Tomorrow Never Dies

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Tomorrow Never Dies ★★ 1997 (PG-13)

18th installment of the James Bond series is all style and little else packaged in a tedious action adventure. Our villain is a media mogul (Pryce) who plans to start WWIII in order to increase his newspaper revenues. (Rupert Murdoch, start your lawyers!) In between the blantant product placements (from Heineken to Visa), our secret agent Bond (Brosnan, who seems bored with the role in his second appearance) sets out to foil the nutty plans. Bond gets help from Hong Kong action queen Yeoh as a Chinese agent, and a bevy of toys from the antiquated Q, including a BMW controlled by remote. Direction and flow is on autopilot after the opening scene and despite Yeoh's energetic highkicks and the sleek techno toys, it can't revitalize what has become a thirdclass imitator of its predecessors. 119m/C VHS, DVD . Pierce Brosnan, Jonathan Pryce, Michelle Yeoh, Teri Hatcher, Judi Dench, Colin Salmon, Samantha Bond, Desmond Llewelyn, Joe Don Baker, Ricky Jay, Vincent Schiavelli, Geoffrey Palmer; D: Roger Spottiswoode; W: Bruce Feirstein; C: Robert Elswit; M: David Arnold.

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