THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
CAPSULE: Pierce Brosnan's third outing as
James Bond, while less flamboyant than his previous
two, is the best spy story of the three. Brosnan
is almost to the point where one can think of him
as Bond. This is a low-key outing, but a story
with some ambiguity and intelligence of a higher
level than one usually finds in a Bond film.
Michael Apted is an odd choice for director, but he
does fine. Rating: 6 (0 to 10), high +1 (-4 to +4)
There is a spectrum of styles for the plots of Bond films. On one hand you can Style I in which you have comic book super-villains who are trying literally to destroy the whole world; you can have women with dirty-joke names (e.g., Pussy Galore); you can have clues that fall into Bond's lap by coincidences or by villain over-confidence, so it looks like Bond always knows what he is doing; Bond always has just the right gizmo to get out of a nasty situation; Bond never gets injured or always heals in seconds; and the villain destroyed when Bond pulls one conveniently located switch. DR. NO started this trend and it is not surprising that it seems childish. Ian Fleming actually wrote the plot of DR. NO first for Captain Jamaica his planned childrens television show. When Captain Jamaica did not sell he rewrote the story as a supposedly adult spy novel in his then fledgling James Bond series.
On the other hand you can have Style II spy story. That puts Bond into the shadowy half-world of international espionage where he wants to get a microfilm that tells with whom Iraq is making secret treaties; Bond does not know who his friends are and who his enemies are; when a bullet hits his arm it is out of action for the rest of the story; Bond has to think very fast frequently; and occasionally Bond makes very wrong decisions. FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE was an effort to move in that direction, though John LeCarre or Len Deighton writes more in that style. There are people who just love the Style I Bond films and they are an easy formula to write. I prefer the latter and subjectively placing a Bond film on this spectrum is how I judge if it is a good film or not. THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH has been released with much less hype than most Bond films, and while it is still closer to the unrealistic style of story, it still is more realistic than most Bond films.
In Spain James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) is picking up a stash of money recovered from a mission that killed an MI6 agent. He is betrayed and nearly killed, though his life is saved by the intervention of a mysterious sniper. Bond returns the money to its industrialist owner only to find out the money was booby-trapped to explode and kill its rightful owner. Explode it does rather spectacularly giving rise to an impressive boat chase. The money had been ransom for the industrialist's daughter Elektra (Sophie Marceau). Bond realizes that the means to kill the industrialist required not only the money and an assassin a short distance away to trigger it, it also required that the industrialist be wearing a special doctored lapel pin. This implies that the victim must have been betrayed from within his own organization. Bond immediately realizes that anyone who would use such an arcane, inconvenient, and telltale mechanism to try to kill someone and still get it to work must be impressive indeed. That implies that his next victim might be Elektra who slipped through the assassins fingers once already. Elektra is continuing her father's project to build an oil pipeline across Western Asia. Bond discovers the terrorist who kidnapped her is an ex-KGB agent whom a bullet in the brain has left unable to feel pain This makes the assassin, Renard stronger every day. Bond dons a cover as a businessman and goes in to protect Electra only to have her see through his cover in seconds. She is a strong-willed woman and highly capable woman with no intention of cooperating with Bond. But he still determines to protect her.
This film makes several concessions to realism previous Brosnan Bond films would not. Bond gets hurt several times in this film and at least for a short time it slows him down. He also makes mistakes trusting the wrong people. Bond deduces that the briefcase of money is a trap, but it is not soon enough to prevent the murder plan from going through. Hence Bond is more fallible than in previous films. The villain's plan is more flamboyant than simply embarrassing the British Secret Service and killing Bond as it was in FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, but the plotter and the plot are far less exaggerated than Hugo Drax and his plan in MOONRAKER. This also is an improvement. And more than in recent films it takes Bond a while to sort out good guys from bad guys. The ending is more tense than spectacular. These criteria do not guarantee a good Bond film, but certainly it is more intelligent than Bond films have been of late.
Traditionally Michael Apted's documentaries have been much better than his fiction films. But here his touch does nothing but good for the Bond series. Either Pierce Brosnan is starting to get the hang of being Bond or I am just starting to think of him that way, but he seems more natural than he has in the past. Robert Carlyle as the assassin Renard is acceptable in a role very different from his in THE FULL MONTY or TRAINSPOTTING. He did not need the bullet in the head gimmick to be a good villain. Sophie Marceau and Denise Richards are acceptable in their roles. Some critics have found it unrealistic to have Denise Richards with shorts and bare midriff as a nuclear scientist disarming warheads. To me that just means the critics are more out of touch with the world than are the filmmakers. That job would probably be taken by someone just out of graduate school and Richards is reasonable in the part. Less reasonable is John Cleese as R, the buffoon successor to Q. Casting Cleese is a step in the wrong direction. The series already has plenty of chuckles and needs more credibility.
Usually the best part of a Bond film is the artistic opening credit sequence which used to be done by Maurice Binder. The visuals in this one are on the theme of oil and seeing women in the crude in the nude has all the taste of women mud-wrestling. Most Bond films take place in exotic settings which serve as product placement for tourist destinations. Even Istanbul seems unromantic in this film and Azerbaijan is not vying very hard for tourist dollars.
Overall this may not be the most memorable entry in the series, but it is the best in recent years. I give it a 6 on the 0 to 10 scale and a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Just so the reader can know what my values are in Bond films I
would rate the Bond film best to worst as:
1. FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE
2. ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE
3. THUNDERBALL
4. DR. NO
5. LICENSE TO KILL
6. GOLDFINGER
7. FOR YOUR EYES ONLY
8. THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH
9. YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE
10. THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS
11. THE SPY WHO LOVED ME
12. OCTOPUSSY
13. TOMORROW NEVER DIES
14. GOLDENEYE
15. DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER
16. THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN
17. A VIEW TO A KILL
18. MOONRAKER
19. LIVE AND LET DIE
MINOR SPOILERS... MINOR SPOILERS... MINOR SPOILERS... MINOR SPOILERS...
THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH uses a lot of the trademark Bond touches. Somehow the gun-sight opening at the beginning of a new Bond film still always packs a bit of a thrill. In this film Bond is once again a womanizer, which probably was some of the fun of the earliest Bonds. Traditions I could do without include the extended skiing sequences and the tiresome running gag that Bond is so often caught having sex in the final scene. Ideas in this one that seem foolish include a pair of special glasses whose power seems ridiculous. I am not an expert but it would take some convincing for me to believe the loss of one source of oil would so badly affect Britain. They do have sources in a lot of other places, including the North Sea. It would take even more convincing that anyone would want to hold a half-grapefruit-sized hemisphere of weapons-grade plutonium in their bare hand.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
Copyright 1999 Mark R. Leeper
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