IN years to come, when people are trying to list the Bond movies in order, Die Another Day will be the one they forget.

It begins quite promisingly. Contrary to the spy's usual miraculous escape from hoards of enemies, he's captured, tortured for 14 months and released only as a trade for terrorist Zao.

A bearded and weakened Bond then has his 00 status revoked and becomes a renegade agent on the hunt for Zao.

But the film soon falls back into the typical rut carved out by other Bond blockbusters.

In it, there's either a visual or spoken reference to every previous 007 flick.

And although it has its moments, the props in Q's laboratory for example, the film-makers have taken this too far.

The plot's a mishmash of all the other Bond plots - some scenes feel spookily familiar. It borrows heavily from previous instalments, to the point where Die Another Day barely seems like a film in its own right.

Director Lee Tamahori adds little to the series, except with the use of flo-mo and rotoscopes, made popular in The Matrix. He gets carried away. The set-piece spectaculars push well beyond the boundaries of anything vaguely believable, especially in the parasurfing scene.

The villain, Gustav Graves, is irritating and, by the end, is ridiculously transformed into Robocop.

Brosnan is still a very convincing as the super spy and ,despite this outing, he's still a worthy candidate for the best Bond. Halle Berry as sassy CIA agent Jinx is inoffensive and bland.

Keeping with tradition, this is still a family film and makes the most of the new 12a certificate, which means under-12s can see it if accompanied.

With sequences like the car chase through a melting ice palace and a hovercraft chase through a minefield, the film is still fast-paced, spectacular and a perfectly acceptable action movie.

But all this isn't enough to make a good Bond movie. Bond needs to be reinvented, as in Goldeneye, if the legend is to survive.

In association with the Odeon, Foregate Street, Worcester. Tickets for Die Another Day are available from the Odeon Ticket line on 0870 5050007.