James Bond is a British spy that his very own style from womanizing, to his immaculate fashion taste, and his love for fast cars and high tech gadgets. He has been sent on a mission to North Korea to kill the son of a General there who is planning on war. But when a traitor somewhere in the organization betrays him he his forced to improv and while he does manage to destroy their weapons and stop the madman he ends up being captured by North Korean soldiers and imprisoned for 14 months where he is tortured daily to try and gain information about his organization and who sent him. But when a British mole inside the Korean army is killed they believe Bond has finally cracked under the torture and started to leak information. So now it is imperative they rescue him before he gives away any more information. So they do a prison trade with a Korean madman Tao who had bombed a Chinese embassy and killed several Chinese Agents. Beleiving the price was too high to get back Bond from prison he has now fallen out of the graces of his own organization and is to be imprisoned indefinitely. But Bond manages to escape and now is on a hunt to find out who framed him and try and catch Tao before he can do much damage. But on the way he must confront wether he really did crack under the pressure as he meet an American spy Jinx who throws havoc and chaos into his own hunt for the killer and his life.

The Bond movies have almost become a staple of Hollywood, as this is the 20th movie released in 40 years of the series. One of the major problems facing the Bond movies is the fact that they were originally created during the Cold War when most Americans were afraid of an imminent Russian attack and spy movies made sense. The Bond movies are trying to adjust to the future where the Cold War is not a fear and more as they use a lot more terrorists and end of the world theories in this movie. They may have got a little too fanciful though as it seems the best end of the world movies are the ones like Clancy’s involving nuclear weapons rather then the fanciful story they came up with. Still this is one of the better Bond movies in quite some time as Brosnan seems to have fit perfectly into the role and has the panache to pull of the super spy. The movie uses Bond’s imprisonment to give a new twist to the series with Bond now being on the outside which adds quite bit to the plot as most Bond movies have little to no plot to speak of this does a better job at developing one although it still falls quite short. The movie is an action packed thrill ride as they perform one stunt and one explosion after another. But the true improvement on the series is the New Bond girl Halle Berry who plays Jinx. Berry just seems to add something to the movie that they have been missing and that is a great supporting character to go along with Bond. In fact at times her character is more interesting and appealing then Bond’s and you can’t help but wonder who she really is and what her agenda is. Berry does such a great job that there is talk about her getting her own spin off and her own series starring as Jinx. The movie does seem to drag a little in the end though as you keep waiting for the climax and they have several scenes that could have been used as one. Still the movie is excellently done and worthy of the Bond name as it outstrips its predecessors for at least the last tow decades. Go and see it if you are looking for an action packed adventure ride and don’t mind a few plot holes.
3.5 stars out of 5