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Dom Robinson reviews

The World Is Not Enough

Distributed by
United International Pictures

Cert: 12
Running time: 130 minutes
Year: 1999
Released: 26th November 1999
Widescreen Ratio : 2.35:1 (Panavision)
Rating: 6/10

Director:

Michael Apted

Agatha, Always Outnumbered, Blink, Class Action, Critical Condition, Extreme Measures, Gorillas in the Mist, Stardust

Producers:

Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson

Screenplay:

Robert Wade and Neal Purvis

Original Score :

David Arnold

Cast :

James Bond: Pierce Brosnan

GoldenEye, The Lawnmower Man, Live Wire, The Long Good Friday, Mars Attacks!, The Mirror Has Two Faces, Mrs Doubtfire, The Thomas Crown Affair (1999), Tomorrow Never Dies

Elektra: Sophie Marceau

Anna Karenina, Beyond the Clouds, Braveheart, D'Artagnan's Daughter

Renard: Robert Carlyle

Carla's Song, Face, The Full Monty, Plunkett and Macleane, Priest, Riff Raff, Trainspotting, TV: Cracker: To Be A Somebody, Go Now, Hamish MacBeth, Looking After JoJo

Dr. Christmas Jones: Denise Richards

Starship Troopers, Tail Lights Fade, Wild Things

Valentin Zukovsky: Robbie Coltrane

The Adventures of Huck Finn, Alice in Wonderland (1999), GoldenEye, Message in a Bottle, Mona Lisa, Nuns on the Run, TV: Blackadder, The Comic Strip Presents, Cracker: To Be A Somebody, Kevin Turvey: The Man Behind the Green Door

M: Judi Dench

GoldenEye, A Handful of Dust, Macbeth, Mrs Brown, A Room with a View, Shakespeare in Love, Tea with Mussolini, Tomorrow Never Dies

The World Is Not Enough is the 19th official James Bond film to hit the big screen and the third to feature Pierce Brosnan as the superspy.

This time around Bond initially has to retrieve a large sum of money from Spain which is owned by Sir Robert King (David Calder), with an escape bid that involves abseiling down the side of the building. As if that wasn't enough of an impressive opener, the story moves back to London's Bond HQ where King is as rich and as happy as a..er, King, when he opens the briefcase. Alas, thanks to a booby trap of very clever proportions, the money explodes and takes him with it.

Being both a personal friend of Bond and M (Judi Dench), things step up a gear and Bond is assigned to protect King's daughter Elektra (Sophie Marceau), who inherits her father's oil company and its continuing pipeline construction programme across a number of countries and is thought to be in grave danger from a madman called Renard (Robert Carlyle).

Due to an incident before this film takes place, Renard took a bullet in the head from Valentin Zukovsky (Robbie Coltrane). It didn't kill him but it will eventually as not even the surgeons could remove it and it continues to bury into his brain and reach the core. Until then, it affects his senses to the point where he can no longer feel pain. Every day he will grow stronger until he finally "bites the bullet". Until then, he plans world domination by threatening it with a big nuclear bomb (well, the old ideas are the best).

Bond uncovers a conspiracy that links Renard and Elektra, finding that she's not the sweet seductress he thought she was, but something far less savoury and he hooks up with the good Bond girl, bomb disposal expert, Dr. Christmas Jones (Denise Richards).

To divulge more would spoil the plot and then there wouldn't be much point in watching the film, but suffice to say that there are plenty of stunts including a speedboat shoot-out by the side of the £768 million white elephant (aka The Millennium Dome) which pitches Bond up against the "Cigar Girl" (Maria Grazia Cucinotta), an underground explosion of epic proportions after Renard escapes with the bomb (again) and the destruction to end all destructions as Zukovsky's caviar production factory goes into involuntary liquidation.

Dishy Denise...

About the cast, there's a wealth of talent to be found, but how much of it is actually used?

Firstly, Brosnan is on excellent form as Bond. He carries out the action sequences effortlessly and reels off the one-liners as if he was born for it. Coltrane is entertaining as his casino-owning role of Valentin Zukovsky, with a few one-liner quips of his own. Also, Judi Dench finally gets more to do than just spout orders from London, moving abroad for the first time in her character's brief history. Denise Richards also performs fine as a Bond girl. She doesn't appear to have much up top (in her head) as she reads the lines, but she's clearly been working out and ought to be in line for the role of Lara Croft if they ever get round to making the Tomb Raider movie.

Now what's bad about the cast?

There's no really effective bad-guy. Robert Carlyle doesn't appear until 50 minutes into the film and even then doesn't get to shine as you'd expect. His finest hour, for me, was as the racist football hooligan in Cracker: To Be A Somebody, but he is so underused here. I was also hoping for a tense confrontation to be worked in opposing him against Robbie Coltrane, thus mirroring the same we saw in that show, but they never meet on camera. Sophie Marceau looks very good - and one of her bedroom scenes had to be shot 16 times to avoid a nipple coming into view - but despite her much-lengthier appearance over Carlyle, she comes across more as a cold-hearted bitch, than a conscience-free murderer.

Other actors make their presence felt, but only briefly. Gold-toothed pop star Goldie is Zukovsky's assistant Bull, a henchman used for decorative "ugly bloke" purposes than anything else and Serena Scott Thomas appears as Bond's GP, Dr. Molly Warmflash but her hairstyle here really doesn't suit her one bit. Also, Minder's Mr. Chisholm, Patrick Malahide appears in the opening scene as Lachaise, sporting another dodgy foreign accent that makes him sound like he's got a frog in his throat.

The regulars, Miss Moneypenny (Samantha Bond), Tanner (Michael Kitchen) and Robinson (Colin Salmon), turn up to collect their paycheques and 85-year-old Desmond Llewelyn reprises his role of gadget-freak Q, now training his new replacement, R (John Cleese, yet again behaving like Basil Fawlty in whatever he does). When will Q leave though? He isn't prepared to say in this film.

Finally, look out for spot-em-or-miss-em happy camp clamper Ray, from BBC1's docusoap The Clampers, appearing before the opening credits and The Sun's Bizarre editor, Dominic Mohan, in the casino. When watching the film, I saw the former but missed the latter, despite having already seen his appearance mentioned and picture in The Sun.

Dishy Denise...

Overall, this is an average Bond film, but then an average Bond film can be a lot better than most other's best efforts. It'll certainly keep you entertained for its duration the first time you watch it, but it's not one you'll want to go back to time and again like some of his other 18 adventures.

"The World Is Not Enough", but two hours of this film certainly is...

How Dom rates the Brosnan Bond's :

Tomorrow Never Dies

The World Is Not Enough

Visit the Official James Bond: The World Is Not Enough website.

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 1999.

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