Die Another Day
He's never been cooler.
Country
Production
Budget
$142 000 000
Revenue
$431 971 116
Director
Actors
Scenario
Producer
Barbara Broccoli, Michael G. Wilson, Anthony Waye
Operator
Composer
Artist
Audition
Editing
Short description
James Bond is sent on a mission to North Korea, where he is captured and held prisoner. After months in captivity, he is released in a prisoner exchange, but his superiors suspect he may have revealed secrets under interrogation, and he is stripped of his licence to operate. Determined to clear his name, Bond sets out on his own to track down those responsible for his capture. His investigation leads him to a British billionaire, Gustav Graves, whose public ventures conceal a far more dangerous enterprise, and to a connection between Graves and the North Korean figures Bond encountered during his failed operation.
The film is directed by Lee Tamahori, his fifth feature and the one that followed Along Came a Spider in his filmography. Pierce Brosnan plays Bond for the fourth time, with Halle Berry as Jinx, Toby Stephens as Graves, Rosamund Pike as Miranda Frost, Rick Yune as Zao and Judi Dench returning as M. Robert Wade and Neal Purvis wrote the screenplay, and Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson produced.
Released in November 2002, the film had a budget of 142 million US dollars and took 432 million US dollars worldwide, a substantial return on its cost. Audience ratings are moderate: on IMDb it holds 6.1 out of 10 from 240,000 votes, and on TMDB 6 out of 10 from about 4,000 votes. A critics' rating of 6.1 out of 10 from 226 reviews places professional opinion in line with the general audience response.
What's left behind the scenes
- The actor Roger Moore's daughter appears in the film as a flight attendant.
- The 'Space Mirror' featured in the film is repurposed and colorized footage from a documentary recording of a Soviet experiment on light reflection, conducted on the Salyut-7 station. Unlike the fictional weapon, the experiment was much smaller and had a peaceful purpose.
- Bond receives a briefing at an abandoned subway station, and a warehouse of gadgets used in previous Bond films is shown. Specifically featured are the BD-5 Micro aircraft and the crocodile-shaped mini-submarine ('Octopussy'), the jetpack for flight ('Thunderball'), a women's shoe with a retractable poisonous spike, and the suitcase with a pop-out knife ('From Russia with Love').
- In Cuba, in a former agent's office, Bond first looks at and then takes a copy of 'Birds of the West Indies'. This is the same book whose author, ornithologist James Bond, gave his name to the main character when Fleming wrote the first Bond novel. Later, while meeting the heroine Halle Berry, he introduces himself as an ornithologist.
- The airplane in which Graves is flying and where the final showdown between him and Bond takes place is the An-124 'Ruslan' transport aircraft.
- Q hands Bond a watch and mentions that it is the 20th watch in a row. A subtle hint that 'Die Another Day' is the 20th film in the Bond series.
- Bond's car becomes invisible because “…it is fitted with tens of thousands of tiny liquid crystal displays.” It is unclear how these displays were installed on rubber tires.
- The heroine, frozen in icy water, is immersed in hot water to warm up. Instead of (the inevitable in this situation) a wild scream of pain, she smiles blissfully.
- While escaping from the MI-6 'infirmary', Bond slows his pulse to almost a standstill, forcing a woman and two men – the latter he causes to convulse on the floor with a cardioversion device – to enter the resuscitation ward. The defibrillator doesn't work as it should, and a separately applied electrode cannot harm a person.
- Fencing coach Verity tells Bond that her student, Miranda Frost, won gold at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. In reality, Italian Maria Valentina Vezzali won gold at those games, and she was never caught doping. During the same conversation, Verity calls Frost 'the club's best foil fencer,' even though at that moment she is fencing with epees. Her (as well as Graves' and Bond's) fencing skill is at a beginner's level and clearly does not match what is stated. During the fencing scene, Bond is wearing a left-handed suit, judging by the fastener on his shoulder, although he fences with his right hand. The club's equipment (outdated fencing masks, epees with smooth grips) does not match the status of the characters.
- During the fight with Graves at the club, Bond receives at least four punches to the face and one kick. Yet, only a thin trickle of blood flows from his nose. If this were real, his nose would be broken, and possibly his jaw as well.
- None of the film's characters exhale visible breath in the cold winter air of Iceland. The air temperature in Iceland in winter ranges from -5 to -15 degrees Celsius.
- The film claims the North Korean army numbers 80,000 personnel + 1,000,000 reservists. In reality, the army consists of approximately 1,200,000 active duty soldiers + 4,000,000 reservists. This makes it the fourth largest army in the world, after the United States, China, and Russia.
- During the fight on the plane, when Vlad is ejected through the doorway, several soldiers are also ejected. Almost every time this happens, the lower part of the doorway either breaks or returns to its original state.
- During the duel scene between Pierce Brosnan and Toby Stephens, the filmmakers slowed down the film speed to create the illusion that the actors were moving faster than they actually were.
- Rosamund Pike was cast as Miranda Frost just five days before filming began. Her first scene in the film was with the renowned Judi Dench as M, and Pike was understandably very stiff, which was quite predictable and explainable.
- During the filming of an intimate scene in Cuba, Halle Berry choked on a date, and Pierce Brosnan had to perform what is known as an abdominal thrust, or the Heimlich maneuver (a first aid procedure for choking due to foreign body airway obstruction).
- A fragment of a smoke grenade got into Halle Berry's eye during filming. It took a half-hour operation to remove it.
- It took approximately 6 months to build the ice palace.
- Scenes of Halle Berry bathing were filmed in Cadiz, southwestern Spain, and it wasn't as warm there as it appears on screen. On the contrary, the actress had to be wrapped in thick, fluffy towels between takes.
- At one point, a spin-off starring Halle Berry (her character was named Jinx Johnson) was planned. The screenwriters of 'Die Another Day,' Neil Purvis and Robert Wade, spent two months developing a script, and Steven Frears was appointed director of the prospective spin-off. Ultimately, the film company MGM shut down the project, which hadn't even properly begun, due to the unsatisfactory box office results of other action films with female protagonists – such as McG’s action comedy 'Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle' (2003) and Jan de Bont’s adventure action film 'Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life' (2003).
- The filmmakers received a total of $70 million from 20 companies through product placement (a form of hidden advertising in which props shown on screen have real commercial counterparts). This was a record amount at the time of the film's release. This nuance sparked a wave of criticism and comments along the lines of 'Buy, but not now' (a pun based on the phonetic similarity of 'Buy' and 'Die,' using the film's title). For this reason, the number of advertised products was reduced to 8 when working on the next film in the franchise, Martin Campbell's 'Casino Royale' (2006).
- During the filming of the opening hovercraft chase scenes, Pierce Brosnan injured his leg. This injury aggravated an old one, leading to a 7-day halt in filming. This was the first time in the history of the Bond films that work on a film had to be suspended due to an actor’s injury.
- Some scenes of the car chase were filmed on the ice of a lake in Iceland, which rarely freezes naturally due to its proximity to the sea and the high salt content of the water. When problems arose with the ice, the filmmakers even considered filming the chase scenes on ice in New Zealand. To rectify the situation in Iceland, the river connecting the lake to the sea was dammed, and within two days, the ice on the lake exceeded two meters in thickness, so filming proceeded in Iceland as planned.
- To film certain scenes in captivity, Pierce Brosnan spent three hours in the makeup artist's chair before the start of each shooting day, where, among other things, a false beard and grown-out hair were glued on.
- A quarter of the film's action takes place in Iceland, but none of the main cast were in Iceland. Only the second unit and stunt performers flew there.
- Initially, it was planned that Catherine Kingsley (Gala Brand in the radio adaptation of 'Moonraker') would play Bond's girlfriend, and Jinx would be a traitor. Everything changed when Halle Berry was cast as Jinx. She became Bond's girlfriend, and Frost, played by Rosamund Pike, became the traitor.
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