Die Another Day
July 2003 Reviewed by: Rad Bennett Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

"Nobody does it better." So goes Carly Simon's line from The Spy Who Loved Me, and this movie proves it. After XXX and other imitators have come and gone, Bond still stands tall. The acting is on, the music is on, the special effects are on, and the DVD transfer is one of the best ever made.

Pierce Brosnan is back as James Bond and has now made the role "his." He is as much 007 for this century as Sean Connery was for the last one. After flirting with love in the previous outing, he’s back to womanizing, making love to a woman simply because she is beautiful and available. Brosnan does this in such a way that it doesn’t seem distasteful at all, just part of the character. After all, James Bond is not supposed to be Superman; if he were, Bruce Willis would be playing him.

In this movie, Halle Berry plays Jinx, a government agent who matches Bond blow for blow. This strong female character has evolved over the 40 years that the Bond franchise has been around. We saw glimpses of her when martial-arts expert Michelle Yeoh was cast in Tomorrow Never Dies. But Yeoh was ahead of her time and Berry develops the character further. She can be as tough as nails and totally independent, yet deliver the slinky come-hither attitude of the earlier Bond girls without missing a beat. Her first appearance in Die Another Day is homage to the original Bond movie, Dr. No, in which Ursula Andress rose from the sea like Venus, clad in a very scant bikini. Berry’s Jinx knows how attractive she is and what traditional feminine attraction can do, and she employs her attributes to great advantage to make her escape in one of the action scenes.

A Bond movie would be nothing without special effects and gadgets. The latter seem to get better and better from film to film. John Cleese is now playing Q, and in this movie has come up with an invisible car: an Aston Martin, of course, fully armed. The bad guys have their armored car, too, and one of the more exciting action sequences involves a car duel. This is almost medieval in character, as are the sword fights scattered throughout the movie. Romantic technology: Ivanhoe meets computer chips.

The large special effects are done with the usual flair and skill afforded other movies in the series. For the first time, there is a digital explosion, and, though it is very well done, you can tell.

The DVD transfer is simply smashing. The opening scene of the film features three secret agents surfing their way towards the coast of North Korea, riding gigantic Bond-sized waves. The spray seems so real you can almost smell the salt air. That beginning sets up an amazing sequence of scene after scene rendered in the closest thing we have to high-def, without actually having it. The sound is equally impressive, making full and intelligent use of all channels, including the back surround. The dynamic range is enormous, and the music is mixed at exactly the right level in relation to the sound effects.

The extras on this two-DVD set are comprehensive and exciting. There are two informative audio commentaries, one featuring director Lee Tamahori and one with Pierce Brosnan. There are the obligatory documentary, sections on scene evolution and title design, and Madonna’s music video of the title song. One of the most interesting extras is devoted to the gadgets, giving schematics and a breakdown of their components. Last but not least, on the first disc there is the "M6 DataStream." When you turn this feature on and then play the movie, screens pop up frequently with trivia information pertinent to the scene being viewed. If a buyer went through every feature in the extras, it would take a good ten hours. That is certainly good value for dollar!

This Bond movie fulfills any expectations one might have had and leaves one eagerly awaiting the next. The series seems as if it could literally go on forever.

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