A deranged media mogul is staging international incidents to pit the world's superpowers against each other. Now 007 must take on this evil mastermind in an adrenaline-charged battle to end his rei...
How do you follow up a mega hit film? I would think the answer would be to isolate what made the previous effort a success, and then build meaningfully upon it. Whether that’s a specific character, situation, gadget, or story concept, keep your momentum going by giving people more of what you know can work. The creative forces behind Tomorrow Never Dies had other designs, however, namely, a complete 180 in pretty much every way.
Probably the only scene that feels like a holdover from Goldeneye is this beginning action, another explosion-laden aircraft escape which, while featuring some decent quips from Brosnan, hardly gets my blood up. Following the credit sequence--marred by a truly awful Sheryl Crow vocal performance--we get a sunken ship plot--something this franchise has already done to death. I’m already apprehensive and this thing is only warming up.
I’m shocked at how little this script develops the modernized characterizations I enjoyed from the last film. More than that, many seem to have regressed to the conventions I had hoped this series was leaving behind. The stern, liberated portrayals of M and Moneypenny are now a distant memory as the two smugly engage in uninspired sexual innuendo right along with Bond. The idea that these filmmakers have already abandoned their empowered female characters is making me feel deflated.
Cliffs Notes version of the next 40 minutes: Steve Jobs is the villain, Teri Hatcher can’t act, and Pierce Brosnan looks ridiculous trying to keep up with Michelle Yeoh during combat choreography.
To be fair, there are some decent action set pieces here, including a car chase through a parking garage, and Bond skydiving into the ocean, then transitioning directly into diving gear for an underwater ship exploration. This stuff is pretty good, in fact, its all that saves the movie from being a total snoozer.
Michelle Yeoh is fun and badass but never alluring. She works well as a partner for Bond, but that’s where it should have ended. Of course she’s shoehorned into being a love interest, and I don’t think it ever plays convincingly. What’s worse is that Yeoh exudes more screen presence than Brosnan; I frequently had to remind myself that this was a Bond film. For this--among other reasons--Tomorrow Never Dies ends up being generic to point that I found myself wondering if it was a spec script.
As for our leading man, this is a considerable sophomore slump. Brosnan sure looks the part, but these first two films have given him nothing to separate his portrayal of Bond from the four actors who preceded him. In Goldeneye his performance felt like a mashup of Connery and Moore, in this film he’s playing it broad but flavorless. Ultimately it’s a problem with the writing, but perhaps casting Brosnan wasn’t the brilliant move many thought. He’s too handsome to feel dangerous, and the material he’s given doesn’t take advantage of his skills as a dramatic actor. His best features are massively underutilized in both films, this one in particular.
Cliffs Notes version of the final 30 minutes: Bond infiltrates a hidden lair, kills some baddies, escapes a massive explosion. The word rote comes to mind.
Tomorrow Never Dies may be the very worst installment in this series. I never thought I’d say it, but Connery in brown-face during You Only Live Twice sounds pretty good right about now.
