"Leave it in, I want to play with it," says Halle Berry's Jinx to Pierce Brosnan's 007, showing that no matter how old James Bond gets -- this is number twenty in the series that began in 1962 -- the sex jokes can stay adolescent forever. It's not 007's dick the lady wants to leave in (this being PG-13 territory) but a diamond he's placed in her navel. Ah, now the photo above makes sense.
Don't expect the same of the movie. Die Another Day, energetically directed by Lee Tamahori, hurtles from Korea to Cuba to Iceland. Something about a rebel North Korean (Rick Yune), a zillionaire Brit (Toby Stephens), his chilly publicist (Rosamund Pike) and other hissables bent on global rule.

Brosnan, in his fourth time up at the Bond bat, hits this one out of the park. The rat-bastard wit he showed in The Tailor of Panama has seeped into his Bond. In a prison-camp scene, he actually gets his hair mussed. Darkness becomes him. So does humor. Bond freaks will revel in the references to other 007 films. Like Ursula Andress in Dr. No, Berry makes her wow entrance in a belted bikini. Oscar's history maker appears to be having a ball.

On the debit side, the movie drags a bit, the explosions dull with repetition and the one-liners lack the flair of the Sean Connery Bond films. I did like Madonna's title song, but then she spoils it by "acting" as a lesbo fencing master. "Do you fence, Mr. Bond?" she asks. "I can keep my tip up," he replies. Happily, some things never change.