12/19/97
MOVIE REVIEW: Tomorrow Never Dies
007 never dies, he just gets spiffier gadgets

By MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal-Bulletin Arts Writer

*** (out of five)
Starring Pierce Brosnan, Jonathan Pryce, Michelle Yeoh, Teri Hatcher, Ricky Jay, Gotz Otto, Joe Don Baker. A United Artists picture written by Bruce Feirstein, directed by Roger Spottiswoode. Rated PG-13, contains violence. Running time: 120 minutes.

The new James Bond adventure, Tomorrow Never Dies, is a case of deja vu. Even if you've missed the last couple of 007 adventures, as I had, the plots have become tied to such an ingrained blueprint that by now, 35 years into the series, there seems to be little new that can be said.

Yes, 007 has been spiffed up by the suave, ultra-cool and not terribly humorous Pierce Brosnan, who doesn't seem to have the panache for the raised-eyebrow kind of dialogue that Sean Connery excelled at, nor the playfulness of Roger Moore.

In a nod to making Bond a little more up to date and trying to appeal to martial arts fans, the producers have added Michelle Yeoh as his sometimes partner-in-a-pinch, Wai Lin. Yeoh is a veteran of Hong Kong "chop-socky" films who came to international attention in Jackie Chan's 1992 hit Supercop. She puts up a good fight, yet without creating any discernible on-screen chemistry with Brosnan.

Jackie Chan. James Bond. It's all starting to blend together, although Tomorrow Never Dies still has spiffier gadgets.

That includes a remote-controlled silver BMW that serves as the centerpiece of one of the film's most exciting -- and certainly its funniest -- sequences. Bond, fleeing the bad guys in a Hamburg parking garage, hops into the back seat and uses the car's remote-control switch to careen around tight corners, blow holes in steel doors and send it hurtling off the building in a bang-up finale. During all this, the persistent, German-accented female voice coming from the car's control panel grows increasingly perplexed by the death-defying stunts the car is asked to perform.

"Remember," the voice scolds, "unsafe driving will void the warranty." It's wacky stuff, but that's about as funny and original as Tomorrow Never Dies gets.

The rest seems to have been cobbled together from bits and pieces of other 007 films in a story that has Bond looking for a top-secret decoder box that can change the course of satellites or even ships, and for a stolen nuclear missile.

They've fallen into the clutches of Elliot Carver, a media mogul who hopes to create mayhem -- like a war between China and Britain -- that will create headlines for his newspapers and fodder for his new worldwide TV news network. If you think about it long enough, the plot is preposterous. Why would anyone want to precipitate World War III to create headlines if most of the people who'd read the story are dead?

Carver is played by Jonathan Pryce as a sort of cross between Rupert Murdoch and Peter Sellers's mad title character in Dr. Strangelove. He has a sadistic blond henchman (Gatz Otto), who seems to be patterned after Robert Shaw's character in 1963's From Russia With Love.

There's a motorcycle chase through the streets of Saigon (actually Bangkok), that could be from any number of Bond movies or even from Chan's Operation Condor. It rages through crowded bazaars and even along second-story balconies and features a helicopter that hovers very close to the ground and tilts itself at an angle so that its blades threaten Bond and Wai Lin. But for all the brouhaha, it somehow seems canned.

The shipboard finale, in which a threatened missile launch on Beijing is nearing a countdown by an otherworldly voice intoning "T minus one minute, T minus 50 seconds," is shades of 1965's Thunderball. Will Bond defuse the stolen nuclear missile in time? If you're unsure, clearly you've never seen a 007 film before.

All this has been directed in workmanlike style by workmanlike director Roger Spottiswoode, whose undistinguished roster of films includes Turner and Hooch, Shoot to Kill and Air America. Add this one to the list.

Yes, it's fun while it lasts. But next morning you may be hard-pressed to recall just which James Bond film you saw the night before . . . or even its title.