed. However at least they got it right this time. When changing the race of a character, change the actor. They should have done this for Sean Connery in "You Only Live Twice".

5. Who's bright idea is it to put Rick Yune with sports cars? This looked like the winter version of F&F.

6. Sensitivity to Asian Culture: Crazy enough, most of this movie takes place in Hong Kong, Cuba, Iceland and England, North Korea is only where it begins and ends. I think they did a much better job of being sensitive to Asian culture than "The Man With the Golden Gun". (Seriously, for some laughs, watch THAT one! Ha, a Korean father speaking to his cantonese and mandarin daughters and all of them understanding each other? And knowing Karate? HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH! Sumo Wrestlers in Red China? HAHAHAHHAHAHAH!) Also, at least they make an attempt to really speak Korean unlike in Goldfinger where Oddjob grunts to his underlings and they act like they understand. At least they were making an effort.