Tomorrow Never Dies

Hong Kong action star Michelle Yeoh is the best thing about this 18th installment in the legendary James Bond series. The premise has a perfunctory Bond-ian grandiosity about it, with Jonathan Pryce serving villain duty as a media mogul creating his own global crises to feed the news machine. Enter Bond (Pierce Brosnan, dapper and ruthless again in his second go-round), with Chinese government agent Yeoh joining him in his assignment to prevent war between England and China. The ho-hum megalomania of Pryce and his obligatory, inhumanly resilient henchman are only part of an extremely familiar package which prevents Tomorrow Never Dies from ever getting off the ground. The gunplay is routine, the chases are routine, even Q's gadgets are routine (a car that drops little spikey things to flatten the tires of the car behind you...what will he think of next?). The only real change of pace is Yeoh, who provides the Bond series with its most exciting leading lady in years. Watching Yeoh fly through an acrobatic martial arts fight sequence can only conjure images of Jackie Chan, who has been out-Bonding Bond for years now. Once upon a time, the James Bond series was a bi-annual festival of "can you top this?"; now, the feeling is closer to "can you remember this?" Apparently unable to compete with the big-budget big boys and international challengers, the producers of the Bond films are relying on a secret weapon even Q hasn't managed to invent: nostalgia. Not recommended. (S. Renshaw)