Die Another Day (2002)

This is the twentieth Bond film. To commemorate the auspicious anniversary, director Lee Tamahori and the screenwriters decided to make a Bond to beat all Bonds. From the opening sequence onward, it's clear that this film wants nothing more than to be the big fat swinging-dick Uber-Bond, and it damn near succeeds. All the Bondian elements are cranked to a Spinal-Tap-style 11, with each scene more ridiculous and more elaborate than the previous. It's the kind of film that careens from the DMZ to Cuba to England to Iceland without blinking twice and throws in a torrid sex scene, an exploding gene lab, a guy with permanent shrapnel in his face, a vicious sword fight, a massive ice palace and a duel between two cars upon an Arctic ice shelf (among other things) just because it can. Eventually, we do reach the saturation level and the film almost blows itself apart (along with practically everything else in the film) with its too-ludicrous-for-words climax. Still, too much is better than not enough (or The World Is Not Enough, for that matter). It's not worthy of inclusion with the top-shelf Bonds, not by a longshot, but it's still one heck of an entertainment.

Grade: B