Bond Week Day Two - Die Another Day

To celebrate the UK cinema release of Quantum of Solace this Friday, the HCC team will be taking a look at a new 007 Blu-ray release every day. Today, for his sins, Anton van Beek endures Die Another Day.

Every long-running franchise has its ups and downs, but with the arrival of Pierce Brosnan as James Bond in 1995's GoldenEye it looked like things were on the up for Britain's best loved secret agent. Sadly it wasn't to be. While Brosnan himself appeared to offer everything fans could want in a replacement Bond, the scripts he was given to work with got steadily worse, culminating in this complete travesty.

The annoying this is, there are hints of a good Bond film dotted throughout Die Another Day's plot about North Korean terrorists and an international space weapon developed by a diamond mogul. However, they're trampled over by the rampant stupidity that rules everywhere else.

Witness the intriguing idea of having Bond captured and tortured by North Korean forces. The scenes themselves (which play out through the title sequence) are wonderfully dark and brutal, leading you to hope for a grittier, more hard-edged Bond. But then you remember the ludicrous surfing sequence and hovercraft chase that led to them, while your ears are assaulted by Madonna's appalling theme song, and all hope goes out of the window. And then along comes Halle Berry, giving one of the worst performances of her career as Bond girl Jinx, and 007's invisible Aston Martin. We're talking Moonraker levels of stupidity here folks.

Not only is Die Another Day one of the worst Bond films, but it's also a disappointing Blu-ray release. Despite being the newest of the films released in this first batch of six from MGM/20th Century Fox, it's easily the worst looking of them all. Presented as an AVC 1080p encode at the original 2.40:1 aspect ratio, the image quality is definitely a step up from the earlier DVD editions, but that's only because they looked so bloody awful. The excessive edge enhancement that plagued the standard-def releases has been toned down, but small halos are definitely still visible in this new hi-def version. The image also looks surprisingly soft in some scenes, robbing the image of the kind of fine texturing and '3D pop' you expect from modern Blu-ray releases.

Still, for all of its flaws in the picture department, Die Another Day's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix is an absolute triumph of sound engineering. A tour de force of positional audio and phenomenal bass response, this Blu-ray disc is guaranteed to give your speaker setup a serious workout. Incredibly, despite all of the panning effects and atmospherics present throughout the film, dialogue always remains pin-sharp and the reworked Bond theme (itself a travesty of spectacular proportions) has generous range of tonality

The clear stinker in this first batch of Bond Blu-rays, Die Another Day is an awful, awful film. Featuring ludicrously OTT action scenes (which is really saying something for this franchise), Halle Berry’s terminally boring Bond Girl and an invisible Aston Martin, this film gets perilously close to Moonraker levels of badness. Still, at least it makes for a top-notch Blu-ray? Well, not quite. The 1080p AVC encode is an improvement on the excessively edge enhanced DVD, but slight halos are still in evidence and can be occasionally distracting. At least the DTS-HD MA mix is a real tour de force, making dynamic use of the full soundstage.

Extras are generous, yet arguably not as comprehensive as those accompanying the older Bonds. As with the other Bond Blu-rays, the extras here are taken from the earlier Ultimate Edition DVDs. Die Another Day gets a pair of audio commentaries (one with director Lee Tamahori and producr Michael G Wilson, the other by Brosnan and actress Rosamund Pike). Of the two, the actors' commentary is easily the better, being slightly less technical and a little more honest about some of the mistakes made during filming. Also on hand a script-to-screen comparisons, various behind-the-scenes featurettes, location guides and even a text-based trivia track. Surprisingly, unlike the older titles, none of the video content has been remastered in hi-def. And ultimately, probably down to my lack of interest in the film itself, I found pretty much all of the extras here far less appealing than those accompanying the older Bond films.

MGM/20th Century Fox, Region B Blu-ray, £23, On sale now
HCC VERDICT: 3/5