Tomorrow Never Dies

Tomorrow Never Dies arrives as a curious artifact of the late 1990s, a Bond picture that happened to include a capable female co-lead and a villain whose crimes stem from media manipulation rather than geopolitical scheming. These elements read as progressive for their time, yet they lack the self-conscious interrogation of power structures that defines contemporary progressive cinema. Michelle Yeoh's Wai Lin is a competent intelligence officer who fights alongside Bond, but the film makes no particular point of her competence as a statement on gender relations. She simply exists as an equal within the action formula, which is admirable in its refusal to make her gender the subject of commentary, but utterly absent the reflexive consciousness that modern progressive sensibilities demand.

The film's satire of media mogul Elliot Carver amounts to a straightforward critique of corporate greed and the corrupting influence of news organizations willing to manufacture conflict for profit. This constitutes a mildly anti-capitalist current, though one presented as entertainment rather than as preachy social commentary. The geopolitical backdrop involving China and the United Kingdom gestures toward international cooperation, but offers no examination of colonialism, imperialism, or systemic inequity. The film is, fundamentally, a spy thriller that happens to feature a diverse cast and a villain whose evil is corporate in nature.

In assessing this film through the specific lens of 2020s progressive cultural consciousness, one finds it to be largely innocent of the markers that would elevate its score. It predates the era when representation became a self-conscious project, when every film felt obligated to demonstrate its awareness of marginalization and systemic oppression. Tomorrow Never Dies is simply a Bond film that cast well and included a topical villain. For that, it earns a modest score.