James Bond - Tomorrow Never Dies (Ultimate Edition 2 Disc Set) [1997]

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Customer reviews

review by: date: 2008-10-29 rating:
Brilliant Brosnan in exciting but not best Bond
James Bond (Brosnan) investigates a TV media man who is linked to a possible war brewing in the Chinese sea between the Chinese and British.

Pierce Brosnan reprises his role as the famous British agent after a great start in the critically acclaimed Goldeneye. Expectation was high and Brosnan doesn't disappoint as once again he dons the suit and tie as James Bond in another classic action thriller, if not the strongest in the series.

With a fantastic opening surrounding the criminals in the weapon market, Tomorrow Never Dies sets the tone for a high octane adventure and the hero enters, delivering another great opening line, punching a smoker and giving viewers that wonderful pun that only Bond can do.

Unlike many Bond films, the villain is revealed almost instantly and the film centres around Bond trying to unravel the case and find out what media man Elliot Carver is up to.

As good an actor as Jonathan Pryce is, there is hardly any doubt that his character Carver is one of the worst villains of all time. Unscary, too relaxed and easy to watch the Newspaper man does simply have that ruthlessness to create that essence of evil that has created so many good Bond villains in the past. Blofeld with his cat, Goldfinger with his laser and so on. Carver with his newspapers simply does not match up and the film falls short because of him.

Teri Hatcher is very good as Bond's former lover but Michelle Yeoh is disappointing as Chinese agent Wai Lin. Yeoh's kicking action as the agent is good and fun to watch but the character does not contain that exciting and different prospect that other Bond girls have had and the ending feels almost completely clichéd because of it.

Despite that faults in supporting characters the plot with it's terrific action sequences make for a gripping watch. From driving a car with a remote control to driving a motorbike over a helicopter, this film has created some astonishing and memorable moments in the action genre. The remote control car is an ultimate fantasy and is action packed adrenaline not to mention humorous at points as well.

The plot is consistently intriguing with its issues on foreign pride and war, not to mention the different cultures between the Chinese and British government.

Tomorrow never dies fills Bond fans dreams with top notch action sequences and an entertaining and issue driven plot.

8/10

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review by: date: 2008-10-05 rating:
"Let the mayhem begin!"
"Let the mayhem begin." So says Elliot Carver, world media baron with an eye for not just writing headlines, but for creating them for his newspaper `Tomorrow'. But did Jonathan Pryce, who played the part, realise just how apposite his words were in relation to the film as a whole?

This is the eighteenth film (1997) in the Bond franchise and was Brosnan's second film in the starring role. What a comedown from the freshness that seemed to infuse `Goldeneye'. In this film Bond seems to revert to a Roger Moore-ish parody with an emphasis on plain silliness. The Bond team had often pushed credibility to the limit, but this time they excelled themselves. Whereas the stealth boat was entirely credible, the adolescent boy-racer stunts involving the remote-driven BMW in the car park was ludicrous for a host of reasons, not least in that fifteen of the eighteen BMWs supplied were wrecked. (By-the-way, did BMW insist that the baddies drive a Mercedes?)

And there's a return to a certain misogyny. I thought Timothy Dalton had finally knocked this nail on the head, and in `Goldeneye' it took over an hour for Brosnan to get his first kiss. But in `Tomorrow Never Dies', he's at it already within twenty minutes. The producers might say, just like Elliot Carver does in the film, "Give them [the public] what they want", but the public would still come to see Bond at the cinema even if he showed more respect to the female gender. And the gags - oh how I loath Bond's predictable and weak attempts at wit - now verge on the truly embarrassing, whether Bond is truly a "cunning linguist" or not. The heart sinks when Michael Wilson (producer) in his commentary says "great line" to all of Bond's double-entendres.

Having said that, what can we say that is positive about this movie? As usual, the special effects and miniatures departments excel themselves. I was particularly impressed with the helicopter scenes in Saigon (Bangkok). The model of HMS Devonshire was an amazing 55 feet long.

The acting is competent. Only Michelle Yeoh and Teri Hatcher shine in their parts, and I suppose we should say the same about Jonathan Pryce, but I have a suspicion that he deliberately hammed his role in accordance with the premise of the part he had to play.

There are two commentaries, the first with Michael Wilson (producer) and Vic Armstrong (second unit director), full of the usual backslapping largesse and often patronising to the female stars. Wilson talks to Armstrong rather than the audience, and Armstrong is just there to agree everything whatever his boss says.

The second (and better) commentary is with Roger Spottiswoode (director) and Dan Petrie, who is referred to as a colleague but really acts the part of an interviewer. Spottiswoode can talk about the actors both male and female without patronising them and can praise without it appearing as backslapping. His commentary is more concerned with the practicalities of making the movie. Here we also learn that it was originally intended to base the story in Hong Kong, but that this was too risky given the handover to China at the time. Spottiswoode says he wanted to include more humour in the film (alas!) and he wanted a more realistic villain, more realism than fantasy. He was also after a smart and able woman who would be Bond's equal (hurrah). But I think he is on dangerous ground when he says that he wanted the violence to be comic.

Other extras on this two-disc `ultimate edition' set includes a music-only track; deleted/extended scenes; expanded angles; a very good `Making of ...' hosted by Desmond Llewelyn; Moby's version of the 007 theme; and a 45-minute 35th anniversary TV show, `The Secrets of 007'.

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review by: God of Gods date: 2008-07-01 rating:
Brosnan's best Bond adventure
I was never very keen on Brosnan as James Bond. He always seemed like he was trying to be a smart-ass instead of a hard-ass. I remember when Goldeneye came out back in November 1995 the media were raving about it being a new Bond for a new era but to me it actually felt quite regressive.

After the angry, extremely tough Dalton Bond we went back to big, dumb set-pieces, maniacal villains bent on world domination and crude sex jokes. Thankfully Tomorrow Never Dies was significantly better, though it's far from being brilliant.

The main problem with TND is that it's clearly just a bunch of action scenes with a thin plot concocted to string them together. I guess this is acceptable since not every Bond movie has to be a 2-hour+ affair and it does feel very fast-paced in contrast to the slow, lumbering dinosaur that was The World Is Not Enough which followed two years later.

Teri Hatcher gets to look pretty as Bond's former squeeze now married to Elliot Carver, a man who is very much insane and plans to take over the world with his tabloid newspaper that is so sleazy it would make the Daily Sport look like Dickens. Unfortunately, she's not got much to do after her husband finds out and has her killed. Then we're left with Wai Lin, a clumsy Chinese agent who isn't the kind of woman who instantly throws her helpless self into Bond's arms. I like tough women and there's a lot of fun to be had in watching her beat up random bad guys.

It's a shame that Brosnan's scripts got even worse after TWINE. Die Another Day is affront to the franchise and among the rubble of three dull movies ol' Pierce only got to shine in this one.

Dante's Peak was good though.

The DVD is in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen with DTS 5.1 sound and loads of extras.

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review by: skenn1701a date: 2008-01-22 rating:
Brosnan excels in otherwise routine techno-thriller
If there is an example of star charisma pulling a movie through, then it is here, in Brosnan's second Bond outing where he appears effortlessly cool and comfortable in the role. Every time he is on screen, the film works. The director (Roger Spottiswoode) is new to Bond movies, and yet he manages to pull off something that looks just like a Bond movie should - harking back to the Moore era, with quips and the odd comedy moment to add levity to the proceedings.
After a standout opening sequence where Bond infiltrates an arms bazaar on a mountain top before reducing most of the materials on display to scrap, the plot revolves around a media baron out to achieve global media domination. It's a neat updated twist on the megalomaniac idea. To do this, he is engineering a war between Britain and China in order to breach the Chinese media market - this means Bond has to work with a Chinese agent (who coincidentally happens to be a beautiful woman..) to stop the madman before WW III erupts. You know, business as usual for a Bond movie.
One of the standout elements of the movie, is David Arnold's terrific score (with the exception of the main theme tune) - finally, someone has taken on John Barry's mantle, and taken the Bond themes and not just run with them but given them new life, livening them up for a new generation - fantastic stuff. Other ingredients which hit exactly the right note are Judi Dench as M, Teri Hatcher as the (rather short-lived) Bond girl, Michelle Yeoh's spunky Chinese agent and the remote control car chase.
There are however some real problems with the movie. One or two of the action scenes are a little too orchestrated... the helicopter trying to slice up Bond with its blades must have looked great on paper, but fails to convince. And then the old Bond movie dilemma - when the bad guy is not good, the movie falls flat. Jonathan Pryce is never really menacing - He doesn't even look as menacing as the real Rupert Murdoch! He just looks like an actor spouting menacing lines.. and speaking of lines, the script veers from some real witty quips (Admiral Roebuck: `With all due respect, M, I think you don't have the balls for this job.' M: `Maybe. But the advantage is, I don't have to think with them all the time.'), to some real clunkers that fall flat on delivery (`There's no news like bad news ` - how long did it take to come up with that classic??).
The great thing about Bond movies is how they walk the tightrope of cliché to deliver the same old Bond film ingredients, but with inventiveness. With the Bike chase, the car chase, the quirky and interesting secondary characters, that is exactly what this movie does - for the first half. Then, the second half falls into the trap of just being Bond running about killing people, waving a machine gun around instead of killing carefully and with precision the way he ought to, trying hard to kill a guy with grey hair and glasses. It's as much action as we have seen in a Bond finale in a long time, but it does not really thrill.
That aside, if you can try and ignore the ubiquitous product placement, then the cocktail of Brosnan excelling in a role he seems destined to play, David Arnold's exciting score, and Michelle Yeoh matching Bond bullet for bullet and kick for kick rather than be the dull women on the sideline, makes this worth a watch.

As per the other Brosnan releases, there is a gaping hole in the extras where we might expect a retrospective documentary, however that quibble aside there are plenty of other extras, with two commentaries, storyboards, deleted scenes ( none of which are memorable) and a couple of fluff pieces about `the making of' that offer no insight into the genesis of story or movie in general. Good, but not quite `ultimate'. Picture and sound are perfect, as we have come to expect in this remastered series.



review by: date: 2008-01-07 rating:
Brosnan's best Bond outing
Brosnan's hugely successful debut as James Bond, 'Goldeneye', ensured that audiences were left with little doubt that Bond could still hack it amid a seemingly endless slew of Hollywood action blockbusters. For me, despite some nauseating flaws, the follow up would be Pierce Brosnan's finest moment in the guise of Commander James Bond.

There are a lot of arguments for and against this movie for me, and I'll no doubt spend more time criticising it than praising it in this review. For those of you that haven't seen it, at least this review will serve to prepare you for the bad but hopefully it will also convince you that it is certainly worth seeing.

There are three major hang ups I have with 'Tomorrow Never Dies'. The first, and perhaps the biggest, is the premise. While it does actually unfurl nicely as a plot, it leaves us with no hope of suspending any disbelief which, for me at least, is what makes the Bond movies great. In a nutshell, some media mogul intends to manipulate world events in order to start World War Three between China and Britain. The problem is that, according to the film, the mogul in question, Elliot Carver, is supposed to be a household name.

Unlikely as most of the Bond scenarios have always been, it was always possible that Hugo Drax was hoping to start a new super-race in outer space, that Max Zorin was planning to wipe out Silicone Valley or that Goldfinger was intending to destroy all the gold in Fort Knox. If the events that take place in most Bond movies were ever to really happen, Joe Public would never know about it anyway. The problem here is that we all know that Elliot Carver is a made up character because, were he not, we would all know who he is and we would all, apparently, be watching his channels and reading his papers. Minor gripe, perhaps, but it leaves the film with no credibility whatsoever.

Elliot Carver is also the crux of my second big problem with the movie, or rather Jonathan Price's grotesquely camp performance of him. I'm not sure whether to blame Price or the director on this one but, every second this supposed supervillan is on screen, I want to throw a chair at it. He is just plain awful, and easily the worst Bond baddie next to John Gray's embarrassing turn as Blofeld in 'Diamonds Are Forever'.

The third problem is that there is little to no chemistry between Bond and his Chinese love interest, played by Michelle Yeoh. They both try hard, and the scenes between them are handled fairly well by the director, but if the chemistry isn't there, what can you do? Sadly, simply, the chemistry is not there.

There are other gripes I have, such as the absence of Bond veteran Peter Lamont as Production Designer. The nature of the plot led the film-makers to go in a rather predictable pseudo-techno futuristic direction. The subsequent lighting does make for some great cinematography, but it all makes the film seem like it's trying just a little too hard. Sadly, the franchise continued in this direction right until the thoroughly appalling 'Die Another Day' before realising that it didn't work any more.

For all my beefing thus far, you might be forgiven for thinking that I don't like this movie at all. However, what this film has in spades, and what more than makes up for its shortcomings, is swagger. This film has a set of balls on it like a Spanish bull. Brosnan struts through every scene like he owns Hollywood, in what is certainly the pinnacle of 'his Bond'. The action sequences are spectacular, without exception, and David Arnold lives out his life-long fantasy by penning the finest of odes to John Barry, without ever over-indulging. The all-important title sequence (the second by legend Maurice Binder's replacement, Daniel Kleinman) is easily among my all time favourites too!

Other nice touches here include a back-story concerning an old flame of Bond's, which gives a new insight into the character for the '90s. There are some good lines in here too, but there are some pretty bad ones to go with them, including a few in-jokes delivered by Moneypenny which are dead before they hit the back of cinema.

Even with all of the problems, this film does come through gloriously and is largely one the most enjoyable Bond movies ever made, in a sort of mindless way. It is a film that certainly values style over substance but, when you have this much style and you know how to use it, who cares?

As with all the new Bond DVDs, the picture and sound have been remasted to stunning effect. Watching these films on an upscaling DVD player, you will be amazed at how clean they look, sound and feel. Extras are a little less impressive with the Brosnan films, but worth a look nonetheless.

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