Also this issue: Bringing Out the Dead Interview with the Assassin isn't about who killed J.F.K. so much as why we still care. -Sam Adams Screen Picks -Sam Adams Showtimes New Continuing

November 21-27, 2002

movies

Bond on the Run

Halle belly: Bond teases Jinx.

James gets upstaged by Halle Berry's Bond girl.

by Cindy Fuchs

Ouch, ouch, ouch. The opening credits sequence of Die Another Day shows James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) tortured almost to death. Captured by North Koreans, following a chase scene that ends in the apparent death of young and vociferous Colonel Moon (Will Yun Lee), Bond spends some 14 months being beaten, half-drowned, burned, stung by scorpions, electrocuted and kicked. All this under Madonna’s catchy dance tune (her video for same features images of Herself under similar duress) and dissolving girly silhouettes -- icy, fiery, and generally ethereal because, well, women must be that way in Bond pictures.

Even amid this good fun, the torture is brutal. By the time Bond is exchanged for another prisoner, the dastardly Zao (Rick Yune) -- whose face is spectacularly pitted with diamonds following an explosion in the pre-credits action scene -- he's hairy and beat-down. When M (Judi Dench) sees him back at HQ, looking weak and wussy, she tells him she thinks he divulged info while drugged and that, as a result, he's "no longer useful." Well, that's enough for Bond: Within seconds, he's escaped and on his way to find out who betrayed him in North Korea and redeem himself.

From here, the 20th film in the series delivers what you expect -- numerous explosions and stunts, excellent cars (Bond's turns invisible), fabulous ice (both diamonds and an elaborate "ice palace" where the showdown takes place), large weapons, and a special guest (Madonna as Verity, the not-really-lesbian fencing instructor). The Korean villain has a particularly nasty "issue": He's so self-hating and driven to rule the world that not only does he engineer a satellite that's a combination artificial sun/laser-style weapon, he also engages in some genetic replacement, so that he takes on another race: white, and super-wealthy, imperial-seeming British to boot.

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Bond's own issues also have to do with self-identity: Not only does he feel rejected and vulnerable, he's also looking older, rather underlined by his bad liver (remarked by a doctor) and his reversion to Old Bond Days by smoking a cigar during a brief sojourn in Havana. (After 13 years not smoking on screen, he's now upset anti-smoking activists.) More interesting are the physical signs: He squints more, and shows strain when engaged in major stunts and fencing. All this is natural and fine, and Brosnan carries it well; but it has also opened the door for franchise expansion talk.

Enter Halle Berry, whose publicity for this film quite outstrips her actual activity and screen time. As Jinx, She's good with puns (important when you're dealing with James Bond), a good shot, and does a decent job mimicking Ursula Andress' infamous rise-from-the-sea. And she looks fierce in her leather catsuit. Even aside from Berry's celebrity (and the ostensible weight accompanying her Academy Award), Jinx brings into Bond's consummately white-guy heroic world a new possibility: a black woman who can not only keep up (when she's not consigned to a melting ice palace room) and save him when necessary, but also whoop him. She even tosses one-liners that update Bond and then some, as in this exchange -- Zao: "Who sent you?" Jinx: "Your mama!"

The downside to adding Jinx is that the climactic sequences (and there are several) are spread over the two heroes' clashes with villains, inevitably leading to dilution, as frantic crosscutting dulls the thrills-effect. More to the point of the Bond franchise, Jinx looks cooler -- more threatening and slinkier -- in the formfitting camouflage than Bond does.