Cinema Uprising By Steve Evans
Cinema Uprising Take an aisle seat with the most dangerous film critic in America
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The World is Not Enough Dir: Michael Apted. Starring Pierce Brosnan, Sophie Marceau, Robert Carlyle, Denise Richards, Robbie Coltrane and Judi Dench.
The pitch: James Bond races around the globe to stop a brain-damaged terrorist from disrupting the world's oil supply.
Secret Agent 007, now in his 19th official outing, can still act suave, caressing women, guns and cocktails with equal ease. But the series itself is looking long in the tooth and short on ideas.
After an old friend is killed in a bombing inside MI6 headquarters, Bond resolves to protect the man's beautiful but emotionally scarred daughter Elektra (Marceau, who can plop her feet on our coffee table any time). The bewitching Elektra was once kidnapped by Bosnian terrorist Carlyle, who still carries a bullet in his head from an attempted assassination. Although he survived the hit, the bullet has caused irreparable neurological damage. Carlyle can no longer feel pain. Or pleasure. The injury is slowly killing him. Too bad this idea never develops into a big payoff at the climax. Like most of the action in this busy film, the issue of brain damage is introduced and quickly forgotten as Carlyle obsesses on blowing up an oil pipeline in the Caspian Sea (think fast, film fans: how many times has the climax of a Bond movie hinged on the threat of a thermonuclear device?).
Bond travels by jet ski and snow ski, by boat, rocket-equipped BMW and submarine. Curiously, though, for all his globe-trotting, we never see the super spy climb aboard or disembark from a plane (Perhaps the ancient Q and his new sidekick -- John Clesse, in an amusing cameo -- have developed a secret teleportation device so Bond can get around).
Brosnan, reprising the role for the third time, seems to relish his assignment. His confidence and wry manner are well-suited to the part, which demands a seriousness that Roger Moore could never muster and a levity that eluded Timothy Dalton in his two-picture incarnation as Bond. Brosnan has shrugged off the Remington Steel albatross and settled for a style somewhere between Moore and Dalton. Still, nobody kicked super-villain ass, defused nuclear bombs, stroked babes, smoked cigarettes, sipped martinis, raced Aston Martins, knew more about fine wine, gave Q a hard time or muttered more amusing quips than Sean Connery, his own bad self. And if Connery wouldn't look absurd trying to hold his toupee in place – or face serious risk of cardiac thrombosis (he turned 69 in August) – we'd say bring him back, put a Walther PPK in his shoulder holster and let's rock.
If this sounds like carping, then the gentle readers of Cinema Uprising should know that we have seen every Bond film, most of them multiple times. We even enjoy Casino Royale (1967), the much-maligned spoof that purists don 't count as a legitimate Bond film, although in many ways it is better than most of the movies starring Roger Moore (as Bond, or anyone else, for that matter). So we're predisposed toward this Bond character. We know the formula. And Brosnan is the best actor to get behind the role since Connery vowed `nevermore.'
But the goons behind the camera are so focused on pyrotechnics, good as they are, and gee-whiz gadgets, that no one bothered with the script. We're not talking about believable plots. Hell, if that was a prerequisite, there wouldn't be any Bond films.
The problem with The World is Not Enough is the characters have nothing intelligent to say. The new Bond girl, Christmas Jones (Richards), is a case in point. First off, the best Bond girls have ridiculously suggestive and sexist names like Pussy Galore (Goldfinger), or Holly Goodhead (Man with the Golden Gun), not stupid monikers like Christmas Jones, which is just a setup for the worst closing line in any of the Bond movies. Richards plays a nuclear bimbo-scientist, with an emphasis on the bimbo. Talk about unbelievable: If this doe-eyed valley girl knows anything about nuclear physics, then we'll eat plutonium. Richards hit her stride in Wild Things (1998), a gleefully sleazy picture that still shows up on cable TV at 2 a.m. Such roles illustrate the breadth of her talent, which doesn't stand up to the stress of dialogue or facial expression.
Bond's tricked-out BMW turns in a better performance. Worse, he shows more emotion for the car when it is destroyed than he does for Ms. Richards – or the remarkable Ms. Marceau – who is a wild and an untamed thing, yet sadly impervious to Bond's particular method of rehabilitation.
Even the fine Shakespearean actress Judi Dench, starring here as a matronly M, is forced to declare obvious plot points that we can see for ourselves. The portly Coltrane fares better, reprising his role from Goldeneye (1995) as a Russian gangster. He provides equal parts cynicism and comic relief.
The World is Not Enough just isn't enough to sate the legions of Bond fans who must wait another two years for the next installment. Our advice is to check out the solid first hour, then bail out for a debriefing over vodka martinis and Beluga caviar served on toast points. Thus primed, the discriminating viewer will head for the home theater and a nostalgic, late-night viewing of the Bond classic, From Russia with Love (1963) on video. As the ads once exclaimed: Sean Connery is James Bond. That's good enough for us.
Rated PG-13 for cartoonish violence and insipid sexual double-entendres.
Cinema Uprising copyright C 1999 by Stephen B. Evans. All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means, without the prior, written permission of the author. The author may be contacted at: evans@cstone.net
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