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James Bond - Tomorrow Never Dies (Ultimate Edition 2 Disc Set) [1997]


RRP: £16.99
Our Price: £4.81 (subject to change)

Editorial
Synopsis

British super spy James Bond goes after a ruthless media baron--an amalgam of Ted Turner, Rupert Murdoch, and Bill Gates, played with feisty aplomb by Pryce--whose diabolical plans include instigating World War III so that his empire can obtain an exclusive. This time, 007 discovers sorrow in a love lost and a worthwhile partner in a female Chinese counterpart, played by Hong Kong action diva Michelle Yeoh. Digitally restored.


Brosnan's best Bond adventure
Review date: 2008-07-01 Rating: 8 out of 10

I was never very keen on Brosnan as James Bond. He always seemed like he was trying to be a smart-ass instead of a hard-ass. I remember when Goldeneye came out back in November 1995 the media were raving about it being a new Bond for a new era but to me it actually felt quite regressive.

After the angry, extremely tough Dalton Bond we went back to big, dumb set-pieces, maniacal villains bent on world domination and crude sex jokes. Thankfully Tomorrow Never Dies was significantly better, though it's far from being brilliant.

The main problem with TND is that it's clearly just a bunch of action scenes with a thin plot concocted to string them together. I guess this is acceptable since not every Bond movie has to be a 2-hour+ affair and it does feel very fast-paced in contrast to the slow, lumbering dinosaur that was The World Is Not Enough which followed two years later.

Teri Hatcher gets to look pretty as Bond's former squeeze now married to Elliot Carver, a man who is very much insane and plans to take over the world with his tabloid newspaper that is so sleazy it would make the Daily Sport look like Dickens. Unfortunately, she's not got much to do after her husband finds out and has her killed. Then we're left with Wai Lin, a clumsy Chinese agent who isn't the kind of woman who instantly throws her helpless self into Bond's arms. I like tough women and there's a lot of fun to be had in watching her beat up random bad guys.

It's a shame that Brosnan's scripts got even worse after TWINE. Die Another Day is affront to the franchise and among the rubble of three dull movies ol' Pierce only got to shine in this one.

Dante's Peak was good though.

The DVD is in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen with DTS 5.1 sound and loads of extras.

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Reviews


Brosnan excels in otherwise routine techno-thriller
Review date: 2008-01-22 Rating: 8 out of 10

If there is an example of star charisma pulling a movie through, then it is here, in Brosnan's second Bond outing where he appears effortlessly cool and comfortable in the role. Every time he is on screen, the film works. The director (Roger Spottiswoode) is new to Bond movies, and yet he manages to pull off something that looks just like a Bond movie should - harking back to the Moore era, with quips and the odd comedy moment to add levity to the proceedings.
After a standout opening sequence where Bond infiltrates an arms bazaar on a mountain top before reducing most of the materials on display to scrap, the plot revolves around a media baron out to achieve global media domination. It's a neat updated twist on the megalomaniac idea. To do this, he is engineering a war between Britain and China in order to breach the Chinese media market - this means Bond has to work with a Chinese agent (who coincidentally happens to be a beautiful woman..) to stop the madman before WW III erupts. You know, business as usual for a Bond movie.
One of the standout elements of the movie, is David Arnold's terrific score (with the exception of the main theme tune) - finally, someone has taken on John Barry's mantle, and taken the Bond themes and not just run with them but given them new life, livening them up for a new generation - fantastic stuff. Other ingredients which hit exactly the right note are Judi Dench as M, Teri Hatcher as the (rather short-lived) Bond girl, Michelle Yeoh's spunky Chinese agent and the remote control car chase.
There are however some real problems with the movie. One or two of the action scenes are a little too orchestrated... the helicopter trying to slice up Bond with its blades must have looked great on paper, but fails to convince. And then the old Bond movie dilemma - when the bad guy is not good, the movie falls flat. Jonathan Pryce is never really menacing - He doesn't even look as menacing as the real Rupert Murdoch! He just looks like an actor spouting menacing lines.. and speaking of lines, the script veers from some real witty quips (Admiral Roebuck: `With all due respect, M, I think you don't have the balls for this job.' M: `Maybe. But the advantage is, I don't have to think with them all the time.'), to some real clunkers that fall flat on delivery (`There's no news like bad news ` - how long did it take to come up with that classic??).
The great thing about Bond movies is how they walk the tightrope of cliché to deliver the same old Bond film ingredients, but with inventiveness. With the Bike chase, the car chase, the quirky and interesting secondary characters, that is exactly what this movie does - for the first half. Then, the second half falls into the trap of just being Bond running about killing people, waving a machine gun around instead of killing carefully and with precision the way he ought to, trying hard to kill a guy with grey hair and glasses. It's as much action as we have seen in a Bond finale in a long time, but it does not really thrill.
That aside, if you can try and ignore the ubiquitous product placement, then the cocktail of Brosnan excelling in a role he seems destined to play, David Arnold's exciting score, and Michelle Yeoh matching Bond bullet for bullet and kick for kick rather than be the dull women on the sideline, makes this worth a watch.

As per the other Brosnan releases, there is a gaping hole in the extras where we might expect a retrospective documentary, however that quibble aside there are plenty of other extras, with two commentaries, storyboards, deleted scenes ( none of which are memorable) and a couple of fluff pieces about `the making of' that offer no insight into the genesis of story or movie in general. Good, but not quite `ultimate'. Picture and sound are perfect, as we have come to expect in this remastered series.


Brosnan's best Bond outing
Review date: 2008-01-07 Rating: 8 out of 10

Brosnan's hugely successful debut as James Bond, 'Goldeneye', ensured that audiences were left with little doubt that Bond could still hack it amid a seemingly endless slew of Hollywood action blockbusters. For me, despite some nauseating flaws, the follow up would be Pierce Brosnan's finest moment in the guise of Commander James Bond.

There are a lot of arguments for and against this movie for me, and I'll no doubt spend more time criticising it than praising it in this review. For those of you that haven't seen it, at least this review will serve to prepare you for the bad but hopefully it will also convince you that it is certainly worth seeing.

There are three major hang ups I have with 'Tomorrow Never Dies'. The first, and perhaps the biggest, is the premise. While it does actually unfurl nicely as a plot, it leaves us with no hope of suspending any disbelief which, for me at least, is what makes the Bond movies great. In a nutshell, some media mogul intends to manipulate world events in order to start World War Three between China and Britain. The problem is that, according to the film, the mogul in question, Elliot Carver, is supposed to be a household name.

Unlikely as most of the Bond scenarios have always been, it was always possible that Hugo Drax was hoping to start a new super-race in outer space, that Max Zorin was planning to wipe out Silicone Valley or that Goldfinger was intending to destroy all the gold in Fort Knox. If the events that take place in most Bond movies were ever to really happen, Joe Public would never know about it anyway. The problem here is that we all know that Elliot Carver is a made up character because, were he not, we would all know who he is and we would all, apparently, be watching his channels and reading his papers. Minor gripe, perhaps, but it leaves the film with no credibility whatsoever.

Elliot Carver is also the crux of my second big problem with the movie, or rather Jonathan Price's grotesquely camp performance of him. I'm not sure whether to blame Price or the director on this one but, every second this supposed supervillan is on screen, I want to throw a chair at it. He is just plain awful, and easily the worst Bond baddie next to John Gray's embarrassing turn as Blofeld in 'Diamonds Are Forever'.

The third problem is that there is little to no chemistry between Bond and his Chinese love interest, played by Michelle Yeoh. They both try hard, and the scenes between them are handled fairly well by the director, but if the chemistry isn't there, what can you do? Sadly, simply, the chemistry is not there.

There are other gripes I have, such as the absence of Bond veteran Peter Lamont as Production Designer. The nature of the plot led the film-makers to go in a rather predictable pseudo-techno futuristic direction. The subsequent lighting does make for some great cinematography, but it all makes the film seem like it's trying just a little too hard. Sadly, the franchise continued in this direction right until the thoroughly appalling 'Die Another Day' before realising that it didn't work any more.

For all my beefing thus far, you might be forgiven for thinking that I don't like this movie at all. However, what this film has in spades, and what more than makes up for its shortcomings, is swagger. This film has a set of balls on it like a Spanish bull. Brosnan struts through every scene like he owns Hollywood, in what is certainly the pinnacle of 'his Bond'. The action sequences are spectacular, without exception, and David Arnold lives out his life-long fantasy by penning the finest of odes to John Barry, without ever over-indulging. The all-important title sequence (the second by legend Maurice Binder's replacement, Daniel Kleinman) is easily among my all time favourites too!

Other nice touches here include a back-story concerning an old flame of Bond's, which gives a new insight into the character for the '90s. There are some good lines in here too, but there are some pretty bad ones to go with them, including a few in-jokes delivered by Moneypenny which are dead before they hit the back of cinema.

Even with all of the problems, this film does come through gloriously and is largely one the most enjoyable Bond movies ever made, in a sort of mindless way. It is a film that certainly values style over substance but, when you have this much style and you know how to use it, who cares?

As with all the new Bond DVDs, the picture and sound have been remasted to stunning effect. Watching these films on an upscaling DVD player, you will be amazed at how clean they look, sound and feel. Extras are a little less impressive with the Brosnan films, but worth a look nonetheless.


Brosnan's worst Bond
Review date: 2007-12-08 Rating: 4 out of 10

The history of the latter Bond films is one of false dawns, with sporadic good or near-great Bond films promptly followed by horribly disappointing ones. OHMSS was followed by the lazy Diamonds Are Forever, The Spy Who Loved Me by Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only by Octopussy, and sadly Pierce Brosnan's enjoyable Bond debut GoldenEye remained true to form in being followed by another clunker. Tomorrow Never Dies was a famously troubled shoot, with a constantly rewritten unfinished script the most visible of its many problems. It's that classic `inbetween good Bonds' film that just feels like its treading water while they recharge their creative batteries for the next one. The premise may sound absurd - Jonathan Pryce's media mogul tries to start a war in Asia to boost circulation and viewing figures in return for local TV concessions - but it's a scam that William Randolph Hearst pulled for real in the Spanish-American War with his infamous telegram to a reporter "You supply the pictures and I'll supply the war." True, he didn't use a Stealth Ship or a guided drill-torpedo to do it, but the film almost pulls it off as a framework for a Bond movie. The problem is that, aside from David Arnold's excellent score, not much else really works.

Pryce isn't exactly a threatening supervillain and his henchmen are a rather bland bunch with the exception of Vincent Schiavelli's master assassin, who opts for broad overacting rather than menace. It may be an inspired idea to cast Michelle Yeoh as the leading lady, but with only one brief fight it seems rather pointless hiring one of the best action stars in the world if she doesn't get to do much. Worse, the action scenes are distinctly hit-and-miss. The pretitle sequence is terrific and the remote-controlled car chase one of the more enjoyable gadget showcases, but somehow the motorbike vs. helicopter chase through the streets and rooftops of Saigon never works nearly as well as it should: the footage is good but there's something almost haphazard about the editing that robs it of much of its potential. The film's big finale is little short of disastrous. Reputedly intended to be on a larger scale but scaled down because the effects shots wouldn't be ready in time for the film's opening date, there's literally nothing at stake by this point - with WW3 safely averted, all that's left for a somewhat bored Bond to do is walk around a badly designed and unappealingly photographed set shooting extras like he was in a bad video game before killing an old man with glasses.

Throw in lazy plotting and some of the worst dialogue in the series history and even the few promising ideas thrown up along the way tend to get lost in the hurry to get something releasable in the can. While Die Another Day is most Bond fans' choice for Brosnan's worst Bond, that at least threw up some good ideas in the first half - this feels like a film where no-one had a decent idea between them but were contractually obliged to deliver a movie in time for Christmas anyway. Horribly disappointing.

There's not a great deal of in the way of new extras to justify an upgrade if you have the previous special edition - aside from the extras carried over from that, there's a featurette on Moby's Bond theme remix, some redundant clips from the movie and some weak deleted scenes. Among them is an extended briefing scene in M's car where everyone is drinking cocktails that is so clumsily executed (every shot ends with them raising a glass to their lips) that it looks like an outtake from the old Thunderbirds TV series, so the film could clearly have been even worse, but that's scant consolation. As per all of the Brosnan Bond DVDs, there's no proper making of documentary either, just the odd puff-piece from its first release. One for the bond completists only, really.

Classic Bond
Review date: 2007-07-10 Rating: 10 out of 10

Traumatised by my ghastly experience of watching 'Casino 'Royale', I decided to cheeer myself up by watching a really good Bond movie. Although I never thought Pierce Brosnan was all that brilliant by comparison with my favourite Bond, Roger Moore, he is a veritable prince among men compared to the dreary nonentity in 'Casino Royale'.

Among the many pleasures of this film there is an outstanding performance by Johnathan Pryce who clearly enjoys himself thoroughly playing the villain, manic media boss Eliot Carver, who bears a strong resemblance (quite coincidental I am sure) to Rupert Murdoch. There is a satisfyingly tough heroine who can do terrific karate kicks, lots of humour, wonderful gadgets, and one of the most spectacular and exciting chases in any Bond movie, with Bond and heroine handcuffed together while driving a motorcycle through crowded city streets, across rooftops etc, breathtakingly thrilling.

Fabulous entertainment, they don't (alas) make Bond movies like this any more.

Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
Pip Torrens
Terence Rigby
Desmond Llewelyn
Pierce Brosnan
Al Matthews

Creators:
Pierce Brosnan (Primary Contributor)
Desmond Llewelyn (Primary Contributor)

Director(s):

Recording label: MGM Entertainment
Manufacturer: MGM Entertainment
EAN: 5035822460799
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 2
Format: Box set, PAL, Widescreen,
Release date: 2006-07-17
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Audience rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
Region code: 2
Running time: 114 minutes
Theatrical release date: 1997
Language: Greek (Subtitled)
Language: Dutch (Subtitled)
Language: Norwegian (Subtitled)
Language: Finnish (Subtitled)
Language: English (Subtitled)
Language: Danish (Subtitled)
Language: Swedish (Subtitled)
Language: Hindi (Subtitled)
Language: English (Original Language)

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