The World Is Not Enough DVD

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Dom Robinson reviews


Special EditionDistributed by

MGM

    Cover

  • Cert:
  • Cat.no: 15767 DVD
  • Running time: 123 minutes
  • Year: 1999
  • Pressing: 2000
  • Region(s): 2 (UK PAL)
  • Chapters: 32 plus extras
  • Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
  • Languages: English
  • Subtitles: English (and hard of hearing)
  • Widescreen: 2.35:1
  • 16:9-enhanced: Yes
  • Macrovision: No
  • Disc Format: DVD 9
  • Price: £19.99
  • Extras : Scene index, Booklet, Documentaries: “The Making of TheWorld Is Not Enough”, “Bond Cocktail” & “Bond Down River”, Featurette: TheSecrets of 007, Music Video, Original Theatrical Trailer, Playstation GameTrailer, Tribute to Desmond Llewelyn, Animated Main Menu, 2 AudioCommentary tracks

    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 (Dante’s Peak, 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, The World Is Not Enough)
    Elektra: Sophie Marceau (Anna Karenina, Beyond the Clouds, Braveheart, D’Artagnan’s Daughter, The World Is Not Enough)
    Renard: Robert Carlyle (Carla’s Song, Face, The Full Monty, Plunkett and Macleane, Priest, Riff Raff, Trainspotting, The World Is Not Enough, 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, The World Is Not Enough)
    Valentin Zukovsky: Robbie Coltrane (The Adventures of Huck Finn, Alice in Wonderland (1999), GoldenEye, Message in a Bottle, Mona Lisa, Nuns on the Run, The World Is Not Enough, 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)

The World Is Not Enoughis the 19th official James Bond film to hit the big screen and the third to featurePierce Brosnan as the superspy.

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

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

Due to an incident before this film takes place, Renard took a bullet in the head fromValentin Zukovsky (Robbie Coltrane). It didn’t kill him but it will eventuallyas not even the surgeons could remove it and it continues to bury into his brain and reachthe 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 plansworld domination by threatening it with a big nuclear bomb (well, the old ideas are thebest).

Bond uncovers a conspiracy that links Renard and Elektra, finding that she’s not thesweet seductress he thought she was, but something far less savoury and he hooks upwith 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 thefilm, but suffice to say that there are plenty of stunts including a speedboat shoot-outby the side of the £768 million white elephant (aka The Millennium Dome) which pitchesBond up against the “Cigar Girl” (Maria Grazia Cucinotta), an underground explosionof epic proportions after Renard escapes with the bomb (again) and the destruction to endall 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 effortlesslyand reels off the one-liners as if he was born for it. Coltrane is entertaining as hiscasino-owning role of Valentin Zukovsky, with a few one-liner quips of his own. Also, JudiDench finally gets more to do than just spout orders from London, moving abroad for the firsttime 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’sclearly been working out and should have been in in line for the role of LaraCroft when they make the Tomb Raider movie, although that rolehas now been taken byHackersactress – and new wife to Billy Bob Thornton – Angelina Jolie,the daughter of Jon Voight.

Now what’s bad about the cast?

There’s no really effective bad-guy. Robert Carlyle doesn’t appear until 50 minutes intothe film and even then doesn’t get to shine as you’d expect. His finest hour, for me, was asthe racist football hooligan in Cracker: To Be A Somebody, but he is so underusedhere. I was also hoping for a tense confrontation to be worked in opposing him againstRobbie Coltrane, thus mirroring the same we saw in that show, but they never meet oncamera. Sophie Marceau looks very good – and one of her bedroom scenes had to be shot16 times to avoid a nipple coming into view – but despite her much-lengthier appearance overCarlyle, 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 Goldieis Zukovsky’s assistant Bull, a henchman used for decorative “ugly bloke” purposes thananything else and Serena Scott Thomas appears as Bond’s GP, Dr. Molly Warmflashbut 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 dodgyforeign 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-oldDesmond Llewelyn reprises his role of gadget-freak Q, now training his newreplacement, R (John Cleese, yet again behaving like Basil Fawlty in whatever hedoes).

When I wrote myThe World is Not Enough: Cinema reviewin November last year, I asked the question… “When will Q leave though?He isn’t prepared to say in this film.”

Sadly, the question was answered just before the New Year as the actor waskilled in a road accident when his car crashed. I’m pleased to report thatthis disc features a tribute to the man.

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

Dishy Denise...

The film was shot in 2.35:1 Panavision and that has been faithfully representedhere. It’s also an anamorphic print, to take full-height advantage of awidescreen TV screen and the average bitrate is 5.8Mb/s, occasionallypeaking above 8Mb/s.

However, not everything in the garden is lovely as the print is rather on thedark side with an element of grain in there, which does spoil the enjoyment somewhat.

The sound doesn’t disappoint though. Presented in Dolby Digital 5.1,dialogue is crystal clear and action scenes and explosions will leave theneighbours deaf for weeks.

Extras : Chapters :The usual 32 chapters for an MGM, which is an excellent amount. If only some other DVDcompanies could take a lesson from this one. Languages & Subtitles :English is the only language on the disc and there are subtitlesfor English (and hard of hearing). And there’s more… :MGM seem to be pulling out all the stops for their Bond collection which hasbegun with the first and last film in the series.

  • “The Making of The World Is Not Enough” (15 mins): Introduced byLeanza Cornett, slight relation to IceCream, a grinning all-Americangal and a fairly-standard ‘making of’ with brief cast interviews withBrosnan, Robert Carlyle, Desmond Llewelyn, Denise Richards, Sophie Marceau and directorApted, that offer nothing objective, just yawn-inducing, pre-scriptedfluff to promote the film and the franchise, mixed in with 16:9-cropped clipsfrom the film. Only Llewelyn‘s comments are interesting because youknow he’ll never be saying any more ever again.
  • Bond Cocktail (23 mins): I thought this would be a 38-yearretrospective on the Bond formula and what keeps the 007 action fires burning,as that’s how it seems to set itself out, but it only doffs a cap to Dr. Noand Goldeneye and concentrates more on this film.
    There are no surpriseshere but more chat from more cast and crew members including Samantha Bond,the current Miss Moneypenny, ‘R’ John Cleese, music composer DavidArnold and Garbage‘s lead singer Shirley Manson. The filmclips included are in their original widescreen ratio this time.
  • Bond Down River (25 mins): Every Bond film has one and HAS to haveone – a pre-credits action opener. Hence, it’s only fitting that it gets anengaging ‘making of’ analysis, right down to the mention of Ray from“The Clampers”. Apted said he wanted to make the Millennium Dome lookheroic – which is only possible by tearing it down and turning it into somethinguseful! This section is narrated by a man with a strong Scottish accent thatsounds familiar, but I can’t place it (and no I’m not trolling and implyingit’s Connery at all! :)It sounds a bit like John Gordon Sinclair, whose last film on DVD wasGregory’s 2 Girls,but it’s not quite there.
  • Music Video: Garbage‘s theme tune, with the same name as thefilm, which made No.11 in November last year.
  • The Secrets of 007 (23 mins): Nine short dialogue-free pieces showinghow certain stunts were performed, with storyboards, such as Bond’s openingjump from a window, Renard’s hologram head, another mention for the boat chase,the ski scene, Bond’s X-ray specs, the explosion at the Nuclear Facility,the destruction of Zukovsky’s caviar factory, the submarine and the deliciousopening credits. Unfortunately, most of the spectacles shown are cropped to4:3 pan-and-scan.
  • A Tribute to Desmond Llewelyn: A 3-minute video montage of thelate actor who starred in 17 of the first 19 official Bond films, with allclips cropped to 4:3 pan-and-scan, apart from some from the latest film whichare cropped to 16:9.
  • Theatrical Trailer (2 mins): in 2.35:1 anamorphic, the originalwidescreen ratio. The quality actually looks better here than in the film itself.
  • The World Is Not Enough: Playstation Game Trailer (34 seconds): Brief and flashy.
  • 2 Audio commentary tracks: One from director Michael Aptedon his own and a second with production designer Peter Lamont, secondunit director Vic Armstrong and music composer David Arnold.
  • Booklet: The package is nicely rounded off with a lavish 8-pagebooklet containing plenty of pictures and info about the film, the series andthe characters. It also gives a brief, pictured, explanation as to whywidescreen is best.

Menu :A classy-looking animated and scored main menu is impressive and it explosivelyleads to the sub-menus which are static and silent. The initial screen offers you thechoice to start the film, select a scene, choose a language or watch the extras.When you select ‘play movie’ Bond appears and gives his trademark fired shotfollowed by the blood flowing down.

Also, note that if you linger on any of the sub-menus too long, a 10-secondcountdown timer begins then takes you back to the main menu. A nice touch, butI wish there was an option to stop it doing that in case you’re watching lateat night and have to nip to the fridge to grab another cold one without tryingto wake the rest of the house up…

film picOverall, this is an average Bond film, but then an average Bond film can be a lotbetter than most other’s best efforts. It’ll certainly keep you entertained for itsduration the first time you watch it, but it’s not one you’ll want to go back to timeand again like some of his other 18 adventures. Also, the picture problemneeds addressing.

However, I defy anyone to have any beef with the disc’s sonic or supplementalproperties.

“The World Is Not Enough”, but two hours of this film certainly is…

How Dom rates the Brosnan Bond’s :

    GoldenEye: 10/10
    Tomorrow Never Dies: 7/10
    The World Is Not Enough: 6/10

FILM CONTENT
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS


OVERALL
Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2000.

Visit theOfficial James Bond: The World Is Not Enough website.

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