TheRetroCritic

In his third outing as Bond, Pierce Brosnan sure gave us a good show bringing his trilogy to an end in style with a film that, although not quite as good or memorable as its predecessors, made a worthy conclusion to one of 007's best eras. Before Die Another Day , that is... But The World Is Not Enough starts off with one of the longest (and best) pre-titles sequences around: Bond in an MI6 speedboat chasing a female terrorist around The Thames only to end with a hot-air balloon explosion and 007 rolling down the Millenium Dome. Check out Bond fixing his tie while underwater, boating on the road and cheekily splashing parking wardens. Then the plot kicks in as we learn that Robert Carlyle is Renard, a superhuman dude with a bullet in his head and Sophie Marceau's stripper-named Elektra King is an important part of the puzzle. Along the way, Bond meets Robbie Coltrane's always welcome sleaze-bag Valentin Zukovsky and Denise Richards who plays, ahem, nuclear physici

Hardly the most popular of the Bond films, Die Another Day marks the end of Pierce Brosnan's run as 007 and, by extension, the end of the super-suave, wisecrackin' agent with all the best (read: worst) puns this side of MI6. Yes it was time for a change. After a great start to the Bond franchise, Brosnan's films started losing whatever little edge they had instead opting for a lighter, Roger Moorian cartoonish tone. Die Another Day is when Bond really became pure sci-fi. Which meant good news for fans of G.I. Joe but bad news for Ian Fleming purists. To be fair: you are warned pretty darn quickly about what you're in for with Bond surfing his way to North Korea in a scene so implausible you'll be making faces long before 007 reveals himself as one of the surfers. The pre-titles sequence proves to be much more promising though with Bond ending up getting captured and tortured throughout Madonna's hit-and-miss theme song. So far, so messy. The key plot is