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Starring
Pierce Brosnan .....Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) is the eighteenth spy film in the James Bond series, and the second to star Pierce Brosnan as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. Bruce Feirstein wrote the screenplay, and it was directed by Roger Spottiswoode. It follows Bond as he tries to stop a media mogul from engineering world events and starting
World War III.
The film was produced by Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, and was the first James Bond film made after the death of producer Albert R. Broccoli, to which the movie pays tribute in the end credits. Locations included
France, Thailand,
Germany, the United
Kingdom, Vietnam and the South China Sea. Tomorrow Never Dies performed well at the box office and earned a Golden Globe nomination despite mixed reviews. While its domestic box office surpassed
GoldenEye, it was the only Pierce Brosnan Bond film not to open at number one at the box office; it opened the same day as
Titanic.
Plot
MI6 sends James Bond, agent 007, into the field to spy on a terrorist arms bazaar on the Russian border. Via television, MI6 and the British military identify several wanted men, including American "techno-terrorist" Henry Gupta, who is buying a GPS encoder made by the American military. Despite M's insistence to let 007 finish his reconnaissance, British Admiral Roebuck launches a missile attack on the arms bazaar. Bond then discovers two
Soviet nuclear torpedoes mounted on an L-39 Albatros, and as the missile is too far along to be aborted, 007 hijacks the L-39 and flies away while the weapons bazaar explodes. Gupta escapes with the encoder.
Media baron Elliot Carver, head of the Carver Media Group Network (CMGN), begins his plans to use the encoder to provoke war between China and the United Kingdom, which would replace the Chinese government with one more supportive to Carver's plans of exclusive broadcast rights. Meaconing the GPS signal using the encoder, Gupta sends the British frigate HMS Devonshire off-course into Vietnamese waters in the East Vietnam Sea, where Carver's stealth ship, commanded by Mr. Stamper, sinks the frigate with a sea drill and steals one of its missiles. Afterwards, Stamper's men shoot down a Chinese J-7 fighter jet sent to investigate the British presence, and kill the Devonshire's survivors with Chinese weaponry. After reading a CMGN report of the incident as a Chinese attack, Roebuck deploys the British Fleet to recover the frigate, and possibly retaliate, leaving M only forty-eight hours to investigate its sinking.
M sends Bond to investigate Carver after Carver Media releases news with critical details hours before these have become known, and MI6 noticed a spurious signal from one of his CMGN communications satellites when the frigate was sunk. Bond travels to Hamburg and seduces Carver's wife, Paris, an ex-girlfriend, to get information that would help him enter Carver's newspaper headquarters. After Bond steals back the GPS encoder, Carver orders Paris and Bond killed. Paris is killed by Dr. Kaufman, but Bond kills Kaufman and escapes in his
BMW 750i. Bond then goes to the East Vietnam Sea to investigate the wreck, discovering one of the missiles missing. He and Wai Lin, a Chinese spy on the same case, are captured by Stamper and taken to the CMGN tower in Saigon, but they escape and then collaborate on the investigation.
They contact the Royal Navy and the People's Liberation Army Air Force to explain Carver's scheme. They find Carver's stealth ship in Ha Long Bay and board it to prevent him firing the stolen British cruise missile at Beijing. During the battle, Wai Lin is captured. Bond captures Gupta to use as his own hostage, but Carver kills Gupta, claiming he has "outlived his contract". Bond detonates an explosive, damaging the ship and making it visible to radar, and vulnerable to a subsequent Royal Navy attack. While Wai Lin disables the engines, Bond goes after the missile. He kills Carver with his own sea drill. As Bond attempts to destroy the warhead, Stamper appears and fights him. Bond traps Stamper in the missile firing mechanism and dives to save Wai Lin as the missile explodes, destroying the ship and killing Stamper. Bond and Wai Lin survive amidst the wreckage as HMS Bedford searches for them.
CAST:
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Pierce Brosnan as James Bond, MI6 agent 007.
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Jonathan Pryce as Elliot Carver, a media mogul modelled on Robert Maxwell, but analysed as a satire on Rupert
Murdoch. He is completely insane and possibly even psychopathic, with scant regard for any of the lives destroyed or simply taken as a result of his media
ambition.
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Michelle Yeoh as Colonel Wai Lin, a skilled Chinese spy and Bond's ally.
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Teri Hatcher as Paris Carver, a former girlfriend of Bond who is now Carver's trophy wife.
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Götz Otto as Richard Stamper, Carver's henchman, who is skilled in the art of Chakra torture.
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Ricky Jay as Henry Gupta, an American "Techno-terrorist" in the employ of Carver. Bruce Feirstein said he named this character after a Gupta Bakery, which he passed on the way to the
studios.
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Joe Don Baker as Jack Wade, CIA liaison, reprising his role from GoldenEye.
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Vincent Schiavelli as Dr. Kaufman, a professional assassin used by Elliot Carver.
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Judi Dench as M, reprising her role from GoldenEye.
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Desmond Llewelyn in his penultimate appearance as Q.
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Samantha Bond as Miss Moneypenny.
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Geoffrey Palmer as Admiral Roebuck, M's contentious military contact.
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Colin Salmon as Charles Robinson, M's Chief of Staff.
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Julian Fellowes as the British Minister of Defence, who orders Admiral Roebuck to send the fleet to the Vietnam Sea. He is the successor to Sir Frederick Gray (Geoffrey Keen).
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Cecilie Thomsen as Professor Inga Bergstrom.
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Gerard Butler and Julian Rhind-Tutt as crewmen of HMS Devonshire.
This
chapters above are neither a serious nor a developed work, but it is a
workable idea for a plot in the traditional Bond format and could possibly
have been worked into an excellent script. The Solar Navigator autonomous
stealth boat has now been licensed to Blueplanet Netdirect Productions for
the Jameson
Hunter series of books/films.
Tomorrow
Never Dies 1997 movie,
Sean Connery - youtube
LINKS
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