Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

[©DURANMANIA Board Team]

Date of Release
World Premiere 9th December 1997, the Odeon Leicester Square, London

the story

British multimedia mogul Elliot Carver plans to achieve global domination by influencing the minds of people over the entire globe through his media empire, which after his plan to start a war between Britain and China, will enable him to have more people under his influence than anyone else has achieved in the history of the planet.

Bond’s Women
Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh)
Paris Carver (Teri Hatcher)
Professor Inga Bergstrom (Cecile Thomsen)

Bond’s Enemies
Elliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce)
Stamper (Gotz Otto)
Henry Gupta (Ricky Jay)
Dr. Kaufman (Vincent Schiavelli)
General Chang (Philip Kwok)

Bond’s Allies
Jack Wade (Joe Don Baker)
Admiral Roebuck (Geoffrey Palmer)
Dr. Dave Greenwalt (Colin Stinton)
Charles Robinson (Colin Salmon)
‘M’ (Judi Dench)
Miss Moneypenny (Samantha Bond)
‘Q’ (Desmond Llewelyn)

Bond's Car
BMW 750 iL
BMW R 1200 Motorbike (Borrowed!)

Bond’s Gadget
Ericsson cell phone with universal lock-pick in antenna, fingerprint scanner, 20,000 volt electric shock security system. Also remotely starts and controls oo7’s BMW 750 iL

Main Title Music
‘Tomorrow Never Dies’ sung by Sheryl Crow

End Title Music
‘Surrender’ sung by k.d. lang

Music Score
David Arnold

Production Design
Allan Cameron

Main Titles Designer
Daniel Kleinman

Screenplay
Bruce Feirstein

Editors
Dominique Fortin & Michel Arcand

Director of Photography
Robert Elswit

Director
Roger Spottiswoode

Producers
Michael G. Wilson & Barbara Broccoli

Budget
$110 million

Worldwide Box Office
$335.3 million

Worldwide Box Office Gross Income 2003 inflation-adjusted
$377 million

REVIEW: Tomorrow Never Dies is a great action movie which fails as a Bond film. The film takes no time for character development and attempts to pad a weak plot with non-stop action. The worst part about this formula is that the action sequences seem out of place and are usually way too long. I actually fell asleep in the theater during one of my viewings of the film. Still, the movie has all the elements Bond fans know and love. M and Moneypenny have much larger parts than normal, but sadly, Q's scene is rather short. The film is filled with far more sexual innuendoes than usual; it almost become a Moore film in that respect. The ads touted non-stop action and the movie delivered in that aspect. There are more gunfights, explosions, brawls, and shots of Brosnan running that I can count. The stunts are great and well choreographed. Bond's HALO jump looks real, as does he and Wai Lin sliding under the helicopter's propellers (the best stunt in the film). Even the parts that don't involve some life-endangering situation for Bond are also, for the most part, well done. Carver's sinister plan is developed sufficiently, but I never really believed he was the cruel man he pretended to be. The things he does hurt him inside; after ordering the death of his wife, he sits alone at a table, sulking. He did show the usual villain insanity when he compared himself to Napoleon and Caesar. Why do all Bond villains usually compare themselves to tyrants of history?

This time around there are plenty of girls for the non-monogamous Bond. First he "picks up some foreign tongue" from a Inga Bergstrom who is teaching him Danish at Oxford. Next he beds Paris Carver. Finally, he and Wai Lin don't respond to cries of "Commander Bond, Colonel Lin, are you out there?" so they can stay and enjoy themselves on the wreckage of Carver's ship. As for Wai Lin, the first Bond-equivalent Bond girl, she was fabulous. For the first time, 007 doesn't have to tell the girl to "stay here and wait for me". He can give her a gun and some limpet mines and she is off. As usual, the locations were breathtaking; they really made Bangkok look like Vietnam. As for Bond in this one, he seemed much more like the spy of Fleming's novels. He womanizes, drinks alone in his hotel room, kills without reservation, and actually gets hurt. Perhaps the best example is when he kills Dr. Kaufman at point blank range.

The main problem with the movie is that somewhere during the motorcycle chase it began to go downhill. The chase was too long and what followed it was not all that interesting. Bond and Wai Lin had to go through the cliched "I work alone" bit, and then finally arrived at "ok, let's team up". It just seemed like a waste of time. The scene in the Vietnamese equivalent of Q branch was a nice touch, but again, too drawn out. Then, the ending was terrible. I didn't like most of the final scene on the stealth ship. The edge-of-your-seat tension that many Bond movies have was missing. I never believed that Bond or Wai Lin's lives were in danger. The best scene was when Bond had Stamper shoot the man he just killed so Stamper would think Bond was dead: classic Bond technique. Elliot Carver's death by the sea drill was the worst one since Kananga's death by inflation. It didn't give me any satisfaction and was made too obvious before it happened. Another bad move was to turn Stamper into a typical, muscle-bound grotesque henchman. He really showed a sinister side when he gunned down the 17 helpless men in the water without blinking an eye. After that he just became another one of Carver's big bullies. He never seemed to get the same joy out of killing, and the part where he talks about being Dr. Kaufman's student was just pointless and took away from his character. In the end he fell into the trap that so many henchmen get into: invincibility. Bond stabs him two times and he barley winces. That killed any credibility and finished the ruination of the character. But aside from all these peeves, it was still a pretty good entry into the Bond series: especially with no more Cold War to fall back on.

Added 1.2.98:The more I watch this movie, the more I hate the use of slow-motion. It is just not needed and takes away from the overall quality of the rest of the well-directed movie. Finally, the movie's quality during some of the dimly lit scenes was not too good. It was grainy and looked like the movie was not fully processed before release. The last movie this happened with was The Spy Who Loved Me and it bothered me then too. Still, one of the best entries in years.

BROSNAN: In GoldenEye, Brosnan was most worried about conforming to the public's view of who and what James Bond is. Now that it was such a success, he feels more confident with the role, and it shows. Brosnan downplays the Superman image and goes more to the gritty, cold, depressed secret agent of the novels: he kills Dr. Kaufman with no hesitation, sits alone in his hotel room drinking vodka, and delivers his lines with a coldness that works for a man of his profession.


Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh), James Bond (Pierce Brosnan)


Elliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce)

peace & love
SLIM K