Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) - film review

Media mogul Elliot Carver has big ambitions for his global media empire, the Carver Media Group Network, but unfortunately to achieve his aims he must risk provoking World War Three.  Agent James Bond is assigned to investigate Carver’s activities and the mysterious disappearance of a Royal Navy frigate in the South China Sea.   Carver has stolen a cruise missile from the sunken frigate and intends firing it on Beijing, thereby triggering a war between Britain and China that will make him the world’s most powerful media man.  Nothing, not even the resourceful Mr Bond, will stop him from carving his place in history...

By the time the James Bond series had reached its 18th film, the ideas may have been virtually exhausted but it remained one of cinema’s most profitable franchises.  After the runaway success of GoldenEye (1995), the series’ latest producers were keen to rush out another similar action-packed espionage-adventure romp to coincide with the sale of MGM to billionaire Kirk Kerkorian.  With all of the original Ian Fleming novels now well and truly plundered, an original storyline was required, and what could be more topical than a story centred on a megalomaniac media baron intent on world domination?   A scary composite of Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch, Elliot Carver emerges as one of the most effective villains in the entire Bond series, thanks largely to Jonathan Pryce’s magnificently unbridled performance.   

In his second Bond outing, Pierce Brosnan is still as unflappably cool, sexy and energetic as any of his predecessors, but shows worrying signs of morphing into a comicbook superhero of the Rambo variety by the film’s mid-point.  The film’s weak point is its plot, which rapidly runs out of steam and logic after a very well-constructed opening.  Once the action has shifted to Saigon and starts running round in circles, the screenwriters have difficulty sustaining the pace and from thereon the barrage of action scenes merge into a blurred and somewhat confused haze.  Tomorrow Never Dies is certainly one of the feistiest and more enjoyable late Bond films, but it is let down somewhat by its hurriedly cobbled together script and a lack of narrative focus.

© Steve Chandler 2011

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