The World Is Not Enough

Michael Apted | UK/USA | 1999 | 128 mins

It's James Bond. It's fun. You know the rest... Yes in that delightfully predictable manner, here comes another Bond film. Bond films tend to be just familiar enough, without being too similar that you have seen it all before. Take the latest. It features Pierce Brosnan going around the world one more time as the suave, oft spoofed, super spy, this time looking after trillionaire, terrorist-threatened, oil magnate Elektra King (Braveheart's Sophie Marceau).

All Bond plots weave around stunts and women. Bond films have always had a number of ‘action scenes' (stunts to you or me): indeed, Dr No is considered the first ever Action Movie. As the years progressed, the stunts got bigger and louder, with the filmmakers having to try and think up new things to do (like GoldenEye's bungee jump off a dam) or do the things they've done before but with a new twist. So this time, there's the Bond speciality, a damn good ski chase, an escape from a nuclear bunker, and a leap off a seven storey building. The pre-credits sequence has also transformed over the years. From Russia With Love's was a short, moody stalk round a maze, a far cry from the condensed Stephen Seagal movies that opened the later films, including this one's fantastic white knuckle boat ride along the Thames to the Millennium Dome. Still, the terrible pay-off lines and puns are still around, and this time they are real groaners.

As for women, the multiple bed hopping antics of pre-1990s Bond had gone, only to return along with the strong female characters of the sixties Bonds. Early and later Bond women including Elektra and Christmas Jones (the wet-T-shirted Denise Richards) are strong, independent types, who know when to ask for help. This contrasts strongly with the majority of the women in the Roger Moore films, whose only purpose in life appeared to be to scream ‘Help, James!' or discard their knickers.

One new development is that this is the first time Scotland appears in a Bond film as Scotland, with Eileen Donan castle making a quick appearance as M's Scottish base (The West Coast doubled as Turkey in From Russia With Love). Other Scottish input, providing direct and indirect reference to previous films, are the return of Robbie Coltrane's Russian gangster Zukovsky from GoldenEye and Robert Carlyle looking decidedly dodgy as the terrorist Renard.

The Bond films really are comfortably familiar. Sit back and enjoy.

(Footnote: This is not the first time that Scotland appears as Scotland: James Bond visits Faslane in The Spy Who Loved Me, with two brief exterior shots. Apologies for the error. Scott Keir.)

Review by Scott M Keir
Taken from EUFS programme spring 2000