It’s been 15 years since the release of Die Another Day—a movie that set an unusual number of milestones for the James Bond franchise. It was released on the 40th anniversary of Dr. No, which kicked off 007’s remarkable run at the box office—at the time of Die Another Day’s release, more than $4 billion worldwide. It was the final James Bond movie starring Pierce Brosnan. And it is the only James Bond movie with a long and baffling cameo by Madonna.

Die Another Day isn’t exactly held in high esteem today. When it’s remembered at all, it’s remembered for its goofy excesses. (Say it with me: invisible car, surfing down a glacier.) It was the first Bond film to be released after 9/11, and 007’s frothy world-serving antics had already been outmoded by spies like Jason Bourne and Jack Bauer, who occupied the murkier, more complicated global landscape viewers actually recognized.

Revisiting Die Another Day for the first time since 2002, I was surprised to discover that it’s actually much closer to the grimmer post-9/11 Bond played by Daniel Craig than I remembered. It starts with the usual pyrotechnics. Bond night surfs into North Korea, sets off an exploding briefcase in the face of a general and his scheming son, and escapes on a hovercraft, capping the whole thing off with the customary corny quip.

And then—rather unexpectedly—his pursuers actually catch up to Bond. He’s thrown into a damp concrete cell and tortured for information. For more than a year. His captors waterboard him. They stab him with red-hot irons while he’s chained to a ceiling by his wrists. They let scorpions sting him until the pain is unbearable, then give him the antidote right before he dies so they can do it all over again. (Meanwhile, we’re all tortured by Madonna’s godawful theme song.) When Bond emerges from captivity 14 months later—long-haired, thick-bearded, and generally haggard—he’s subjected to one final psychological torture, when General Moon pretends he’s going to be executed by firing squad before releasing him in a prisoner exchange with the British government.

"Your people have abandoned you. Your very existence denied. Why stay silent?" his captors asked. And they kind of have a point! When Bond is finally released, he’s greeted not with a hero’s welcome, but with ice-cold skepticism by M (Judi Dench). "If I had my way, you’d still be in North Korea. Your freedom came at too high a price," she sneers. "Double-O status rescinded. You’re no use to anyone now."

In its first 20 minutes, Die Another Day can go toe-to-toe with the darkest moments in franchise history: Bond’s new wife being shot in the head on her wedding day in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, or Felix Leiter being fed to sharks in License to Kill, or Bond’s genitals being beaten with a knotted rope in Casino Royale. Die Another Day actually, briefly feels like it could evolve into a sobering look at a broken Bond, abandoned by his country and wracked with PTSD.

And then—yes—it becomes the James Bond movie in which Pierce Brosnan drives an invisible car and surfs down a glacier. (It's also the one with Halle Berry coming out of the sea in an orange bikini—a scene borrowed from Dr. No and inverted, with Bond himself as the one for us to ogle, in Casino Royale.) In the years since Die Another Day’s release, fans have basically written this movie off entirely—including Pierce Brosnan, who called Die Another Day "so ridiculous" in an interview with Total Film earlier this year.