Die Another Day - DVD Review

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Review

Bond (Brosnan) is sent to North Korea on the trail of a sinister military General and is captured whilst trying to escape. When he is released after 14 months of imprisonment and torture, he finds he has been abandoned by the government and sets out to find the traitor that gave him to the North Koreans. In the process he finds a link with the mysterious millionaire businessman Gustav Graves (Stephens), and CIA Agent Jinx (Berry) with similar motivations to his own.

I love the James Bond movies. I'll even watch the bad ones such as Moonraker because they are always full of great stunts, cracking one liners and a tonne of action. Over the years the Bond movies have kept up with the times - look back at Dr. No or From Russia With Love and you'll be surprised just how slow they are - still thoroughly entertaining, and in fact much tenser than nowadays, but the demand for eye-candy was much lower back then, and the action gaps were filled with intrigue and wonder.

So it's fitting that the 20th Official Bond movie plays like a Greatest hits compilation of the franchise, bringing the best and worst of the series together. It suffers a little for this - the first hour is gritty Bond along the lines of the classic Goldfinger and From Russia With Love, whilst the second half is the sci-fi Bond of Moonraker and Diamonds Are Forever, and whilst the two don't sit quite comfortably together, Die Another Day is classic Bond - fantastic action scenes (such as the swordfight and hovercraft battle), incredible stunts (cars on ice), slightly naff miniatures and tongue lodged firmly in cheek. Brosnan is my favourite Bond - he is the closest to Fleming's description in both appearance and manner, and certainly the first half of this movie harks back to the original books in tone and storyline. The inclusion of references to each of the previous 19 movies (Rosa Klebb's shoe, Little Nell, Jinx's swimsuit etc.) is welcome and will ensure that fans of the movie watch it repeatedly until they have spotted them all.

It's a thoroughly entertaining movie in its own right and certainly one of the better Bond movies. Tamahori keeps the pace up with some slick editing and plenty of top action scenes. The storyline itself is fairly straightforward, but has a couple of neat twists that will surprise most. Although I'm not a big fan of the sci-fi Bonds, it's a great addition to the series with plenty of standout scenes that sit comfortably next to the best of bond. My biggest complaint is that Director Tamahori resorted to some highly questionable CGI for the first time in the series, and although it looks better on small screen than in the cinema (the crowd laughed at one particularly bad scene, despite our hero being in terrible danger), it's still poor and spoils the movie somewhat, better than the effects in Tamahori's last effort Along Came a Spider, but poor nonetheless.

Watching the movie on disk 1 will take some time in all it's guises. Firstly do you have dolby digital 5.1 and DTS tracks, and we are thankful as this is what surround sound was designed for! Explosions, bullet ricochets and David Arnold's excellent score sucking you Dyson cyclone-esque in to the on-screen action. DTS provides a deeper soundstage, with rich bass and stunning highs, with the Hovercraft segment a great way to show off your system to your friends. The dolby digital track is excellent but if you have the equipment for the DTS, take it every time. Those with equipment that will only handle the dolby track will be more than pleased with a soundtrack that will impress your friends. Tamahori's commentary is an interesting insight in to what it is to direct a Bond movie, and being the "new boy" in a team that know their roles very well. The second commentary features Pierce Brosnan and the lovely Rosamund Pike, and discusses the production. It's interesting here to hear two perspectives - that of the Brosnan, who has had plenty of time to perfect his take on the character, and Pike, who is not only new to the Bond franchise, but new to movies in general. Brosnan makes entertaining commentaries, he has a good sense of humour about the Bond films and this is shown to good effect on this entertaining track. Finally my favourite feature is the MI6 Datastream Trivia track which you can watch with either dolby or DTS sound. Throughout the movie interesting trivia regarding the series and the production are covered. Also in key parts of the film the main feature zooms out to a small window whilst the main part of the screen shows interviews, behind the scenes footage etc with cast and crew that isn't included in the disk 2 documentaries. My only complaint as a Bond fan is that it doesn't point out all the references to previous Bond movies, so you have to find them yourself. Whilst there's no option to turn the documentaries off, it adds yet more value to an already impressive disk. Despite the volume of information on the disk, the picture is clear and bright throughout. Even during the ice scenes there seems to be little grain. There have been complaints from the big screen viewers about edge enhancement but on 28 and 32 inch televisions it didn't bother me.

On to the second disk and the quality of extras is again high. The main feature is Inside Die Another Day. A 77 minute feature follows the production's highs and lows, including Brosan's injury and problems finding locations. It covers all of the main scenes and includes plenty of on-set interviews with cast and crew, as well as behind the scenes footage, production designs etc. It's an engaging documentary that is worth repeat viewing. Next is Shaken and Stirred on ice (23 mins), which compliments the main documentary by examining some key sections in detail - here you see extensive production footage of the ice chase, including the wiping out of an Aston Martin, and the customisation of those beautiful cars. Another excellent documentary. The final documentary is annoyingly called Region 2 exclusive, which is actually called From Script to Screen (53 mins) and follows pre-production - casting and planning as well as the rewrites and what the writers were trying to do with the script. It also includes footage from the press conference held before every Bond film, which I found to be very interesting. Looking at all three documentaries - there is some repetition but on the whole each featurette has a different angle to the others. Perhaps they could have pulled all of this together in to a single (perhaps branched) documentary, but this is more of a suggestion than a gripe.

On to Mission deconstructions there are four featurettes and interactive sections which break down the action scenes even further. Scene evolution offers multi-angle breakdowns of the Hovercraft and Car battles, with storyboard, rough cut and final versions. Interaction takes it further with multi-angle and composite for four segments, and includes the original soundtrack, which is quite entertaining and not at all professional-sounding! Title design covers the production of the traditional Bond titles, whilst Digital Grading shows you how they matched the colours for skies etc., which is cool.

Equipment briefing covers 3d animations for Bond's gadgets with a voice over, and is just a gimmick, although the 3d of the Aston Martin Vanquish is very nice. The Ministry of propaganda includes all of the promotional information, and includes the press photos against green screen that were then used to produce posters etc. Also included is the Die Another Day Theme video by Madonna, a fairly violent piece interwoven with some cool Bond references for the fans. This is accompanied by a Making of Die Another Day 5 minute behind the scenes look at the making of Madonna's video. Nothing special but I'm impressed with the level of detail provided for the fans of the movie. This approach continues with a trailer for James Bond: Nightfire, the latest Bond console game and a Making of Nightfire documentary.

Add to this a set of Trailers and TV Spots and I believe that you have pretty much every bit of information produced to accompany this film on two wonderful disks.

Finally I'd like to comment on the cover, which is double-sided, with the second side designed to fit perfectly with those of us collections who now have all twenty films. It sounds a bit petty but when you sweated and toiled through twenty films, which include the bad as well as good, the least we deserve is a matching set of spines on our over-stressed shelves.

For Bond fans, who will buy this anyway, it's an essential purchase, and a good addition to the Bond movies. For DVD fans this is simply one of the best 2 disk DVD sets to be released so far in 2003, and attached to a good movie should be on most people's shopping list.

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About Matt Hatson

Thirty-year-old Londoner in self-imposed exile in the marshes of Leicester. With a penchant for all things technical, he lives surrounded by odd bits of machinery and obsolete computers, much to the chagrin of his wife. First dabble with the Internet came as a general reviewer, regularly reviewing household objects ('torches, like table lamps but portable - 5 out of 5'). After running his own DVD website for a couple of years, he decided to take the easy path and let someone else do the hard work and just watch films. Now he spends his time searching for bargains on the Internet and travelling around Europe on behalf of his employer, who falsely believes hat he works for a living. Other interests include shouting at Arsenal, quality tasting Stella Artois and "living his life the Dilbert way". Not necessarily a religion according to the recent UK census, but through devotion, there will come enlightenment.