Critics were lukewarm, even if Michael Gove did approvingly call Rosamund Pike a “tart citrus sorbet”.
It wasn’t poorly received when it came out, grossing $430m (£365m) worldwide, making it the highest-grossing Bond movie at the time. Often derided as one of the series’ worst, resulting in a Daniel Craig-fronted overhaul with Casino Royale in 2006, Die Another Day has a lot to answer for: the invisible car, sliding like clear jelly through a misty ice palace Madonna’s jerkily awful theme song Madonna, again, playing a corseted fencing instructor a villain who changes race another whose face is speckled with diamonds an estimated $70m (£59m) spent on product placement John Cleese.Īnd yet, as the much-maligned first Bond movie of this century turns 20, its deranged atonality deserves a second look. This arch juxtaposition of rags and riches exemplifies the wider tonal inconsistency of a film that, for all Bond’s talk of survival, nearly killed the franchise.
