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Die Another Day

Die Another Day is a 2002 spy film and the twentieth film in the James Bond series produced by Eon Productions. It was directed by Lee Tamahori, produced by Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, and written by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade. The fourth and final film starring Pierce Brosnan as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond, it was also the only film to feature John Cleese as Q, and the last with Samantha Bond as Miss Moneypenny. It is also the first film since Live and Let Die (1973) not to feature Desmond Llewelyn as Q as he died three years earlier. Halle Berry co-stars as NSA agent Giacinta "Jinx" Johnson, the Bond girl. It follows Bond as he attempts to locate a traitor in British intelligence who betrayed him and a British billionaire who is later revealed to be connected to a North Korean operative whom Bond seemingly killed. It is an original story, although it takes influence from Bond creator Ian Fleming's novels Moonraker (1955) and The Man with the Golden Gun (1965), as well as Kingsley Amis's novel, Colonel Sun.[3]

For other uses, see Die Another Day (disambiguation).

Die Another Day

MGM Distribution Co. (United States)
20th Century Fox (International)

  • 20 November 2002 (2002-11-20) (United Kingdom)
  • 22 November 2002 (2002-11-22) (United States)

134 minutes

United Kingdom[1]
United States[1]

English

$142 million[2]

$431.9 million[2]

Die Another Day marked the James Bond franchise's 40th anniversary. The film includes references to each of the preceding films.[4] It received mixed reviews; some critics praised Tamahori's direction, but others criticized its reliance on CGI, product placement and its unoriginal plot, as well as the villain. Nevertheless, it was the highest-grossing James Bond film up to that time.

as James Bond, an MI6 agent.

Pierce Brosnan

as Giacinta "Jinx" Johnson, an NSA agent.[5][6] Before Berry's casting Salma Hayek, Saffron Burrows, and Sophie Ellis-Bextor were also considered for the role.[3]

Halle Berry

as Gustav Graves, a British entrepreneur and the alter ego of Colonel Tan-Sun Moon. Graves was modelled after Hugo Drax in Ian Fleming's original Moonraker, a Nazi war criminal who switched places with a British soldier at the end of World War II, became a well-respected and wealthy philanthropist, and used this cover to plan a nuclear missile strike on London. He was also modelled after Uday Hussein and Richard Branson.[3]

Toby Stephens

as Colonel Tan-Sun Moon, a rogue North Korean army colonel and the original persona of Graves.

Will Yun Lee

as Miranda Frost, undercover MI6 agent and double agent.

Rosamund Pike

as Tang Ling Zao, a North Korean terrorist working for Moon and living as an exile.

Rick Yune

as M, the head of MI6.

Judi Dench

as Q, MI6's quartermaster and armourer.

John Cleese

as Verity, Graves and Frost's fencing instructor.

Madonna

as Damian Falco, Jinx's superior in the NSA.

Michael Madsen

as Miss Moneypenny, M's secretary.

Samantha Bond

as Charles Robinson, M's Deputy Chief of Staff.

Colin Salmon

as General Moon, Colonel Moon's father. He assists in Bond's release back to the West. The North Korean general wishes for a peaceful reunification of Korea, whereas his son is bent on war.

Kenneth Tsang

as Vladimir Popov, Gustav Graves' personal scientist.

Michael Gorevoy

as Mr. Kil, one of Gustav Graves' henchmen.

Lawrence Makoare

as The Hotel Manager and Chinese special agent Mr. Chang. In early drafts of the script, it was Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh) who aided Bond in Hong Kong, but the idea fell through and Chang was created to replace her.[7][8]

Ho Yi

as Peaceful Fountains of Desire, a Chinese agent working for Mr. Chang, undercover as a masseuse.

Rachel Grant

as Raoul, the manager of a Havana cigar factory, and a British sleeper agent.

Emilio Echevarría

as General Li

Vincent Wong

as Elderly Cigar Factory Worker

Joaquin Martinez

as Dr. Álvarez

Simón Andreu

(the daughter of former Bond actor Roger Moore) as Airline Hostess

Deborah Moore

as Mr. Van Bierk

Mark Dymond

as Concierge At The Fencing Club

Oliver Skeete

Marketing[edit]

Reportedly, twenty companies paying $70 million had their products featured in the film, a record at the time,[25] although USA Today reported that number to be as high as $100 million.[26]


The eleventh-generation Ford Thunderbird was featured in the film as Jinx's car, with a coral colour paying homage to a paint option for the original model, and matching her bikini. Ford produced a limited-edition 007-branded 2003 Thunderbird as a tie-in for the film, featuring a similar paint job.[27]


Revlon produced "007 Colour Collection" makeup inspired by Jinx.[28] Bond Barbie dolls inspired by the franchise were also produced, featuring a red shawl and an evening dress designed by Lindy Hemming, and sold in a gift set with Ken posing as Bond in formal wear designed by the Italian fashion house Brioni.[29]

Reception[edit]

Box office[edit]

On the first day of release, ticket sales reached £1.2 million at the UK box office.[34] Die Another Day grossed $47 million on its opening weekend in the US and Canada and was ranked number one at the box office.[35] The film would compete against Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and The Santa Clause 2 during the Thanksgiving weekend. Moreover, all three films were able to defeat the underperforming animated film Treasure Planet. Later on, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Die Another Day would simultaneously reclaim the number one spot at the box office.[36] For six months, they were both the latest films to return to the top spot at the box office, until Finding Nemo joined the group in June 2003.[37] The film earned $160.9 million in the US and Canada, and $431.9 million worldwide, becoming the sixth highest-grossing film of 2002. Not adjusting for inflation, Die Another Day was the highest-grossing James Bond film until the release of Casino Royale in 2006.[38]

Critical response[edit]

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film received an approval rating of 56% based on 220 reviews, with an average rating of 6.1/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Its action may be a bit too over-the-top for some, but Die Another Day is lavishly crafted and succeeds in evoking classic Bond themes from the franchise's earlier installments."[39] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 56 out of 100 based on 43 critics, indicating "mixed and average reviews".[40] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "A−" on scale of A to F.[41]


Michael Dequina of Film Threat praised the film as the best of the series to star Pierce Brosnan and "the most satisfying installment of the franchise in recent memory."[40] Larry Carroll of CountingDown.com praised Lee Tamahori for having "magnificently balanced the film so that it keeps true to the Bond legend, makes reference to the classic films that preceded it, but also injects a new zest to it all."[42] Entertainment Weekly magazine also gave a positive reaction, saying that Tamahori, "a true filmmaker", has re-established the series' pop sensuality.[43] A.O. Scott of The New York Times called the film the best of the James Bond series since The Spy Who Loved Me.[40] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, who gave the film three stars out of four, stated: "This movie has the usual impossible stunts ... But it has just as many scenes that are lean and tough enough to fit in any modern action movie".[44] Kyle Bell of Movie Freaks 365 stated in his review that the "first half of Die Another Day is classic Bond", but that "things start to go downhill when the ice palace gets introduced."[45]


Several reviewers felt the film relied too heavily on gadgets and special effects, with the plot being neglected. James Berardinelli of ReelViews said: "This is a train wreck of an action film – a stupefying attempt by the filmmakers to force-feed James Bond into the mindless XXX mold and throw 40 years of cinematic history down the toilet in favor of bright flashes and loud bangs." Of the action sequences, he said: "Die Another Day is an exercise in loud explosions and excruciatingly bad special effects. The CGI work in this movie is an order of magnitude worse than anything I have seen in a major motion picture. Coupled with lousy production design, Die Another Day looks like it was done on the cheap."[46] Gary Brown of the Houston Community Newspapers also described the weak point of the film as "the seemingly non-stop action sequences and loud explosions that appear to take centre stage while the Bond character is almost relegated to second string."[47] Roger Moore, who played Bond in earlier films, said: "I thought it just went too far – and that's from me, the first Bond in space! Invisible cars and dodgy CGI footage? Please!"[48]


The amount of product placement in Die Another Day had been a contemporaneous point of criticism, with the BBC, Time and Reuters referring mockingly to the film using the title "Buy Another Day".[25][26] The producers subsequently chose to limit the number of companies involved in product placement to eight for the next Bond film, Casino Royale, in 2006.[26]

Retrospective[edit]

Despite favour from fans who prefer Bond's more "camp" films, a comment piece in 2020 stated that it is "considered by many to be the worst entry in James Bond's canon" and compares unfavourably to The Bourne Identity (released months earlier), which "ushered in a new era of violent, gritty action-espionage movies" and gave rise to the "stripped-down, no-nonsense" Bond of Daniel Craig.[49] It often occupies a low rank on Bond-related lists. In a 2021 Yahoo! survey consisting of 2200 experts and superfans, Die Another Day was ranked as the third-worst installment after Quantum of Solace and Spectre. The authors of the study did, however, specify that "every Bond film...is always someone's favourite".[50]

Media[edit]

Die Another Day was novelised by the then-official James Bond writer, Raymond Benson, based on the screenplay by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade. An effort is made to depict some of the film's more outlandish elements with more believability, in the style of Fleming's original novels' use of cutting-edge technology. So, for example, the non-bodywork elements of the Aston Martin with its 'cloaking' function (the glass windows and rubber tyres) are described as having retractable covers to achieve the invisibility effect. Fan reaction to it was above average.[51] After its publication, Benson retired as the official James Bond novelist; a new series featuring the secret agent's adventures as a teenager, by Charlie Higson, was launched in 2005. As the novelisation was published after Benson's final original 007 novel, The Man with the Red Tattoo, it was the final literary work featuring Bond as originally conceived by Ian Fleming until the publication of Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks in 2008 to mark the 100th anniversary of Fleming's birth.[52]


007 Legends, released in 2012, features Daniel Craig's James Bond in a Die Another Day level.[53]

Cancelled spin-off[edit]

Speculation arose in 2003 of a spin-off film concentrating on Jinx, which was scheduled for a November/December 2004 release. It was originally reported that MGM was keen to set up a film series that would be a "Winter Olympics" alternative to the main series. In the late 1990s, MGM had originally considered developing a spin-off film based on Michelle Yeoh's character, Wai Lin, in 1997's Tomorrow Never Dies. The spin-off Jinx was announced in December 2002. Lee Tamahori initially wanted to direct, but Stephen Frears was ultimately hired. Berry and Michael Madsen were originally going to reprise their roles as Jinx and Falco, while Jinx's lover was going to be played by Javier Bardem. Bardem would later play villain Raoul Silva in Skyfall (2012). The film would have revolved around Jinx's entry into the NSA, revealing that she had been adopted by Falco after being orphaned in a bombing and being hired by him from the RAND Corporation to do a job at the NSA as a favour.[3][54][55] Wade described the film as "a very atmospheric, Euro thriller, a Bourne-type movie."[3] However, despite much speculation of an imminent movie, on 26 October 2003, Variety reported that MGM had cancelled the project.[56] MGM instead decided to reboot the James Bond franchise with the next film, Casino Royale, with Daniel Craig portraying the role of the titular character.[57] In 2020, Berry revealed that the film was cancelled over its $80 million budget, saying: "Nobody was ready to sink that kind of money into a black female action star."[58][59] Purvis and Wade said that this decision was influenced by the failure of several action films with female stars, including Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life, in 2003.[60]

Invisibility in fiction

Outline of James Bond

at IMDb

Die Another Day

at AllMovie

Die Another Day

at Rotten Tomatoes

Die Another Day

at Box Office Mojo

Die Another Day