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Dom Robinson reviews
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 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.
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 ought to be in line for the role of Lara Croft if they everget 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 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 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’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.
Overall, 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.
“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
Visit theOfficial James Bond: The World Is Not Enough website.
Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 1999.
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.