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Another superb pre-title sequence opens Pierce Brosnan's third Bond movie. His confrontation with a Swiss banker in Spain seems to hark back to the old days, when the villains were always Europeans and pronounced his name "Meester Bond." Brosnan continues to play 007 as a very hard character, particularly when confronting bad guys. From Bilbao the action moves swiftly to London, where Bond chases the sultry Cigar Girl down the Thames after her attack on the MI6 Building. The boat chase is superb, let down only by the unforgivable transgression of Bond sustaining an injury (which lasts the entire film) after a little fall onto a tent. This sort of thing's fine for his literary counterpart, Fleming always had him being breaking his arms and getting shot. In the books The Man With The Golden Gun actually hits him with one of those golden bullets. As well as having Bond injured and fallable, The World Is Not Enough also shows Bond developing feelings for a woman again. I thought this kind of chick-flickery was dealt with once and for all in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, perhaps Brosnan would feel more comfortable making romantic comedies. He's slightly redeemed by shooting her dead at the end, but even that moment is tainted slightly by him leaving his witty comeback until after she's already dead. The plot concerns Elektra King's attempt to blow up Istanbul, in order to make her's the only oil pipeline out of Russia. Played by Sophie Marceau, Elektra is Bond's first female villain. A nice twist is that plot leads you to believe that Renard (Robert Carlise) is the villain, but is, at it turns out, only the head henchman. Having discovered Elektra is a baddy, Bond teams up with nuclear physicist Doctor Christmas Jones (the gorgeous Densie Richards, left). Although Richards is not in the same league as Marcaeu when it comes to acting, she is younger and prettier, and doesn't have a big minging lump out of her ear like Elektra. This is sadly the final appearance of Desmond Llewlyn as Bond stalwart Q. Although this was unclear at the time of making the movie, (Llewlyn tragically died in a car accident shortly after the film's release). His farewell is handled perfectly in the movie. It's moving, without being overly sentimental. His replacement is introduced in the promising form of comedy genius John Cleese. Future female villains should take note that villains really need a evil base, one that will blow up in the finale. Elektra King lacks this, although she does have a torture device, in the form of an ancient Greek chair that snaps it's victim's necks. M seems to tell Bond exactly who he can sleep with while on assignment now. In GoldenEye she insists on authorisation if he's going to get to know Xenia Onatopp better, and in Tomorrow Never Dies her order to "pump" Paris Carver for information is loaded with meaning. Here M tells Bond to be Elektra's shadow, saying that shadows are in front or behind, "never on top." When Bond seems to have messed the mission up a bit, M actually flies out and takes charge herself. I wasn't too keen on this. I like the idea of 007 being sent in, on his own, with carte blanche to solve the situation. This is a bit like his mum turning up at work. When M gets captured she doesn't have a single Q-Branch gadget on her. The laser on a standard-issue MI6 watch would have made short work of those bars. What was she thinking? Valentine Zukovsky (Robbie Coltrane) returns in this movie. He is as entertaining as he was in GoldenEye, with his apparant death scene providing a fairly poignant moment. The film's climax is a little let down by the lack of an Evil base to be blown up, but Bond's fight with Renard aboard the nuclear submarine is pretty good. Another great Bond movie, mixing traditional elements (Bond uses the Universal Exports cover for the firsttime in ages) while continuing the modern, hi-tech style founded in GoldenEye. But why has Bond forgotten how to disarm nuclear bombs? |
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| Director: Micheal Apted Producers: Michael G. Wilson & Barbara Broccoli Screenplay: Neil Purvis, Robert Wade & Bruce Feirstein |
| 1999 |