Die Another Day

(Re-viewed and reviewed as part of the 2017 "Watch all James Bond movies in sequence" project.) Brosnan goes out with a bang. Several of them, in fact. Brosnan was, by this point, a solid number two on the Bond list (after Connery, of course); his films largely held their own among entries in the canon. This one did not impress me that much upon first viewing, but it has aged well and earns higher marks upon a second showing. The strengths here are in the action sequences, including some truly audacious work with hovercraft, cars (on ice, no less), and a helicopter escape from a disintegrating cargo plane. the eye-candy remaining top notch, with Rosamund Pike getting bested by Halle Berry (it’s closer than you’d think). There are downsides: we’ve seen the orbiting super weapon at least three times now. But generally, this is an entertaining and satisfying entry in the series; at this remove one wonders why any felt an urgent need to reboot the franchise. Perhaps Brosnan had simply had enough. The reboot idea turned out to be golden, in hindsight, but on the strength of this flick, at the time, you could have made the case to keep going with one more effort along these lines.