Stevens, Michael Stevens. Not quite as cool as Bond, James Bond, huh? Well, I can always hope that one day I too can be a super spy like Mr. Bond. Till then I’ll have to settle for being a super asshole, which I have been told many times that I do fit that description. Not nearly as many hot babes, cool toys, or great special effects in my line of work as a super asshole, as compared to Mr. Bond in his 20^th installment, Die Another Day, but I do get some perks.

In this particular film Mr. Bond (Pierce Brosnan, the Tailor of Panama) starts his adventure in the coincidentally news making evil nation of North Korea. No, he is not there to stop their nuclear program such as Kirk Douglas does in The Heroes of Telemark. Rather he is there to assassinate a bad colonel (Moon not Sanders) that wants to conquer South Korea. Unfortunately for Bond, a Mr. Zao (Rick Yune, The Fast and the Furious) who works for Col. Moon (Will Yun Lee) discovers that Bond is there as an assassin, not as an arms buyer, thus putting a kink in Bond’s plans. Of course, just before being executed James is able to escape, kill a hundred or so soldiers, and then chase Col. Moon of a cliff in an exciting hovercraft chase. Bond thinks Moon is dead, and so does Moon’s father, General Moon who then takes Bond prisoner. James stays in captivity for 14 months surviving brutal torture, but certainly Bond never breaks. Though Bond knows he never breaks, MI6 finally works for his release after the NSA loses their top agent in North Korea, which the NSA thinks Bond gave up. So Bond is traded for Zao and then he is sent to recover, but mainly just kept isolated so he can’t hurt the organization any more. But this is Bond, James Bond and he can’t stay away from the action for too long, so he escapes the ship he is being kept on and swims ashore to Hong Kong where he makes a deal with Chinese intelligence agents so that he can hunt down Zao and seek revenge. This leads him to Cuba where he discovers that Zao is undergoing a DNA/gene re-sequencing treatment to change his identity. He also finds a hot new girl to conquer in the bedroom with the lovely Jinx (Halle Berry, Swordfish), which he does conquer before finding out that Jinx is some sort of secret agent herself. Next James is off to Britain to look into a gentleman named Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens, Possession), who made his fortune by discovering diamonds in Iceland (but Bond thinks the diamonds are conflict diamonds from Sierra Leone). Here is where good old M (Judi Dench, Chocolat) decides to bring in James to help see if Graves is legit or not. Of course James has to get some new gadgets, so he goes to see Q (John Cleese, Harry Potter 2) where he gets a really kick-ass Aston Martin that can become invisible. Here we also meet another MI6 agent in Miranda Frost (Rosamund Pike) that has been working on Graves, but has yet to come up with anything. Soon the two are off to Iceland and Graves palace made of ice to unveil his Icarus space project that he claims is to help give extra daylight for farming, but it is really a weapon (I’m not sure why an evildoer would name their weapon of destruction after someone in Greek mythology that dies from his own stupidity/brazenness?). In Iceland the whole gang shows up with Jinx, James, Frost, Graves, and Zao all there to put on one hell of a spectacular show with plenty of explosions and other various special effects that do the James Bond name proud. But enough plot; though I’m sure you can probably guess how things turn out in the end (for a hint see the 19 other James Bond films).

Die Another Day was directed by Lee Tamahori, whose last work was Along Came A Spider last year. The screenplay was written by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, and is obviously based on Ian Fleming’s characters. Some others in the film are Emilio Echevarría, Lawrence Makoare, Samantha Bond, Michael Madsen, Rachel Grant, Deborah Moore, and a brief cameo by Madonna (plus of course her song at the beginning).

This installment was much better than The World Is Not Enough, but the jokes didn’t seem to be all that funny. Plus some of those jokes were old by the time you got to the theater. Granted, you don’t go to see James Bond for the wit and humor, but something needs to stay fresh in this franchise. The special effects and gadgets are great, the realism non-existent (again not something you look for from 007). The final analysis: Great action, great women, great explosions, great gadgets, but not much else (which in this case is OK) as Bond grabs a rating of seven couches.