In the great Bond-flick tradition, Die Another Day starts off with the in medias res action sequence. This time around, Jimbo (we still giggle envisioning Joe Don Baker calling Bond by that name in Goldeneye) arrives just in time to foil a North Korean weapons-for-diamonds trade, leading to a big shoot-em-up chase on...hovercrafts. Yes, hovercrafts, those lumbering military vehicles that resemble nothing so much as tobogganing hippos. Spinouts at high speed in a souped-up car a la Bullitt are awe-inspiring; spinouts at medium-low speed in a hovercraft that turns like sloshing soup are snicker-inducing.

After Bond's hippo-tobogganing adventure, he's captured by the North Koreans and subsequently tortured, which leads into the weirdest Bond credit sequence ever. It doesn't help that the DAD theme song is one of Madonna's missteps. Memo to Maddy: using silence to mark a beat in a movie theme only makes the audience wonder if the speakers have briefly cut out. And while we're at it, you have no business singing "I'm gonna avoid the cliche"; the last cliche you avoided was probably in preschool.

After enduring 14 months of torture and that loathsome song, Bond is bearded, bedraggled, beaten but still not broken. He's traded back to the British in exchange for the film's secondary villain, whose encounter with a Bond-rigged briefcase left him with diamonds embedded in his skin. (Like much of the rest of the film, it looks kinda neat but doesn't make a whole lot of sense.) Once Bond is back in British hands, M (Dame Judi Dench) informs him that he's damaged goods, under suspicion for treason and under house arrest as well. Cue the escape sequence!

Bond's quest to clear his name (and get laid as often as possible) leads him to Hong Kong, Cuba, London and Iceland---and then back to exotic, sultry North Korea. The movie's plot meanders even more than Bond's itinerary, taking detours through African diamond smuggling, "DNA replacement therapy," a big-ass death ray in outer space and a pointless Madonna cameo.

Any pretense of verbal foreplay has gone completely out the window in DAD. Bond meets gorgeous cipher Jinx (Halle Berry) after watching her rise Ursula-Andress-like from the sea and somehow manages to hook up with her despite a total lack of chemistry between them. Their hack dialogue reminded us of pickups we'd see at keggers around 3 a.m.: "It's late. You busy?" "Not really." Bomp-chicka-wow-wooooow....

DAD is much better when nobody talks at all; its high point is a swordfight between Bond and primary villain Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens with a sneer you just want to smack off his face). They begin with harmless foils and proper protective gear, then move on to bare faces and rapiers and finally graduate to heavy broadswords as the fight gains murderous momentum. Unlike the movie's other fights, this one actually feels dangerous. The scene where Bond para-surfs onto a glacial tidal wave through the painfully obvious miracle of CGI? Not so much.

In a year that's given us such dreck as Austin Powers in Goldmember, xXx and I Spy, DAD is relatively good. But in a series that's given us such high points as Goldfinger, The Spy Who Loved Me and even Tomorrow Never Dies, DAD is apparently just the placeholder for "Installment #20." And we curse ourselves for saying so, but we'll be in the theater when #21 rolls around, still waiting for that perfect Bond experience.

Gadgetgirl