This week: Die Another Day

Filthy says: "I assumed suave was more than this."

Once upon a time, there was a Colossal Man. He was a lonely man because there was no Colossal Woman, and whenever he tried to make love to a regular-sized woman, he crushed her with his penis. One day, the Colossal Man decided to pamper himself to get over the blues. He treated himself to a lunch at a Furr's Cafeteria, where he ate all the croutons, hush puppies and most of the fried chicken. Then he went to the movies. The Colossal Man had a Colossal tummy ache from all that cafeteria food. At the theater, he took a Colossal dump. He called it Die Another Day. What a truly Colossal Man he must have been because this is truly Colossal shit. Pierce Brosnan, a man old enough to get 10% off at Wendy's, plays James Bond. After infuriating a North Korean General by killing his corrupt son, the aging spy is tossed into solitary confinement and tortured for 14 months. He is freed, finally, when traded for Zao (Rick Yune), a villain with diamonds encrusted in his face. Brosnan wasn't traded because the Limeys wanted him back; it's because they thought he was giving away their secrets. Seeking revenge, Brosnan hunts Yune down to Havana, where the snarling baddie is getting his DNA replaced in order to change his appearance. In Havana, Brosnan teams up with Jinx (Halle Berry), a dimwitted American agent with tits that fill a bathing suit better than beer fills a mug. For some reason I can no longer remember, they stop chasing Yune and start chasing the mincing, vaguely feminine diamond billionaire Gustav Graves (Topy Stephens). Graves is an international hero, having discovered a diamond mine in Iceland and given half the money to charity. Interestingly, though, that these highly improbable Icelandic diamonds have the “identical chemical composition” as diamonds from Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone diamonds are embargoed because of conflict in the region, so wouldn't it be interesting if these so-called Icelandic diamonds actually are from Africa and the Icelandic mine is just a front? Well, no, it wouldn't be interesting because that's as simplistic as one of my retard Larry's prairie dog stories, not to mention unreasonably stupid. Diamond smugglers all over the world are slapping their foreheads and saying “Duh! A bogus Icelandic mine! Why didn't we think of that? Nobody would ever, ever suspect it as a ruse!” Anyway, as it turns out, this Stephens character has a grander scheme than just smuggling diamonds. See, he is actually the Korean General's son, thought to be dead, and he is using the money to build a giant solar-powered laser in outer space and will allow North Korea to invade South Korea, then take over the world. He's been busy in the 14 months since Brosnan was captured. He not only became a white Englishman, he also built a fake Icelandic mine, was knighted by the Queen, recruited the less pixieish members of the Sugarcubes to provide security detail, built a space station, an ice palace and an untarnished reputation in the world, He became familiar with everyone and apparently was able to build lasting, lifelong friendships and a legendary status as a fencer. Brosnan and Berry travel to Iceland, per Graves invitation, to catch him. It's a good thing the villains always invite the heroes to their elaborate lairs. Otherwise, those world domination plans would go off without a hitch and we'd all be wearing Beatle boots and speaking Esperanto already. There's a shitload of stuff going on in Die Another Day. Actually, way too much shit. There is action piled on action like cousins at a Alabama family reunion. A little of it has to do with the plot. Some even is cool in that Bond way, like a demolition derby through a crumbling ice palace that will remind any twelve-year old of the Ice Pyramid level in “Diddy Kong Racing.” There are sequences of stupefyingly bad CGI, like Brosnan snowboarding down a falling glacier that looks worse than anything on a Playstation 2. And when there isn't interesting action, they have dumb explosions and breaking glass, as though they got a good deal on stock footage from old Kurt Russell movies. Madonna taunts us with the title song like an $8 whore exposing a string of festering syphilis cankers. It contains such pretentious horseshit as her muttering “Dr. Freud, Analyze this… analyze this.” No, you stupid, overexposed hag, that's a different movie. Can someone please tell me why she is famous when she's by all objective measures a disgusting, pigeon-throated gutter slut? And why does she get a cameo? Did the makers think the audience would be delighted to see her? The bag had to marry Guy “One Trick” Ritchie just to be in his bad movies. Despite some interesting scenes and Halle Berry's boobs, what made this movie unbearable were three things: its 135-minute playing time. You can walk out anywhere after the halfway point and you've already got the gist. It's also tiresomely relentless. Rather than have an interesting or involved plot to show how suave this Bond fellow is, the movie just keeps throwing dumb action at him. Blow shit up, then blow more shit up. Now let's break some glass. And when Brosnan speaks, it's the sorts of double entendre that usually serve as the punchlines of jokes in a Moose Lodge . This guy's suave? He'd get punched in the mouth for being such an unoriginal pervert at the Tavern. You need to come up with new ways of leching to survive there. Bond might as well walk up to women and say “I've got a boner... in my slacks.” Let's see if that line works for him any better than it has for me. I expect a little goofy impossibility in a Bond movie. A little is corny and funny, and gives it an edge, but it needs to be used sparingly and mixed with some common sense to appear clever. Die Another Day uses the entire damn corn cob. the gimmicks reeks of lazy plot contrivances the way Madonna's career has the stench of the half-gnawed bones of trends and people she used n her way up. Brosnan escapes British custody and goes directly to his favorite hotel, where he checks into the suite under his own name. Yet the British can't find him. It takes Bond about 45 minutes longer than the audience to figure out that Icelandic diamonds “chemically identical” to Sierra Leone diamonds might actually be smuggled from Africa. And the villain has bamboozled the world in only a few months with his “Icelandic discovery” and his incredibly speedy aerospace development program. Try as they might, British Intelligence can't find any dirt on him: uh, how about that he didn't exist last year? It's crap. Sure a loud crap is more satisfying than a quiet one, but it still has only one appropriate place: the sewers. Two Fingers for Die Another Day. Want to tell Filthy Something?

The always-consistent Earl Dittman They is "a flawless, breathtaking, terror-filled thriller...a must see!" Friday After Next is "The funniest Friday ever!"