Eric Serra’s score was one of the worst things of GoldenEye; David Arnold’s is one of the best of Tomorrow Never Dies.
Brosnan’s second film suffered from major production problems; a change of release date that forced a complete plot rewrite and a script that wasn’t finished when production began. As such, this is a very action oriented piece that comes in at under 2 hours. However, 007 certainly knows how to do action and this film doesn’t disappoint; the scenes are done with verve and wit, indeed, I was chuckling at many of the one-liners (the car park scene with the car is great and made better by the in-car computer). Michelle Yeoh (a veteran Hong Kong action star before and after this) does a great job and there is some clear chemistry with Brosnan in this work – I can see why a spinoff would have been considered. The solitary scene we get with Q is great; the problem with many Bond films is that we never get enough time with him.
Where this movie falls down is in the non-action scenes; there’s a couple of big plot holes, contrivances and general weakness of dialogue there. Jonathan Pryce is pretty poor in the villain role (of the four Brosnan villains, he’s had the least successful post-Bond career) and watching “The Curse of Fatal Death” as research for my Doctor Who series diminishes his threat. Teri Hatcher is poorly written, Stamper is rubbish and Carver’s goons are so poor at their job, he calls them on it.
Mind you, I wasn’t expecting to have Julian Fellowes turn up – Hugh Bonneville also gets a small speaking part.
Conclusion
Not as bad as its reputation, but some poor casting choices mean I can only give this a maximum of:
7/10
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