Reviewing a new James Bond movie can be boiled down to how well it fulfills the precedents set by the previous seventeen epics. Thus we find ourselves watching Tomorrow Never Dies, the latest entry in the longest-running film franchise to date, like ravenous shoppers scanning our grocery lists:1. Death-defying pre-title sequence, complete with cheeky jokes -- check.
2. Title song with artfully silhouetted nudes -- check. (Unfortunately, Sheryl Crow's alley-cat groan does a disservice to the grand tradition of Bond title tracks. Check out the k.d. lang end title "Surrender" instead.)
3. Megalomaniac villain and threatening sidekick -- check. (Jonathan Pryce has fun with the Rupert Murdoch-on uppers shtick, Gotz Otto isn't given much to do besides glower and be nearly invincible.)
4. M and Moneypenny -- check. (Although now that M is the formidable Dame Judi Dench, the two of them ganging up on Bond conjures up unpleasant images of a women's activist roast.)
5. Q -- check. (Three cheers for Desmond Llewelyn, while he's still alive.)
6. A tuxedo-infested nightclub; "Bond, James Bond"; the inevitable vodka martini, shaken, not stirred - check, check, check.
7. Love interest who later becomes sacrificial lamb -- check. (Teri Hatcher is strangely bedraggled and petulant, as if she got lost on her way to the set of Lois and Clark.)
8. The gadget-laden car -- check. (Thumbs up for the parking garage chase scene, thumbs down for the producers' choice of BMW -- why feature a car that any Communist cadre and his mother can own?)
9. The "demolish everything in sight" finale, the fate of the world at stake as the clock ticks down, etc. -- check. (A little less of the Bruce Willis Die Hard antics would have been welcome.)
10. The one special element that breaks from traditional formula: this time a shapely Communist Chinese spy in the form of Hong Kong action goddess Michelle Yeoh -- check. (Yeoh steals the show despite being saddled with a sloppy kung fu scene which doesn't come close to matching her feats with Jackie Chan in Police Story III: Supercop. Her presence also finally answers the question about why all Beijing female cops are elderly meter-maid types -- obviously the young and beautiful ones opt for special assignments around the globe with James Bond.)
11. And for those of us in Beijing, we receive the extra special bonus of witnessing Chinese MIGs tussle with British warships, intimations of a hostile cable television takover of the PRC, and corrupt Communist generals making backroom deals which nearly lead to World War III. In short, just another day in the Middle Kingdom.
All the above indicates that a fine time should be had by Bond aficionado and neophyte alike. Well, almost. Tomorrow Never Dies duly fulfills its requirement to be fast-paced entertainment, but there's no getting around the fact that something is missing -- the insouciance, the elegance that is Bond's world. Subtract all the peripherals -- the famous James Bond theme, the gadgets, the English accent -- and this movie could just as well be about some nameless Yankee spy from Oklahoma.
There's pleasure to be gained from how Tomorrow Never Dies adheres to the Bond formula, but the movie prefers to rocket from point A to point B, failing to linger over the details. The locations, including Thailand (pretending to be Vietnam) are potentially dazzling, but too much time is spent in faceless hotel rooms and office buildings. The velvet-touch espionage which Bond is justly famous for has been jettisoned in favor of double-fisted machine guns and indiscriminate slaughter. Finally, the plot is long on hardware but short on fun or wit. It builds on current "China threat" fears in the West and includes topical references to Bill Gates and satellites, but those hoping for a fresh and incisive view on telecommunications and world politics besides what you get on CNN will be disappointed.
Above all, we wonder if Bond knows who he is any more. Pierce Brosnan, who is weightier and more relaxed than he was in GoldenEye, seems to understand that his character is a pure fantasy, which puts him on the right track. But the script gives him few opportunities to develop a personality beyond the usual wisecracks and assassinations. One could argue until Armageddon about the relative merits of Sean Connery and Roger Moore, but no one can deny that they had their established personas as Bond: Connery as the cultured sadist, Moore as the aristocrat's spy. Until the filmmakers and Brosnan can place a distinctive stamp on his version of the character and rediscover the sleek, polished thrills that originally set the movies apart from their competitors, the Bond series risks becoming nothing more than a faulty martini in which the vodka itself is perfect, but the actual shaking leaves something to be desired.