In Die Another Day, Bond returns from North Korean captivity expecting at least a trace of sympathy, only to be reminded by M withe the above line that he always had an exit. Bond’s response that he “got rid of it months ago” raises a very interesting scenario that the movie never bothered to explore. At some point during those fourteen months, Bond chose to live and discard the cyanide: why?

Was it a hardened resolve in the face of torture or a quiet rejection of the very code he serves? The movie never says and worse, never shows. That omission feels like a missed opportunity for a brief, character-driven sequence that would have added real depth and emotional context to a Bond movie that has some of the least of both ever.

Frankly, I’d have traded the hovercraft chase sequence for a scene that actually shows Bond at his most desperate yet most defiant.