There's no advertising tag line on "Tomorrow Never Dies," the new James Bond film, but an accurate one might be "Never wake a sleepwalker. Especially one that's turning a nice profit."
As the latest film in a series that dates back to "Dr. No" in 1962, a run of 18 pictures that has earned an estimated $2.5 billion in admissions, "Tomorrow Never Dies" is very aware of its position as the latest incarnation of one of the most lucrative franchises in movie history.
This self-consciousness means more than licensing so many products--notice, please, the BMW car, the Dunhill cigarette lighter, the Omega watch and the Ericsson phone, to name a few--that you half expect Bond to appear covered with a sea of corporate logos like a successful stock car driver. It also mandates that considerable time and effort go toward keeping things the same as they've always been.
So even though the Bond song is now sung by Sheryl Crow instead of Shirley Bassey or Nancy Sinatra, change is not apparent or even allowed in most areas of "Tomorrow Never Dies." The film's producers have calculated, no doubt correctly, that in this chaotic world the Bond audience wants things unchanged as much as possible. Who would have thought that what started out as the racy exploits of a suave secret agent would turn into the movies' version of comfort food?
From its derivative title through the Bond-in-an-eyeball logo and the way-familiar Monty Norman theme, a lot of "Tomorrow Never Dies" has a stodgy, been-there feeling. Agent 007 still prefers martinis shaken not stirred, still makes increasingly tired double-entendre remarks, still drives a car that's a weapons arsenal on wheels. And gadgetmeister Q (Desmond Llewelyn), though looking like he could have served Queen Victoria, is still handing out gizmos to our favorite undercover operative.
Speaking of undercover, "Tomorrow Never Dies" is so old-fashioned in the romantic area it just about wheezes. Bond's tryst with a Scandinavian professor of linguistics is shot in such a determinedly modest way it comes off as quaint more than sexy. And even the concept of blond Scandinavians as the epitome of sexuality has a comforting, retrograde feeling about it.
Veteran director Roger Spottiswoode has tried to pep the old warhorse up, but the combined inertia of all those pictures over 35 years proves hard to budge. The only place where an updating has been successful is in the addition of the lively Michelle Yeoh, one of Hong Kong's top female action stars, as a sidekick for Mr. B.
