DIE Another Day is Bond number 20 and the series can definitely live another day, no matter what xXx may wish.

More money than ever has gone into making 007 cinema heaven, but the more important decision was taking on a director who would shake and stir the old formula. Lee Tamahori directed the extraordinary, disturbing 1994 New Zealand film Once Were Warriors, a Maori street-gang drama of the dispossessed, and he brings the sledgehammer visuals and emotional impact to Bond. Or more precisely, he does so in the opening 25 minutes.

In that time, Pierce Brosnan has to do more with his Bond characterisation than in his first three adventures, taking 007 back to the more earnest days of Timothy Dalton. The opening finds secret agent Bond botching an operation at Colonel Moon's base in South Korea, whereupon the best executed credits sequence in years suddenly turns Madonna's theme tune into a hot number.

We rejoin Bond 14 months later, incarcerated and tortured and now sporting the beard, hair and waistline of late-Doors Jim Morrison. Just when it looks like this might be a more serious Bond, Brosnan is traded for a Korean terrorist, and takes to showing off his chest hair and fuller figure (presumably he will Diet Another Day) as if taunting those who say he should hand in his commission.

Dame Judi Dench's imperious M certainly agrees, stripping Bond of his licence to kill, but James can never be in hot water for long, and likewise Tamahori decides to give up on the heavy stuff, instead becoming a big boy let loose in the Bond fantasy factory.

As soon as Halle Berry's sassy action-girl Jinx emerges from the Cuban sea in the bikini-clad style of Ursula Andress from Dr No, it is apparent that Die Another Day will revert to pastiche type, corny, horny chat-up lines and all.

Here come knowing if affectionate digs at old Bond movies, any excuse for more exotic locations than BBC1's Holiday, and an erratic plot that re-arranges the usual ingredients of bombs, diamonds, political intrigue and double dealings.

New for the hi-tech 21st century is modern science allowing men to change their look beyond even Michael Jackson's wildest dreams, so that a Korean troublemaker can become classical English baddie Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens), a diamond billionaire and philanthropist with Icarus delusions and plans for world domination.

Not everything is top notch: the new Aston Martin Vanquish that turns into the invisible Vanish works better as a word gag than a visual one; the big bangs and stunt sequences are more spectacular and louder than ever but bigger does not always mean better; Madonna's stilted few moments as a lesbian fencing instructor were surely a sweetener for her agreeing to do the theme tune; and the pace slows rather than quickens once a brash Michael Madsen starts demanding more American involvement.

However, Brosnan is as suavely assured as ever and more flirtatious; Berry's cunning hired assassin is the hot Bond girl to Rosamund Pike's deliciously cold one, her British agent Miranda Frost being a fragrant English rose in the old Forties style; Stephens's milky-skinned megalomaniac is a proper villain, not a pantomime joke; John Cleese's Q is marvellously eccentric; and Graves's ice palace in Iceland is one of the best Bond locations.

Tamahori's Bond debut is both futuristic and nostalgic, British but not too much so, and Bond still works, rests and plays with style.

Updated: 09:54 Friday, November 22, 2002