"Die Another Day"

While he's looking for Zao, Bond bumps into yet another villain, the icy gazillionaire Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens), who, it just so happens, is about to unveil a giant weapon that will bring the world to its knees. (Remember, the world always has knees in a Bond film.)

Stephens (who's the son of actors Maggie Smith and Robert Stephens) makes a lovely villain -- he's like a sneering schoolboy you'd really like to punch out -- and he balances Brosnan's warmer brand of classiness well. The two also share one of the finest action sequences in any Bond movie, a sword fight that takes place in a tony fencing club. (Madonna makes a brief, amusing cameo as a fencing instructor; she's wonderful when she's simply allowed to be a presence in a movie, instead of attempting to impersonate an actress.)

Tamahori and cinematographer David Tattersall keep the action clean, clear and blissfully old-fashioned. Bond and Graves, stripped down to their trousers and expensive white T-shirts, go at each other with a murderousness that's both refined and feral. The scene is a gorgeous example of modern-day swashbuckling, and a nod to the fine tradition of stage combat -- the sort of thing we used to get in the movies when fighting meant more than just fancy cutting in the editing room.

But that sword fight also creates its own set of problems: The next leg of Bond's adventure takes him to a magnificent ice palace in -- where else? -- Iceland. But even all that glamorous icy whiteness feels underwhelming after the exhilarating simplicity of that good old-fashioned English swordplay. The action becomes noisier and murkier; and while the movie opens with a nicely executed surfing scene, the Iceland segment features Bond riding some very cheesy-looking computer-generated waves.

That's just one example of the puzzling inconsistencies that litter "Die Another Day." Tamahori gives us some marvelous details: Gadgets have taken a back seat in recent Bond movies, but care has been taken here to give us some good ones. And there's the brilliant touch of a spy headquarters located in an abandoned London Underground station. How can Tamahori get so many of the smaller, tougher things right, only to turn around and get most of the easier things wrong?

But you can say this much about him: He seems to have brought out a sense of lightness and fun in his actors. Halle Berry as Jinx -- a vixen who may or may not be fighting on the "right" side -- simply looks as if she's having a wonderful time, whether she's emerging from a dip in the ocean in an orange bikini, a white knife holster dangling from her hip, Ursula Andress-style, or interrupting her lovemaking with Bond to flip out a penknife so she can cut into a juicy piece of fruit. She also gets one of the best Bond-girl costumes since the days of Honor Blackman: A leather catsuit rendered in magnificent aubergine instead of black.

Tamahori's "Die Another Day" is an imperfect Bond movie. But for every patch where it's dull and lifeless or just plain stupid, there are also sections that are significantly different from anything we've seen before in a Bond movie. For one thing, "Die Another Day" opens with Bond in disgrace. He's been held captive (and tortured) in a Korean prison camp for 14 months; when British intelligence finally, reluctantly rescues him, it's made clear that his glory days are over. As M, once again played by the magnificent Judi Dench, tells him with almost unbearable coldness, "You're no use to anyone now."

In "Die Another Day," it's failure that galvanizes Bond and forces him into action. We're not used to seeing a demoralized Bond. And yet Brosnan plays that Bond beautifully, giving us a glimpse of what can happen to a supremely confident and successful man when everything and everyone turns against him. This is a more vulnerable Bond than we've ever seen, but also, perhaps not paradoxically, a more masculine one. By the end of "Die Another Day," Bond is surer of himself, precisely because he's been forced to reckon with his limitations. Every James Bond, from Sean Connery to Roger Moore to Timothy Dalton to Brosnan, has looked great in a tuxedo. Here, he looks at home in his own skin as well.

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