Die Another Day

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The savviest and most exciting Bond adventure in years, and that's because there's actually something at stake in it.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

As strong on action as it is weak on the interpersonal stuff. If Bond can get a new car for each episode, how about some new pickup lines?

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

All told, this first Bond of the new millennium may be far from the best of the series, but it's assured, wonderfully respectful of its past and thrilling enough to make it abundantly clear that this movie phenomenon has once again reinvented itself for a new generation, and is very likely to outlive us all.

Film Threat Clint Morris

The real-deal, packed with more excitement, vigor and fortitude than an unfaltering Magnum.

Film Threat Michael Dequina

Brosnan's best mission as Bond yet, and the most satisfying installment of the franchise in recent memory.

Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf

Tamahori pumps a tremendous amount of energy into his Bond movie, and it's an electrifying ride.

LA Weekly John Patterson

The result is the niftiest Bond movie in years -- fresh, funny, and jammed to the rafters with demented stunts, Boys'-Own gadgetry and brazen promiscuity.

New York Post Megan Lehmann

Aside from a jarringly fake computer-generated avalanche scene that momentarily challenges the necessary suspension of disbelief, the big-bang set pieces are superbly crafted.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Brosnan, in his fourth time up at the Bond bat, hits this one out of the park.

Miami Herald Howard Cohen

Amped to the max, with firepower and fisticuffs flying, this is Bond as we have come to know him in the post-Roger Moore years: bigger, badder, better.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The picture should satisfy both diehard fans, who liked the plotting and interaction of early Bond films, and "Die Hard" fans, who prefer Bond shaken and stirred by massive explosions, vehicular crashes and gunplay befitting a Central American revolution.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Die Another Day is still utterly absurd from one end to the other, of course, but in a slightly more understated way. And so it goes, Bond after Bond, as the most durable series in movie history heads for the half-century.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Tamahori's Die Another Day is an imperfect Bond movie. But for every patch where it's dull and lifeless or just plain stupid, there are also sections that are significantly different from anything we've seen before in a Bond movie.

Slate David Edelstein

He thrilled me, then betrayed me in the end.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Perhaps the most satisfying Bond movie since "The Spy Who Loved Me."

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Die Another Day is still as professionally mediocre as its predecessors.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Dead-on as entertaining eye candy, a bona fide guilty pleasure -- for the first hour. But the movie loses steam and the sequences that dazzled in the beginning get overshadowed by the excesses of later scenes.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Every hero needs to be revitalized by a little humiliation, and for at least the first 40 minutes of Die Another Day, Bond's dressing-down seems to do him and the movie franchise a world of good.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Maybe I've seen too many James Bond movies by now, or maybe the trouble with this 20th installment is that the filmmakers are trying too hard to top the excesses of the predecessors.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Surely it will not be giving things away to tell you there's absolutely nothing new about the latest episode.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Pierce Brosnan has mastered every smidgen of 007 schtick, making the role more thoroughly his own than any actor since Sean Connery -- still the best of the batch -- decided to call it quits.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

The new movie lacks something, a special something. It's a quality that has characterized some of the best of the first 19 Bond movies: extravagant ludicrousness.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

The many shots of characters operating devices with remote controls will do little to quiet the complaints that the films have started to resemble video games, and the same can be said of the proliferating digital effects.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Beginning to creak not only with age but with the strain of constant self-one-upmanship in giving us exotic locales, explosive geopolitics and unbelievable stunts.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Not even Halle Berry, emerging from the blue Caribbean in an orange two-piece -- can bring this thing to life.

Portland Oregonian Kim Morgan

Another Bond film that turns out to be an unspectacular spectacle, at times winking and fun but too often plodding and hackneyed. That said, as usual Brosnan is terrific, walking through dunderhead moments and a tedious plot with grace.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

As a franchise, the James Bond series needs its stomach stapled.

Chicago Tribune Mark Caro

You leave feeling like you've endured a long workout without your pulse ever racing. The exercise ultimately is product placement, with Bond the biggest product of them all.

Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis

Die Another Day is only intermittently entertaining but it's hard not to be a sucker for its charms, or perhaps it's just impossible not to feel nostalgia for movies you grew up with.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

This series is in its fortieth year; it might be nice to see Bond battle a readily identifiable, real-world villain for a change. There's certainly no shortage.

TV Guide Frank Lovece

The non-action scenes are so pedestrian that one suspects the good stuff is less due to workmanlike director Lee Tamahori than to one of the best second-unit crews in the biz.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

This is a train wreck of an action film -– a stupefying attempt by the filmmakers to force-feed James Bond into the mindless "XXX" mold and throw 40 years of cinematic history down the toilet in favor of bright flashes and loud bangs.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Sports some tasty scenes, mostly in the first half, but also pushes 007 into CGI-driven, quasi-sci-fi territory that feels like a betrayal of what the franchise has always been about.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Just doesn't have it.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

What's new here is a severe deficit of style, or even craftsmanship, both in the action sequences and what passes for human interludes.

Newsweek David Ansen

Flat, distressingly witless -- To put it bluntly -- the thrill is gone. Nobody did it better. But that was then.

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

Dissing a Bond movie is quite like calling a dog stupid, but when it has the temerity to run over two hours, you feel like winding up with a kick.