Resurfaced: Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

In this series of articles, I’ll be posting reviews that have recently resurfaced. A number of the reviews I wrote in the past I thought had been lost to time, but after coming to a realization that they might still exist on the Wayback Machine, I was able to relocate many of them. I believe there are still some that are lost and they may be lost in perpetuity, but I will periodically search for that data or re-write those reviews that I have never found or which I never wrote to begin with.

For now, this series will be extensive with over 300 regular (400+ words), short (400- words), and quickie (1 to 2 paragraphs) reviews. I will attempt to combine them as best as I can. Reviews written in early 1998 or earlier, no date of creation exists. I will post the original writing date where known, otherwise the date will be listed as “unknown.” These reviews were written between the date of my site’s founding in 1996 through much of 2002. It was only after this period that I settled on the standard format and length of reviews as well as posting each one to its own individual page, which is why the old data was ultimately lost.

All but the review content has been replaced to match my current formatting guidelines, which are a bit more thorough than they might have been in those early days. Please note that I am attempting to retain as much of the original editing integrity as possible, so spelling and/or grammar errors may still be present. This may also mean that some factual data is not there as IMDb was not as ubiquitous as it is now. So, let’s get on to today’s review.

Tomorrow Never Dies

Rating

Director

Roger Spottiswoode

Screenplay

Bruce Feirstein

Length

1h 59m

Starring

Pierce Brosnan, Jonathan Pryce, Michelle Yeoh, Teri Hatcher, Ricky Jay, Götz Otto, Joe Don Baker, Vincent Schiavelli, Judi Dench, Desmond Llewelyn, Samantha Bond

MPAA Rating

PG-13

Basic Plot

James Bond is back and now he’s battling a media tycoon who wants to create his own headlines with real people’s lives. It’s up to Bond to stop him.

Review

Brosnan is easily equatable with Bond, he’s debonair, visible and still a ladies man. Q is the same old curmudgeon if not older and a little farther off his mark. Judi Dench reprises her role as M for the second time and is easily a worthy successor, she’s intelligent, brash and quite funny. Other than your standard technical effects and plot contrivances, Tomorrow Never Dies pulls in a much needed element, that effectively steals the show. No, it’s not Jonathan Pryce whose performance is acceptable, if not a little overbearing (his Peron was much better in Evita). It’s not the insipid Teri Hatcher who has shown no growth as an actress since her ill-fated series superman. However interesting the character of Stamper was, whether it was his maliciously good looks or his non-mastery of the English language, Götz Otto isn’t the best part of the film. The one element comes from Michelle Yeoh, who plays a female intelligence officer in China. Even though her presence at the beginning of the film is predictably spy material, she ads a certain penache to the film that has been missing for some time, strong female roles. Yeoh does a superb job bringing the Chinese Wai Lin to life and will hopefully remain a part of future Bond movies, if she does not, Bond’s demise could come very early.

Awards Prospects

Other than the Technical awards, Bond only has a chance at a nomination for Original Song, written by Sheryl Crow.

Review Written

Unknown