Recap / Die Another Day

The film opens with James Bond traveling to North Korea in pursuit of Tan-Sun Moon, a corrupt KPA Colonel selling weapons hidden within the Korean Demilitarized Zone. Posing as a buyer to meet with Moon, Bond learns that the Colonel studied at both Oxford and Harvard (indeed, he’s the Trope Namer for Majored in Western Hypocrisy), but is later exposed by Zao, Moon’s Dragon, who received a tipoff from an unknown source. Bond escapes by setting off explosives hidden within a briefcase of diamonds he had brought to the meeting - with several of them becoming embedded in Zao’s face - and pursues Moon with one of the hovercrafts used by the colonel to move the weapons in and out of the DMZ. A hovercraft chase ensues, and ends with Bond sending Moon and his hovercraft over a waterfall, seemingly killing him. Soon after this, Bond is captured by troops led by the late colonel’s father, General Moon.

After being imprisoned and tortured by the North Koreans for fourteen months, Bond is swapped for Zao in a prisoner exchange. Prior to the transfer, General Moon admits to Bond that he had given his son a western education to try and bridge the gap between the two Koreas, and reveals that his son had an ally in the West, with Bond figuring out that this is the same person who warned Zao about him. Following the transfer, Bond is imprisoned again, this time on a medical ship within Hong Kong, where he learns from M that he is suspected of giving up information that led to the death of an American agent while in captivity. Bond however guesses that he was framed for this by Colonel Moon’s western ally in order to free Zao, and resolves to go after him. M - who believes he may have betrayed his country without knowing it - refuses to allow this, and informs him that his status as a 00 agent has been suspended, along with his freedom.

Bond escapes his room by slowing his heartbeat and overpowering the medics sent in to resuscitate him. Getting off the ship, he heads to a hotel being managed by one Mr Chang, whom Bond knows to be a member of Chinese Intelligence. After some confusion over whether or not the British have designs on their former colony, Bond offers to deal with Zao on behalf of the Chinese, who lost three of their agents during the incident where Zao was captured. Chang convinces his superiors to help, and Bond is given a plane ticket to Havana, Cuba, where they believe Zao to be. There, Bond makes contact with Raoul, a British sleeper agent in the city, who learns that Zao is staying at a medical clinic on a nearby islet. Bond also meets and spends a night with an American woman named Giacinta "Jinx" Johnson while in Havana.

The next morning, Bond sees Jinx heading to the clinic; he follows her by knocking out a rude foreigner due to receive treatment there, and posing as the now unconscious man’s assistant. Through a conversation between Jinx and the clinic’s director - who she later kills - it is revealed that the clinic is able to radically alter a patient’s appearance by changing their DNA, with Zao being one such patient. Bond meanwhile finds Zao, and interrupts the treatment to question him about Colonel Moon’s ally. Zao manages to fight him off and flee without giving anything away, but not before Bond grabs a pendant from him. Pursuing Zao to the director’s office, Bond encounters Jinx again, and discovers her role in the director’s death as she attempts to kill Zao herself. Zao manages to get onto a helicopter and escape, and Jinx does the same by removing her dress and diving into the ocean, before being picked up by a boat. With both Zao and Jinx gone, Bond examines Zao’s pendant, discovering a number of diamonds hidden within it. Raoul identifies them as African conflict diamonds, but also finds that they’ve been marked with the crest of the Graves Corporation, whose owner Gustav Graves supposedly discovered diamonds within Iceland roughly a year ago. “Yet they’re chemically identical to African conflict diamonds. What an amazing coincidence,” Bond remarks.

With Graves due to receive a knighthood for his philanthropy, Bond travels to London to investigate him, and meets him and his publicist Miranda Frost - a fencing champion who won a gold medal after the previous winner overdosed on steroids - at the Blades Club. Bond agrees to a fencing match with Graves, and lets the other man score two points against him before wagering one of the diamonds he took from Zao, admitting that he got it in Cuba and that he knows it’s a conflict diamond. Graves is quietly furious at hearing this, and becomes more so when Bond strikes him on the wrist during their next duel. Graves proposes they fight to first blood from the torso, grabbing two sabers from a wall display and tossing one to Bond. What follows is a violent fight that wrecks parts of the club, with both men later switching to longswords and practically trying to kill each other. In the end, Bond manages to wound Graves and knock him into a fountain, before Miranda arrives to break up the fight. Graves laughs it off and concedes defeat to Bond, and later invites him to a scientific demonstration he’s hosting at his mine. Bond also tries to charm Miranda during this scene, but is coolly rebuffed by her.

Bond is then met by a disguised Charles Robinson, who directs him to an abandoned train station for another meeting with M, the MI6 boss wanting to know what Bond has on Graves. After a brief bit of friction between the two over her asking for help from the same agent she burned, Bond guesses that MI6 have suspicions about the diamond magnate. M admits that they have nothing beyond his official biography, which depicts him as an orphan who learned diamond mining in Argentina before getting his Icelandic windfall. “From everything to nothing in no time at all,” Bond remarks. M guesses that his planned demonstration is just a publicity stunt, and Bond tells her about the events at the clinic, before voicing his belief that the Graves Corporation is a front for laundering conflict diamonds. With Graves being politically connected, the still disgraced Bond advises M to let him get on with his job. She doesn’t protest.

Alongside staying out of Bond’s way, M has Q provide him with some equipment; a ring that serves as a Sonic Stunner, a watch (the 20th he’s been issued, in reference to Die Another Day being Bond film #20), and another MI6 spy car, this one being an Aston Martin V12 Vanquish with a Chameleon Camouflage feature. Elsewhere, M questions Miranda - an M16 agent, as it turns out - about Bond, with Miranda dismissing him as a Trigger-Happy loose cannon who could blow her cover with Graves. M replies that despite Miranda volunteering for her assignment, she’s failed to turn up anything on her “boss” in the three months she’s been with him, hence she’s sending Bond in to “mix things up a little with Graves”, and entrusting Miranda with keeping him in check.

Arriving at Graves’s mine - which features an Ice Palace built specially for the demonstration next door - Bond meets up with Graves and Miranda, and also reunites with Jinx, who is friendly but dismissive when he tries to bring up the events in Cuba. Later on that evening, Graves is making use of an REM machine within the mine when he is approached by none other than Zao, with the two men hugging like old friends. Zao asks about “side effects”, and Graves explains that he has permanent insomnia; an hour on the REM machine every day is what allows him to stay sane. He then assures Zao that Bond doesn’t recognize him…with Zao then telling him that his father - General Moon - still mourns his death.

Back in the ice palace, Miranda approaches Bond and Jinx to inform them that the demonstration will be starting soon, with the two women exchanging innuendos about the man’s womanizing nature beforehand. Heading outside, Bond, Jinx and the other guests witness the subject of Graves’s demonstration; an orbital mirror satellite named Icarus capable of focusing sunlight on a small area, which Graves claims will facilitate year-round sunshine for agriculture.

Bond tries to break into the mine that night, but gets caught by Graves’s security team. Miranda helps him maintain his cover by posing as his girlfriend and kissing him - also revealing her involvement with MI6 - and the two of them make love back at the ice palace. Jinx also makes her own attempt on the mine and attempts to kill Zao while he’s hooked up to the REM machine, but Graves subdues her with an electricity discharging glove, and she is questioned by Zao and Mr Kil - Graves’s head of security. After it becomes clear that she won’t talk, Kil decides to put an end to her with one of the mine’s diamond cutting lasers, with Zao leaving him to it. Jinx is saved by the arrival of Bond, who is then attacked in turn by Kil, inadvertently setting off the numerous other lasers in the room. The two men fight in the midst of the lasers, before Jinx impales Kil through the head with one of them, killing him.

Bond then questions Jinx, who admits that she’s an agent of the National Security Agency who’s been sent after Zao. The presence of Zao, along with that of the REM equipment - which couldn’t have been bought from Cuba - allows Bond to connect all the dots; Graves is none other than Colonel Moon, who faked his death and underwent gene therapy in Cuba like Zao had hoped to do. He tells Jinx to go to Miranda and get her to leave, before going off to confront the man (who for the sake of simplicity will be referred to as Gustav Graves for the rest of this article).

Bond finds the former Colonel in his office, and holds him at gunpoint. “So you live to die another day, Colonel,” he remarks. The two men briefly talk, with Graves admitting that he decided to model his entire persona as an Evil Counterpart to Bond following their confrontation in North Korea, before Miranda shows up and levels a gun of her own at Graves. He doesn’t look too surprised, and asks Bond if he knows who sold him out in North Korea. Bond replies that it’s only a matter of time until he finds the answer.

“You never thought of looking inside your own organization?” Graves asks, at which point Miranda aims her gun at Bond. As it turns out, she and Graves like to win whatever the cost; his arranging for her Sydney rival to be murdered by overdose was enough to get her to jump sides. Zao shows up in the office around this time, and as for Jinx, she ends up getting locked inside Bond’s room in the ice palace.

Zao and Bond exchange one-liners - “I’ve missed your sparkling personality.” *WHUMP* “How’s that for a punchline” - before Graves subverts Bond Villain Stupidity and orders Miranda to shoot the agent. Bond however escapes by using his sonic ring to shatter the glass floor of the office, dropping himself and Miranda into the mine, and flees using an ice dragster owned by Graves. Undeterred, Graves takes the opportunity to show off the true function of Icarus; it can further focus its reflected sunlight into a powerful laser. He chases Bond over the edge of an icy cliff with it, but Bond uses the dragster’s braking cables to prevent his fall. Graves then uses Icarus to cut away a section of the cliff, seemingly killing Bond; the spy uses the dragster’s parachutes and the lid of its parachute compartment to kiteboard his way to safety.

As Graves and Miranda depart the ice palace, Bond returns to it in search of Jinx, and manages to get into his Aston Martin. He ends up being discovered by Zao, who engages him with his own Weaponized Jaguar XKR. The two of them chase and battle each other across the icy plains, while Graves and Miranda use Icarus to melt the ice palace, slowly flooding the room Jinx is trapped in. Bond and Zao’s chase eventually takes them back into the ice palace, where Bond defeats Zao by using his car’s camouflage and tire spikes to trick the Korean into crashing through the floor of the palace’s ballroom. Zao survives the icy water, but Bond finishes him off by shooting the rope holding up a diamond chandelier and dropping it onto him, before rescuing Jinx.

Bond and Jinx reunite with their respective superiors, and learn that Graves and Miranda have gone to the Korean peninsula, and that General Moon has been arrested following a coup staged by North Korean hardliners last night. After a missile launched at Icarus is destroyed by its laser, Bond and Jinx are sent to kill Graves at a North Korean airfield. They attempt to snipe him as he has supplies loaded onto a cargo plane, but are forced to stow away on the plane themselves when this falls through, getting onboard just as it takes off.

As Jinx moves to take control of the cockpit, Bond goes to deal with Graves; finding him within the plane’s control room, he witnesses the former colonel - now wearing the Icarus control interface and his electric gloves as part of a suit of Powered Armor - receive his father, to whom he reveals his true identity. Graves then begins using Icarus to start clearing a pathway through the DMZ, a move that would allow North Korea to invade both South Korea and Japan. General Moon balks at this, fearing it will start a war that North Korea could never win, and attempts to shoot his son to prevent this, but Graves overpowers his father, and then fatally shoots him instead.

Enraged, Bond enters the control room and tries to kill Graves himself, but the interference of a nearby mook leads to him shooting out one of the room’s windows, depressurizing the plane and causing everyone there except Bond and Graves to be sucked out. As the two of them fight, Jinx manages to regain control of the plane, but is suddenly held at swordpoint by Miranda and forced to put the plane on autopilot; before being led away she directs the plane to fly into Icarus’s beam, severely damaging it but enabling her to escape and then fight Miranda.

Down in the control room, Graves manages to take Bond down, and puts on a parachute in order to escape the stricken plane. As he takes the opportunity to gloat, Bond yanks the cord of his parachute, opening it up and causing him to be nearly yanked out of the window. He manages to cling on, but Bond activates his electric glove; with Graves no longer grounded by the floor, he gets electrocuted, loses his grip and is sucked into one of the plane’s turbines, thereby shutting down Icarus. Jinx meanwhile kills Miranda, and she and Bond escape the crashing plane in a helicopter that had been loaded onto it earlier, taking with them a load of Graves’s diamonds.