(Someday I will meet someone who actually understands what the hell that title means and will be able to explain it to me. Until then - WTF?)
CAST: Pierce Brosnan, Jonathan Pryce, Michelle Yeoh, Teri Hatcher, Joe Don Baker, Ricky Jay, Gotz Otto, Judi Dench, Desmond Llewellyn, Colin Salmon, Daphne Dekkers.
DIRECTOR: Roger Spottiswoode
WARNING: Some SPOILERS and one potentially great Bond girl squandered - straight ahead…
IT’S LIKE THIS: In GOLDENEYE, the last Bond flick before this one, everyone’s favorite super-spy/poontang-marauder had to deal with an ex-buddy who went all Blofeld on him and tried to blow up…. London. Now, James has to contend with whiny rich prick Elliott Carver (Jonathan Pryce), some media mogul who seems to delight in reporting bad news. What’s so unusual about that, you ask? Since bad news isn’t anywhere nearly as profitable as good news? Well, not much. Just the fact that Carver seems to have the scoop on terrible terrorist attacks - before they happen. Hmmmmmm…. Could the jackass have something to do with these incidents? That is Bond’s job to find out. Complicating matters are a couple of women (of course). One is mysterious Chinese journalist Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh), who seems way too good at martial arts and weaponry to be a mere writer. Could she have a secret identity? Then there’s Carver’s gorgeous socialite wife Paris (Teri Hatcher), who just happens to be - wait for it - one of Bond’s ex-girlfriends. Awkward.
THE DUDE (OR DUDETTE) MOST LIKELY TO SAVE THE DAY: Our boy Jimbo. And Wai Lin, who turns out to be a secret agent for China. I knew she was too damn good with a judo chop to be a journalist.
EYE CANDY MOST LIKELY TO FIRE UP A WOODY: Pierce has bit more machismo and swagger in this one - which makes me want to rip his fucking clothes off and play “milk-the-bull” with him tied to the bedposts. Then there’s Teri Hatcher, who is one exotically gorgeous chick. She fills out an evening dress quite nicely. Too bad the dress looks like it has feathers and tentacles. See below… good thing Teri is beautiful as hell.
MOST INTENTIONALLY EXCITING SCENE: Bond and Wai Lin riding on a motorcycle through Saigon. While handcuffed together. And being chased by the propeller blades of a helicopter. Did I mention they are handcuffed together?
MOST UNINTENTIONALLY EXCITING SCENE: Paris confronting Bond and demanding to know why he ran out on her. By demanding, I mean “drops her dress and flashes him with her tits.” It works.
HOTTEST SCENE: Bond beating the shit out of five goons using a variety of instruments - bass violin, microphone stand, ashtray. I wasn’t kidding when I said Pierce hits his stride in this film.
INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW: So… what the fuck is Carver up to? Is he really trying to incite war between China and the United Kingdom to kickstart World War 3? Just so he can beat all the other newspapers to the headlines? Doesn’t this silly shit know that if nuclear annihilation occurs, there won’t be anyone left alive to read his fucking newspapers? Will Bond show him how stupid his plan is? Will Wai Lin assist? Will Paris side with her husband? Or will she remember her loyalty to Bond’s dick and help our superspy? Will she sacrifice herself for him? And the most burning question of all: Paris, girl, what in the name of everything atrocious are you wearing?
WHY YOU SHOULD WATCH “TOMORROW NEVER DIES”: If you like your Bond movies with wall-to-wall action and loud action setpieces that start to feel and sound the same after awhile. And if you love Michelle Yeoh and Teri Hatcher, which I do. And if you want to see Pierce Brosnan growing even more comfortable with the role.
WHY YOU MAY NOT ENJOY “TOMORROW NEVER DIES”: If you prefer your Bond movies to be not so cookie-cutter and unsurprising. If so, watch GOLDENEYE, CASINO ROYALE, or LICENCE TO KILL instead.
BUT, SERIOUSLY: After a confident and strong debut with GOLDENEYE, which got nearly everything right (great villain, interesting Bond girl, vivid henchwoman, quirky supporting characters, colorfula action), Pierce Brosnan moved on to TOMORROW NEVER DIES - and delivered an even stronger performance. In GOLDENEYE he was very good, but here he is looser, cockier, and is having more fun. However, he doesn’t short-change Bond’s sensitive side - which his encounters with Paris bring out.
Unfortunately, his strong central performance is one of the few high points of TOMORROW NEVER DIES. It’s great to see Michelle Yeoh get a nice showcase for her talents and martial arts skills, and she makes a good match for Bond. She holds the screen effortlessly and keeps our interest, even if she’s playing my least favorite type of Bond Girl - the “Female Bond,” which is basically a similarly-trained agent. It seems like such a lazy way to create a strong female character in a Bond movie. Fortunately, Yeoh manages to make Wai Lin seem real and not a cardboard cutout.
Teri Hatcher is also a highlight as Paris Carver, the woman who still haunts Bond despite their years of separation. We don’t get as much of Paris and James’ backstory as we would like. But Hatcher makes the most of her limited screen time and has one of the film’s best scenes: Paris’ visit to James' hotel suite where he finally admits that he left her because she got too close to his heart. Brosnan and Hatcher are very effective in this scene, and its such a shame that Paris’ storyline ends not long after this scene. While Michelle Yeoh is very good as Wai Lin, I would’ve much preferred if Paris had been the main Bond girl. Imagine how much more powerful TOMORROW NEVER DIES would’ve been if the central conflict had revolved around Bond, Paris, and Elliott. Indeed, after Paris departs the action, TOMORROW NEVER DIES loses a lot of what made its first act so intriguing. Without her to tap into Bond’s personal side, the movie becomes… impersonal.
Another reason TOMORROW NEVER DIES doesn’t ascend past the above-average mark is its weak villain. In our review for GOLDENEYE, we talked about how thrillers or action/thrillers are only as strong as their villains. In this film, the villain is quite weak. Elliott Carver is, to be frank, a sniveling weasel. I’m not sure if this is how the character was written, or if Jonathan Pryce chose to play him this way, but he’s a very ineffective baddie. By contrast, Carver's henchmen (Stamper, the Doctor) are more threatening. The best Bond films were the ones that had the best villains: GOLDFINGER, THUNDERBALL, FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, LICENCE TO KILL, THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH, GOLDENEYE, and QUANTUM OF SOLACE, just to name a few. Because of TOMORROW NEVER DIES’s pallid antagonist, the movie never reaches the ranks of those films. You can’t just have wall-to-wall action. You have to have a credibly formidable villain behind all the chases and explosions.
All in all, what saves TOMORROW NEVER DIES from becoming an average Bond film is Pierce Brosnan’s added swagger, Michelle Yeoh’s strong screen presence, and the lovely Teri Hatcher playing “the one Bond let get away.” Had they rewrote the script to make Paris the main heroine, and made Carver less of a clownish villain, we might have had **** Bond film. Sadly, we will never know…
