Just caught this on Spike. I hadn't seen it since during its original theatrical release, and its awfulness has since become legendary, forcing a reboot of the long-running Bond franchise. Seeing it again - yep, it's still horrible.
The later Roger Moore films have a reputation for silliness, but Die Another Day goes out of its way to exceed even that standard. An invisible car? DNA-splicing to change a Korean into a Brit? A man with diamonds embedded in his face that can't be removed? The virtual reality training/erotic fantasy simulator? Madonna acting?
A good example: the main villain, Graves, has Bond trapped at his ice hotel (ice hotel?). Bond breaks out and escapes in Graves' rocket car (rocket car? OK - so I forgot a few more examples of silliness). Graves gives the order: "Kill him, quietly!". So what happens? His men immediately open up with the machine guns, because nothing is quieter than a machine gun. When that fails, Graves uses his superweapon to fire a giant beam of light from space down onto Bond, setting some woods on fire and melting a glacier which forms a tidal wave that almost kills Bond.
Yeah - probably nobody noticed that.
Amazingly enough, on a second viewing I found Halle Berry of all people ended up looking the best out of this mess. While Brosnan seemed to be trying to play it as straight as he could given the lousy double entendres (and not a single one worked), Berry was playing the thing with the right tone - just stand around looking hot in a bikini and toss off stupid one-liners. Yeah, it all falls apart by the end for everyone, but at least Halle had a few scenes that weren't a total embarrassment. Otherwise, everyone is about as bad as they can be (especially Michael Madsen - what in the world was he thinking?). One star.
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