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The world is not enough indeed. The latest James Bond flick falls as flat as Tomorrow Never Dies, with decent action sequences and bad soap opera acting. Here, 007 (Pierce Brosnan, The Thomas Crown Affair) tries to quell – get this – a terrorist with a nuclear warhead. Yawn - now there's something we haven't seen before.
The nineteenth film in the longest-running series in the history of cinema kicks off with the familiar JB opening and music before settling in Bilboa, Spain, where Bond is calmly dealing with a crooked Swiss banker. Of course, the situation comes to a head, and Bond is involved with an impressive boat chase that not only runs through the streets of London, but wraps up on a hot-air balloon before launching into the sexy opening credits and new 007 song from Garbage. Why do songs from Bond films always sound the same?
Bond's initial assignment is to recover money stolen from a Sir Robert King, which leads him to become involved with King's leggy daughter Elektra (Sophie Marceau, Lost & Found). Elektra is currently building a huge oil pipeline in her native Azerbaijan, and Bond believes that her life may be threatened by a devious terrorist named Renard (Robert Carlyle, Plunkett & Macleane). Renard, previously a target of MI6, has a bullet lodged in his medulla oblongotta, which renders him unable to feel pain.
As goofy as that sounds, Bond also gets involved with a buxom nuclear physicist named Christmas Jones (Denise Richards, Drop Dead Gorgeous, in a bit of awful casting). But wait until the point in the movie where they say that Elektra is only twenty-one. If she is twenty-one, then Dr. Jones must be around thirteen. On the plus side – other than getting to watch two attractive women try to act – there are two fantastic one-liners about Christmas' name at the end of the film. I was getting nervous that the screenwriters dubbed her `Christmas' and forgot to make fun of the name. Jones is Bond's third lay of the film, after Elektra and the MI6 doctor Molly Warmflesh, whom 007 poles in order to regain his active duty status. He probably just missed a fourth in Il Postino's Maria Grazia Cucinotta, but she escaped his sexual grasp in the film's opening.
The script is another example of a bad action film with too many writers. Sure, all the bad double-entendres and one-liners are still there, but what was the deal with John Cleese (The Out-of-Towners) playing the successor to Q (Desmond Llewelyn)? You almost feel sorry for people as talented as Robby Coltrane (Message in a Bottle), who again plays Valentin Dimitreveych Zukovsky, and Dame Judi Dench, who reprises her role as M in a healthy supporting role with more screen time than her Oscar-winning turn as Queen Elizabeth in Shakespeare in Love. And as soon as you see Denise Richards in a white tank top, you know that chilly water will figure into the film at some point.
Directed by Michael Apted (Extreme Measures), Enough was filmed by Adrian Biddle (The Butcher Boy) on location in several European countries. The action scenes are barely enough to keep viewers interested (aside from the early boat chase) and the final fight between Bond and Renard is completely anti-climactic. You would expect Bond in a battle against a guy that can't feel pain to be a lot more interesting. But, then again, you would expect the whole film to be a lot more interesting. I've had Enough.
2:08 - PG-13 for intense sequences of action violence, some sexuality and innuendo
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