Bondathon: Tomorrow Never Dies

So, in the world of Bond, everything was well. Goldeneye made big bucks at the theaters, so the studio was happy. Brosnan was finally Bond, acting with a style not seen on any other Bond before, so the people were happy. Brosnan was getting proper recognition in the media and offers for new roles all over the place, so he was happy. Even the extras were happy. Bond had successfully transferred from the Cold War into the techno-terrorist world of the 1990s, so, logically; more films were given the go-ahead. So, without further adieu, let’s take a look at the next one in the series: 1997’s Tomorrow Never Dies.

The movie starts with Bond investigating a terrorist’s arms bazaar near the border of Russia, while M and the rest of MI6, along with the British navy admiral, watch his video feed back at base. Bond and team quickly find out that the bazaar is currently holding a huge amount of the world’s terrorists in one place, so the admiral decides it would be a good idea to shoot a missile at the area and wipe them all out at once, despite M’s protests that Bond isn’t finished. However, right after the launch, Bond zooms the video feed on two Russian nuclear torpedoes mounted on a fighter jet, and everyone panics. The admiral attempts to call off the missile, but it is far too out of range, giving Bond only one option: get them out himself. He starts making his way to the jet, leaving behind a trail of destruction, taking out various guards and trucks with explosives. He manages to get inside the Jet and take off just before the missile hits, and after disposing of a, “backseat driver,” Bond flies off and the movie breaks into the credits.

After the credits, the movie focuses upon a ship within the south China sea: the H.M.S. Devonshire, as it’s being flown over by two Chinese MIGs who swear the ship is in Chinese waters. The ship and the jets go back and forth about where it really is, both swearing hostile intent if the other doesn’t back off. Meanwhile, nearby, a slow and quiet stealth ship is watching, where we see our first couple of villains doing their work: Stamper (Gotz Otto), who’s manning the ship and Henry Gupta (Ricky Jay), who is using a stolen American decoder to jam the Devonshire’s GPS, making them seem somewhere they really aren’t. Stamper decides to send out their secret weapon: a drill called the Sea-Vac, to destroy the Devonshire in a way that is similar to the Chinese air-to-water torpedoes. While the ship is sinking from the devastation, the ship then shoots a missile at the MIGs, so it seems that both sides fired that day, which should make both governments quite angry. Stamper finally murders any surviving men from the Devonshire, and then sends a few divers out to retrieve a ballistic missile from the ship’s carcass.

Meanwhile in Hamburg, it is shown that a Mr. Elliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce) is the man at the helm of all this destruction, merely using it to fuel his media outlets, such as his newspaper, “Tomorrow.” As Stamper tells him the exact amount of bodies that were murdered, he then puts it in his headlines, with his paper set to drop in a few hours. He then goes off to tell his lackeys in a few other countries to do some of his wicket bidding, including releasing a bugged new bit of software and blackmailing the president, just before spilling the news about the Chinese and British altercation that just happened. “There’s no news…like bad news.”

After about thirty straight minutes of no Bond, the movie finally goes back to him as he is called into MI6 by M. He brings along a copy of Tomorrow that spills the news about the Devonshire’s sinking. With the admiral having no knowledge of releasing this information, M is given 48 hours to investigate before the navy starts moving their fleet towards China. On a car ride over to the airport, M quickly discusses the issue and the mission to Bond: investigate Elliot Carver and see if he might have any connection to everything that has happened, and if needed, use his wife Paris, a woman Bond once had a relationship with, to retrieve this information. Bond agrees and goes to Hamburg under the pose of a Banker to attend a party for Carver’s release of his new television station. When he arrives, Q, who gives Bond a gadget-laden phone and a remote-controlled BMW 750iL, briefs him.

Later, at the party, Bond approaches Carver. He attempts to start up a conversation, but is interrupted, as Carver’s eyes go to Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh), who claims to be from the New China News agency.  As Carver seems more interested in what Lin has to say, Bond goes to his next best option, Paris Carver (Teri Hatcher), who greets Bond with a firm slap in the face after leaving her long ago. However, they soon warm up to each other, but Carver notices and finds Bond a threat to his wife. He comes up and introduces Wai Lin to Paris, and then asks her how she knows Bond. She lies, saying he used to date her roommate, but Carver knows better. He sends Stamper and a few goons to take Bond into a back room to beat him while Carver begins his press conference and release. Bond gets out, of course, and cuts to power to Carver’s party before leaving for his hotel. Paris eventually winds up in Bond’s hotel room, sent by Carver, to find out what Bond knows by sleeping with him.

Paris tips Bond off to a door in the roof of Carver’s HQ, which he uses to enter the building the next morning. While there, he gets into Gupta’s office through the use of his phone, and manages to take the encoder from his safe. Everything is going fine until he hears the faint noise of drilling coming from a nearby door. He runs to it and points a gun at it and the driller, who turns out to be Wai Lin. The building alarm starts blaring and both split up, escaping in separate ways. Bond ends up getting caught in a fire fight, while Lin manages to escape without a scratch. Bond fights through various lackeys until he ends up in the printing room. After throwing the last man into a press (spouting the classic line, “They’ll print anything these days.”), he finally makes it back to his car, where he receives a call from Carver, who knows Bond has his wife and his encoder.

He proceeds to return to his hotel, where he finds Paris dead on his bed, and a man, Dr. Kaufmann (Vincent Schiavelli) sitting across from her. Kaufmann proceeds to prepare to kill Bond while Stamper and his men attempt to break into Bond’s BMW. The burgling attempts prove futile, so Kaufmann asks for Bond’s phone to unlock the car, which Bond uses as a way to trick him into electrocuting himself. As Kaufmann is down, Bond turns his gun on him (“I’m just a professional doing a job!” “Me too.”) and shoots him on the spot. Bond leaves quickly and returns to the parking lot where his car is, and uses the phone to turn it on and activate the smoke screen, and…a chase ensues.

I want to take a second and say that the parking garage chase is probably the best scene in this movie. It’s full of action, humor, and it’s all set to a brilliant score. Watching Bond mess around with his phone and seeing all the gadgets pop up and wreak havoc about the pursuers, it’s just brilliant stuff. I won’t go into detail as to what happens, because it’s on YouTube, and I think you should go watch it now if you haven’t already. Anyway, Bond gets rid of all of Stamper’s men before taking the encoder, diving out of the car, and using the remote control to drive to the top and off the roof.

Bond proceeds to take the encoder to a U.S. military base, where he meets with old friend Jack Wade from Goldeneye. As the men from the CIA are bewildered by the fact that Bond retrieved the lost encoder, Bond asks one of them if it could make a boat go off course. They say yes, and one of the men plug it into a computer, where it shows the map of where the Devonshire really was versus where she thought she was. A plane then takes Bond to the spot where the Devonshire sank, and he performs a HALO (High-Altitude Low Opening) jump down to take a look at the wreckage. While down there, he bumps into Wai Lin yet again, and both notice that one of the missiles has been taken, before the boat begins to break off the reef and sink further. Both make it out in time, but are quickly captured afterwards by Stamper and are taken to Carver’s new Saigon headquarters.

When the arrive, Lin spots Chinese General Chang leaving Carver’s office before the two are ushered in for Carver to speak to them. While writing both of their obituaries, Carver explains his plan: to start a small war between the British and China, and rising as a superpower of the Media in both countries. He then shows the two of them Stamper’s torturing equipment, designed specially for torturing chakras in the human body. Bond then sees an opportunity to attack, knocking over the table and equipment, and tossing one of the tools into Stamper’s leg as a diversion. Then Bond and Lin jump out of the window, using a sign with Carver’s face on it as a way to get down. They are then chased through the streets of Saigon, the two of them using a motorcycle to get around, by Carver’s men in Range Rovers and a helicopter. After an exciting chase across rooftops and sidewalks, they finally down the helicopter with a clothesline. Bond says the two work well together, but Lin swears she works best alone, and leaves Bond cuffed to a pipeline.

As Lin returns to her base of operations in a bike shop, she is attacked by various ninjas sent by Chang. Bond gets inside and assists her at fending her off, reassuring her that they do work the best together. Bond then tells Lin that they need to contact both the British and Chinese governments that they’re looking for a stealth ship, and while Lin sends out the messages, Bond gets equipped. They start out looking for the stealth ship, while the British fleets loom into their general area, looking out for blood. Their first searches prove to be useless, but they soon find the stealth ship, and they make their way towards it. They arrive and are greeted by Stamper, who takes Lin on board while Bond fakes his death to investigate inside. Carver greets Lin and allows her to be the audience to all of his destruction. Meanwhile, Bond captures Gupta, takes him to the bridge, and uses him as a way to barter with Carver. His plan seems to have failed, after Gupta says all it takes is a push of the button and Beijing disappears, Carver kills him as a backup plan. Bond, however, also has a backup plan, detonating a well-placed explosive, making the stealth ship visible on British radar systems. The Chinese leave the ship for the British to take care of.

As panic breaks out on the ship, with people all over abandoning and trying to get off, Bond and Lin take care of the two men in charge, Carver and Stamper. Bond manages to pin Carver down while he was monologing, and manages to turn the Sea-Vac on (“You forgot the first rule of mass media, Elliot. Give the people what they want.”), and it drives into Carver, killing him in the process. However, while Bond was distracted with Carver, Stamper managed to capture Wai Lin and trap her in a jacket of chains. He threatens to send her into the depths below if he doesn’t stop what he’s doing. Lin tells Bond to put detonators on the rockets of the ballistic missile, which has only a minute before firing to Beijing. Bond does so, and Stamper drops her into the ocean, and then attacks Bond for Carver. Stamper and Bond fight for a good while, with Stamper threatening to die together, but Bond gains the upper hand, pinning Stamper’s foot under the missile. Bond then jumps into the ocean to save Lin while the missile ignites, exploding and killing Stamper. The movie finally ends with the British fleet looking for Bond and Lin, while they, “stay undercover,” on a nearby island.

I was conversing with a good friend of mine (who is also a Bond fan), while I was watching this movie, and we both came to the conclusion that this movie is very, very bland, to the point of Octopussy even. But, now that I look back over it again, I think it’s got a little bit of a charm to it. Compared to Goldeneye, it’s nothing, but by itself, it’s just a good action film that’s mostly molded by a lot of 90s action tropes. The characters are decently written, but none of them really stand out from the crowd, even if they are as crazily acted as Jonathan Pryce’s Elliot Carver. Roger Spottiswoode…I’ve never seen anything he’s directed outside of this movie (if he ever did anything), but he’s pretty good at the way he shot the film. But, the breakout piece of it is the score, done by David Arnold, a soon to be household name in the Bond franchise for the music. It’s a pretty nice soundtrack, filled with nice little sound effects here and there that accents the movie and the era which it was made.

So, you know, it’s not that bad…it doesn’t really offend anyone or anything, and it’s far better than most Roger Moore movies, so I can’t really complain. I’m going to give it a 3 out of 5…could be better, could be worse (that’s still to come).