Sometime during Die Another Day, exhaustion begins to sit in. James Bond may be able to bounce up like a rubber ball after what seems like an hour-plus of non-stop action sequences and pummeling by his opponents, but some members of the audience may take longer to recover.

For its 20th James Bond outing, Eon Productions comes up with a film that seems to have a split personality. The first half takes a few chances and comes up with some interesting variations on standard 007 sequences. Instead of a cool duel of wits, Bond and his adversary get into violent swordplay. Bond is on the outs with British Intelligence, which thinks he cracked under torture. Bond gets roughed-up over a 14-month period by the North Korean military.

Then, however, it's like somebody (producer Michael G. Wilson comes to mind) was keeping check on his stop-watch. When the designated time arrived, the command came to switch back to action-movie gear. What's more, after a few $350 million worldwide grosses, either MGM opened up the checkbook a bit more, or all those product-placement deals yielded more than the usual cash. In any case, even more computerized effects than ever before get put into this Bond movie.

But, as Sean Connery more or less told Playboy magazine in 1965, bigger is not always better. It's not that the movie isn't enjoyable. It is. But it's a jarring transition. Parts of the first half of the movie are a de facto adaptation of Ian Fleming's ``Moonraker'' novel (as noted in the HMSS interview with writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade,) and that's quite interesting. Then, however, it seems all that melts away.

What's more, a good idea - making references to previous films on the 40th anniversary of the series' debut - gets a little excessive. During the movie's first half, it seemed pretty clever how Purvis and Wade work in a little salute to the way Fleming named his hero while writing ``Casino Royale'' in early 1952. By the end of the movie, though, the whole thing has a ``Where's Waldo?'' feel. "Look, there's producer Michael G. Wilson getting his son a ``cameo.'' (Gregg Wilson's name appears as a byline in a magazine story about villain Gustav Graves.) "Look, this time we made the laser satellite really big, just like Bob McGinnis' poster art work for Diamonds Are Forever." (McGinnis' painting made the thing look huge, with little astronauts around it; the movie version was about the size of a television set.) "Look, we've recycled some sound effects from The Spy Who Loved Me.'' (The laser satellite at work sounds an awful lot like submarines going haywire while being captured in ``Spy.'') I found it distracting.

The ``Where's Waldo'' feel extends to David Arnold's score. I could appreciate Arnold putting in old John Barry music cues. However, Arnold recycles a few tracks of his own scores from Tomorrow Never Dies and The World is Not Enough. One does homage's to other people, not one's self. Barry occasionally dug out his ``007'' theme for the film's he scored, but seemed able to come up with mostly original work with each Bond outing. I like Arnold's work most of the time, but it seems like he was running on empty in a few spots here.

Finally, the North Koreans as villains? Yes, we know they've got nukes, but the place has a Bronze Age economy. Yes, the villain has acquired Western tastes and likes large living, but it all still seems odd.

Halle Berry was fine as Jinx and there are some surprises here and there. Still, the 40th anniversary Bond movie, at least for me, didn't have the high I thought it might.

Copyright © 2002 Bill Koenig