The World is Not Enough (1999)
Directed by Michael Apted
Written by Neal Purvis & Robert Wade

Everybody knows how the film world loves their sequels. If anyone at all goes to see a film, and there is even a remote chance that a sequel is feasible, consider it made. Actually, that's not even necessary anymore. The movie can be marginal, and then half the stars can refuse to come back, and still they'll make a sequel. Major League was an OK movie, but basically only if you like baseball and/or Bob Eucker, and they milked two sequels of rapidly declining quality out of that. By the third installment, I think there might have been three people from the original left around, the ones that couldn't get any other work.

But there are few film franchises that consistently elevate themselves enough to surpass being considered merely a series of "sequels." The James Bond franchise was on its deathbed at the beginning of the 90s, with ultra-boring Timothy Dalton having nearly killed it with his dry and humorless portrayals of 007. Pierce Brosnan came along and breathed new life into the series, starring in two of the best and most successful films in the series, Goldeneye and Tomorrow Never Dies. He proved that he had the talent, good looks, and the penchant for comedy that the role required. Would he run his winning streak to three?

Not hardly. The World Is Not Enough is an overblown, underwritten fiasco. The plot is a mess, and is pretty nonsensical even for a James Bond flick. Something to do with oil pipelines and nuclear terrorism perpetrated by stealing a nuclear submarine and overloading its core with weapons grade plutonium to cause a catastrophic meltdown, rendering a large portion of the world uninhabitable. Or something.

The Bond super-villains and super-babes are here, of course. The super-villain is Renard, played by Robert "The Full Monty" Carlyle. At some point in the past, he was apparently shot in the head by MI6 agents, yet managed to survive. However, the bullet has damaged his brain in such a way that he is slowly losing the use of all his senses; in fact, his sense of touch is already gone, rendering him impervious to pain.

You'd think this would give the screenwriters some great story ideas, but you'd be as wrong as you were that time you tried to feel up Suzie Brecker on the 8th grade field trip. Instead of having him walk through a raging inferno while stalking Bond, or severing a limb to escape from Bond, all we get is him punching a hole through a wooden chest. Snore.

The Bond babes in this case are French hottie Sophie "Braveheart" Marceau, and Denise "Wild Thing" Richards.(Wait, the cast is shaping up to sound like a bunch of professional wrestlers.) Marceau is Elektra King, the daughter of a wealthy oil tycoon. The tycoon, a close friend of "M," gets blown up at the beginning of the movie by a booby-trapped pile of money while at MI6 headquarters.

Apparently, Elektra was kidnapped by Renard while a teenager and held hostage for a very long time. At first she pretends to want to get back at him, but after the requisite porking by 007 in a obvious plot twist, she turns on "M" and Bond, since she feels that they abandoned her, and she has fallen in love with Renard. Richard plays (get this) a nuclear scientist named Christmas Jones.

I don't need to say much about her except that she can't act, and at one point appears in a tight dress that is so utterly unbecoming that I'm amazed that we haven't heard that the wardrobe director for the film was found face down in a Los Angeles canal. I've never seen a worse boob job get more screen time than Richards', not even in the 600 hours of satellite porno I took in last month.

Brosnan is perfectly fine as 007, but some of the lines he's forced to deliver are simply awful. The worst has to be the one he delivers to *shudder* Christmas after they've nearly been blown up by an bomb in a pipeline, she asks him what his relationship with Elektra is. "We're strictly plutonic," replies Bond. Oy vey.

The rest of the cast is basically window dressing. Desmond Llewelyn, who has outlasted four other Bonds, is back again as "Q." This might be the last time we see him, though, as we're introduced to "R," played gleefully (though briefly) by John Cleese. Judi Dench is back again as "M," and while she gets more of a role that she's had in the previous two films, she still isn't used all that much. Robbie Coltrane has a basically pointless role as Zukovsky, a Russian caviar merchant. The role of Moneypenny this time is played by Samantha Bond, unknown to me, but in my opinion, sexier than either Sophie Marceau or Denise Richards.

I know that after the big box office this one did, there will surely be another, but I certainly hope they try a hell of a lot harder. The plot in this was ridiculous at best, and they played so fast and loose with the properties of radioactivity that suspending disbelief became virtually impossible. The two parts of the movie I did enjoy without qualification were the opening and closing credits. The opening credits are backed by Garbage doing "The World Is Not Enough," the best Bond theme since "A View To A Kill."

Personally, I'd much rather have seen Shirley Manson in this movie than Denise Richards. Shirley has a speaking voice I could listen to for days on end, since she could easily make words like "plutonium" and "radiation sickness" sound maddeningly sexy.

As for the closing credits, well, they meant the movie was over.

Review by ICE