|
Review:
 So here we
are: The Twentieth official James Bond movie [there are two
unofficial ones], and we've pretty much exhausted all of the
original novels, novellas, short stories and stuff by other
people. So what do we do?
Leave it to President Bush the second, who gave us the "Axis of
Evil."
As anyone who reads the newspapers remembers, the group has three
members: Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. Now, there are currently a
lot of people out there who would be offended if we went around
bashing radical Islam more than necessary, but the simple fact is,
nobody in his right mind would say that the people running North
Korea are anything but evil, so at last we've got a villain.
The film begins with Jimmy(Pierce Brosnan)) and his crew entering
NK's territory, where they're going to thwart the evil plan of the
evil Col. Moon(Will Yun Lee), who's selling arms to anybody who'll
use them against the west. After what appears to be another
victory, he's caught!
Yes, James Bond loses! But only through the opening credits, where
the North Koreans chastise him with scorpions. The opening number
by Madonna over, Bond is exchanged for the notorious Mr. Zao(Rick
Yune). This is, so we learn, that the good guys, including M(Judi
Dench) and CIA chief Damian Falco(Michael Madsen) think Jim's
cracked and is squealing all sorts of classified information.
Fired, stripped of his OO number, and imprisoned in a high tech
ship in the Hong Kong straights, he of course escapes and with the
help from some people we don't expect is winging his way to Cuba,
where Castro's people are, for an extremely high price, are
performing race-change operations, something that he and NSA agent
Jinx( Halle Berry) successfully put an end to.
Back in London, he's given his old job back and put on the trail
of the evil looking Gustav Graves(Toby Stephens), a Brit from
Argentina who somehow managed to get a billion bucks and a
knighthood in little under a year. What does he have to do with
Cols. Moon and Cho? That would be telling, but he and assistant
Miranda Frost(Rosamund Pike) will find out.
The problem with this film is that it goes back and forth between
really cool action scenes and the self-parody which nearly
destroyed the series during the early ‘80s, when Roger Moor flew
to orbit while fighting giants with metal teeth.
All in all, screenwriters: Neal Purvis and Robert Wade have
managed to keep us from suspending disbelief and the film from
self-destructing. Everybody in it is excellent, even Madonna, who
has a cameo. The special effects are mondo cool and except for a
massive disappointment in the penultimate scene, it's one long
adrenaline rush. Plus the jokes work too.
Eric Lurio
|
