This is the second of four outings by Pierce Brosnan as James Bond. It follows GoldenEye (1995) and is followed by The World Is Not Enough (1999) and Die Another Day (2002). He’s the fourth best Bond to my taste – not on the level of Connery, Moore or Dalton, but is still comfortable watchable in an otherwise well made action movie, unlike George Lazenby or Daniel Craig whose Bond movies I personally find insufferable.
A clever & captivating opening, leading into one of the best theme tunes in James Bond history, sees Tomorrow Never Dies get off to a pretty good start. The movie then continues along similar lines, with a script that’s focused more on an intriguing idea rather than action, but doesn’t lack action either. As a result, it does both to a fair standard, but doesn’t do either masterfully – the main weakness is the lack of strong characters in these early scenes.
The odd attempt at cheesy humour is pretty weak again, just like in GoldenEye. Sometimes even stooping to prolonged exchanges of toilet humour. The scene where Q introduces James to his new remote-controllable bulletproof shock-protected missile-clad BMW ends pretty nicely though, with a healthy mix of action and humour, even if it begins with terrible humour. As always, Desmond Llewelyn does a great job as Q.
The main baddies in this movie are Elliot Carver (brains) played quite well by Jonathan Pryce with vibes of Pope Francis, and Mr Stamper (brawn) played sufficiently but far from outstandingly by Götz Otto with vibes like a cross between Andreas Wisniewski, the KGB milkman from The Living Daylights, and Everett McGill from Under Siege 2 (Seagal’s main rival on the brawn side). Stamper could equally be described as a cross between Dolph Lundgren and Timothy Olyphant. Incidentally, McGill also played a minor role in Licence To Kill but looked quite different there.
Around the half hour mark we’re introduced to both of the Bond girls from this movie: Mrs Paris Carver (the main antagonist’s wife, and an ex lover of James Bond) played by Teri Hatcher (best known for playing Lois Lane in the epic 90s series The New Adventures Of Superman); and Miss Wai Lin (undercover Chinese agent) played by Michelle Yeoh (from Mechanic: Resurrection (2016) alongside Jason Statham and Jessica Alba). They both do a decent job here. Hatcher in her early 30s here, contributes beauty and familiarity, while Yeoh in her mid 30s here, is hardly a bombshell – she’s more of a girl next door type, but the chemistry is still somewhat believable between her and Brosnan. Yeoh is also a very familiar face to fans of Hong Kong action movies, having starred in movies throughout the 80s, 90s & 00s alongside Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Donnie Yen, Sammo Hung, etc. More recently she was in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021) by Marvel Studios.
Joe Don Baker returns as charismatic CIA logistics champ Jack Wade. He’s no Clifton James (Sheriff JW Pepper), but he’s a nice addition to the cast nonetheless. Fun fact: Joe Don Baker also played Brad Whittaker, one of the main antagonists in The Living Daylights opposite Timothy Dalton.
We know James Bond movies love a scuba scene, and this movie is no different, except this time Bond jumps out of a high altitude airplane wearing his wetsuit and oxygen tank, diving straight into the ocean to explore a wreckage.
You may also spot Simon Pegg for a second towards the end, in the smallest of vocal roles.
The ending gets a bit longwinded and one-dimensional, especially for those who have seen this movie many times before. Still, overall I rate it an OK movie, on a par with most Bond movies.
The closing credits say ‘In loving memory of Albert R “Cubby” Broccoli’. For those who don’t know, he’s been the owner of Eon Productions and the main man behind the whole saga since the start. His kids have been running the show ever since, and I guess that explains why it was able to go from something outstanding prior to Brosnan, to something respectable with Brosnan, to something embarrassingly unwatchable with Daniel Craig and has remained that way ever since Brosnan retired from the role. Cubby must be turning in his grave at the state of what the Bond franchise has become under his kids’ supervision. Having said that, the Daniel Craig era has been performing outstandingly at the box office, so I guess in killing the cool, calm & collected work of art that was James Bond, they created a commercial monster that appeals to a different but larger audience of soppy drama fans, so in purely financial terms it would be deemed a success (until it dies out, because it’s got nothing really cool about it any more). There may also be a deeper strategy at work, since the soppy new James Bond of the Daniel Craig era represents the kind of emasculated woke wetwipe that our world’s leaders seem to want to turn us all into.
