Since I've branded The Spy Who Loved Me as being the dead center of the Bond movie bell curve, it necessarily follows that we've now arrived at the films that constitute superior, if not yet classic, Bond fare. It struck me upon glancing at the master list of films that this next burst of reviews are of films that can be considered to be in the nature of not quite successful experiments. These films mark the producer's attempts at moving away from the Bond movie conventions in some way. And even if these moves were not quite successful enough to be repeated, at least the attempt to do something unique resulted in films that are above the norm in terms of memorability. The current object of dissection in particular centers around an idea so audacious that Fleming himself would never have gotten near it. Even if the film ultimately disappoints on several dimensions, I still find its unique plot conceit to be fascinating enough to recommend this film on that basis alone. Before we start discussing what is Brosnan's best movie by a wide margin, however, I want to state up front that in order to do it justice I will have to employ some major spoilers ahead. To even describe why I'm so fond of it in the first place, I will have to give the whole game away below. Thus if you are reading this and for some reason still haven't seen The World Is Not Enough, I suggest you give it a look before continuing on here.
Once again a Brosnan film means the absence of any Fleming material. The title of the film derives from a visit by Bond to the British College of Heralds that took place during the film On Her Majesty's Secret Service. During that visit Bond was shown his family's coat of arms and his family motto - orbis non sufficit - or in rough translation - the world is not enough. This film earns even more points due to the fact that this will not be the only reference made to that earlier feature. Before launching into the plot, I should admit that I've seen the film several times and I'm still not quite clear as to the reasons for many things that take place. Fortunately not only is the film not hurt by the lack of complete explanations, in some ways the lack of simple answers adds depth to the story. The plot in some ways resembles that of a hardboiled detective novel which is itself a fictional genre in which detailed explanations of events are not a priority. The film begins with Bond visiting a shifty Swiss banker in Spain (?) to recover the money of British industrialist Sir Robert King. How things came to this pass is one of the things never made clear by the film, but we learn that King was trying to buy a report that was stolen from an MI-6 agent. Who the agent was, why King really wanted the report, and how the Swiss banker got in the middle of the transactions are among the questions never answered by the film. Yet even at this early juncture we sense something isn't kosher about the whole set-up when we learn that "M" and King are old college friends. There are questions already as to whether "M" is using the secret service to run errands for personal friends or whether King is throwing money around in an effort to save "M" from the consequences of a botched MI-6 operation. In any case, King's money has been dipped in explosive urea and when he approaches it, the money detonates and kills him.
After a few straining and heroic leaps of logic, Bond ties the killing of King to a botched kidnapping of his daughter. King's daughter Elektra was kidnapped by a group lead by terrorist Renard, and "M" advised King not to pay the ransom. Elektra managed to escape the kidnappers herself, and "M", again grossly abusing her authority, sent a double-oh agent to assassinate Renard. The agent put a bullet in Renard's head, but the bullet failed to kill him. The conclusion reached by Bond and "M" is that the killing of King was Renard seeking revenge on those involved in the earlier debacle. "M" thinks Elektra King may be next on Renard's list and sends Bond out to bodyguard her. I'll point out that this again involves using government employees for personal reasons and so constitutes another abuse of authority. As the film unspools, the viewer gets a distinct feeling that much of the ensuing mayhem in fact stems from very poor decisions on "M"'s part. Whether this was intended or not is debatable, but it does finally put the filmmakers' overexposure of this secondary character to good use for once. And I'll also point out how "M" expressly orders Bond to keep his hands off Elektra even though she's upbraided him in the past for his sexism and misogyny. Given "M"'s concerns about Elektra's chasteness during the crisis, her choice of Bond as bodyguard is another instance of very poor judgment.
Bond trails Elektra to some reasonably scenic part of the former Soviet Union where she is currently engaged in trying to complete the building of an oil pipeline begun by her father. Elektra poo-poos the need for a bodyguard, but Bond insists on keeping close to her. A welcome nod to Bond's past takes place here when Elektra, alluding to the loss of her father, asks Bond if he's ever lost a loved one. Bond still remains touchy on this point and immediately changes the subject. Soon after Bond's arrival, however, an apparent attempt is made on either Elektra's or Bond's life while they're both out skiing. Afterwards Elektra quite forcefully comes on to Bond. He initially resists but, after doing some snooping into the assassination attempt, he finally weakens. After succumbing to Elektra's charms, Bond's snooping leads to his finding a body in the trunk of the car driven by Elektra's head of security, Davidov. Bond hides in the trunk and when Davidov opens it pretty much shoots him down in cold blood after kicking him in the head! It’s a good thing for Bond that guy was actually guilty of something, because that was a textbook example of shooting first and asking questions later. In any event, Bond impersonates Davidov and goes off to what was an arranged meeting between Davidov and Renard at a Russian nuclear weapons facility. Bond finds Renard involved in the theft of a nuclear weapon (again with the nuclear weapons!) but fails to stop him from purloining the device.
One of the more interesting things about this film is how often it causes one to wonder if its more intriguing aspects were intended by the filmmakers or purely serendipitous. Note for example here how Bond has been disobeying orders since "M" put him on the case. He's expressly disobeyed "M"'s order not to get intimate with Elektra at this point. Even if we were to take this as being in the nature of these films, however, he has also flown half-way across Russia to learn what Davidov was up to. Frankly if he had leaned on the guy for answers instead of summarily executing him, he may have been able to learn about Davidov's scheme without abandoning the woman he is supposedly protecting. Part of the reason he failed in eliminating Renard at the weapons facility stems from Renard's claim that the unprotected Elektra will be killed on Renard's orders if he can't phone to prevent it. In addition Bond is caught out on abandoning his job when Elektra calls "M" herself to tell her of Bond's disappearance and ask "M" herself to come down in person. Even though "M" not too long after this calls Bond her best agent, his performance up until now honestly makes us wonder whether or not he was the worst choice for the current assignment. In addition to derelicting his duty, Bond makes himself look even worse by breaking into Elektra's home to badger and threaten her. While at the weapons facility, Bond heard Renard use a phrase used by Elektra while she and Bond were in bed together. The phrase, however, certainly isn't so baroque or unusual that it couldn't be coincidental that both Renard and Elektra used it. Bond, however, is now convinced that Elektra and Renard are allied in some way and lets loose a stream of psycho-babble about "Stockholm syndromes" as a supposed explanation for this. Elektra, however, slaps Bond down both literally and figuratively and he ends up still suspicious but uncertain.
"M" arrives on the scene but before she has time to read the riot act to Bond for disobeying orders, an apparent attempt is made to destroy Elektra's pipeline with the stolen nuclear device. Bond heads off to disarm the bomb only to find that half of the bomb's plutonium is missing and what's left will not cause a nuclear detonation. Bond decides to let the bomb explode in order to convince the one who planted it that he was killed in the blast. The film is somewhat cavalier on the environmental impact of scattering highly radioactive nuclear material across the Russian countryside. After all isn't this the dreaded "dirty bomb" that the media has been worrying us about so much recently. At least Bond doesn't seem to suffer any immediate harm from the cloud of radioactive dust created by the explosion, though I can't speak for his future fertility at this juncture. After Bond's apparent demise, however, Elektra finally reveals that Bond's suspicions did have some basis in fact by having her henchmen gun down "M"'s guards and take "M" prisoner. Before you think that Elektra's revealed villainy makes my prior comments on Bond's failure to do his job seem like nit-picks, let me point out that it was Bond's abandonment of Elektra that allowed her to talk "M" into coming in person. Later dialogue also implies that Bond's seduction was in itself planned by the villains. Even though its ultimate purpose remains unclear, it's another example of Bond's insubordination playing into the villain's schemes. And as we shall see, even Bond's psychological speculations about Elektra are way off the mark.
It becomes clear that "M"'s abduction has been planned by Elektra and Renard as revenge for her poor advice to Elektra's father and the subsequent attempt to assassinate Renard. The revenge, however, is just a small part of their plans - an attempt to kill too many birds with one stone. Bond learns from the mildly amusing left-over Goldeneye character Zhukovsky that Elektra and Renard have paid a Russian submarine crew to meet with them for purposes of smuggling. In fact, Elektra and Renard plan to hijack the nuclear sub and meltdown its reactor with the nuclear bomb's plutonium. We are told that a nuclear meltdown in Istanbul will contaminate the Bosphorus for decades and leave Elektra's oil pipeline the only one capable of exporting oil to the West. I honestly have my doubts on this score given the fact that the other half of the bomb's plutonium is blowing all over the central Asian Icky-stans to no apparent ill-effect. Before Bond can contact the submarine's crew, however, Elektra and Renard capture him. Zhukovsky comes to the rescue, but winds up shot himself by Elektra. In a very improbable bit he fires a concealed weapon at Bond's restraints rather than at Elektra herself. It's all so that Bond can free himself and hold Elektra at gunpoint himself in order to set up the film's most disturbing moment. Bond threatens to shoot Elektra if she doesn't call Renard in the submarine and order him to desist from causing the meltdown. When she refuses, Bond guns down the unarmed woman in cold blood. Bond's viciousness here is entirely unwarranted given the fact that after shooting her down he still has to board the submarine to stop Renard. She could certainly have been held prisoner while Bond did this. Bond's evident show of remorse after Elektra's death shows vividly that he realizes too late how savage and unnecessary his actions were.
Regrettably after this memorable moment, the movie sputters to its conclusion. Bond boards the submarine and creates havoc of various kinds causing it to sink to the bottom of the Bosphorus. In the clearest instance of deus ex machina in the franchise, Bond kills Renard by reattaching one of the sub's air hoses, pressing a few buttons, and causing a reactor rod to fly into his chest. Not since Scotty bypassed the warp feed circuit to repower the impulse conductor drive has technology been more conveniently deployed to foil evil. With Renard dead, Bond escapes the imploding submarine with a female lead so completely extraneous I've been able to ignore her up until now. In one last act of insubordination, we find that Bond hasn't reported back to headquarters and MI-6 tracks him down by satellite. Whether the Secret Service has had a microchip implanted in his buttock or something remains unclear, but in a very ridiculous Roger Moore type ending Bond is caught on screen in in flagrante with the extraneous female. One totally egregious and smutty quip later, the end credits roll.
The unprecedented and audacious conceit that elevates this film far above Brosnan's other turns in the role may not be clear from my synopsis above. What becomes clear upon watching the film, however, is that the villain of this movie and the female lead are one and the same person. The film argues that the sub meltdown will result in the destruction of all of Elektra King's competitors and make her fantastically wealthy. Note in addition how Elektra here is given the villain's requisite megalomaniacal speech as she explains her scheme to Bond. Plot-wise Renard appears as a mere henchman who helps with her scheme because he is terminally smitten with her. In fact, I can't see how Renard's actions aboard the sub can be construed as anything other than a suicide mission on his part. And to bring what has to be the trickiest role in the series to life the producers found the perfect actress in Sophie Marceau. Every time I see the film I like her performance more. The first half of the picture sees her managing to put herself in the first rank of Bond female leads. While her seduction of Bond seems to be part of her plan, her directness in approaching him never seems anything other than appealingly flirtatious with no hint of the conniving or predatory. She's so ravishing that, despite my lambasting of Bond for disobeying orders, its inconceivable that Bond could resist her for long. I also find it fascinating how sympathy for her far outruns the point at which suspicions about her arise. Bond seems to look an ass time and time again next to her. While the two are in bed early on, for instance, Bond boorishly quizzes her about how she escaped from Renard. Since Bond knows that this involved her allowing a kidnapper to have his way with her, Bond seems pretty tasteless to say the least. Later when Bond breaks into her home and starts making accusations, we feel even more sympathetic towards her. Bond strutting around spouting pseudo-Freudian nonsense and snapping his fingers in her face makes him look like a complete d#ck. Even if she's the eventual villain, he deserved the smack she gave him.
There are times later when she has to deliver the stock villain speech at which she nearly goes over the top, but this is arguably more due to questionable scripting. For the most part Ms. Marceau slices the ham expertly enough to put together one of the franchises better forays into megalomania. Her speech drips with the traditional self-righteous justification and egotism. We are even treated to that touch of madness when, in one of the film's ghastlier moments, she pulls off an earring to reveal that she cut off part of her own ear in an effort to make the kidnapping look real. I'm intrigued by the possibility that this may be another homage to the earlier On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Fans of the earlier film may recall that Blofeld, the main villain, had cut off his earlobes in an effort to pass as a European count. But even with all the elements of super villainy on display here, Ms. Marceau still remains eminently desirable. When Bond is captured, Elektra has him strapped into some ancient Turkish torture gizmo that can be used to break someone's neck after slowly strangling him. While being tortured, Bond again demonstrates both his cluelessness and shortage of class when he brings out the old "It didn't give me any pleasure" chestnut that we last saw him using in Thunderball. While such a claim already seemed juvenile in the earlier film, here it seems particularly pathetic when Elektra, instead of engaging in the macho posturing of Fiona Volpe, simply shrugs it off as the absurdity it is. Bond frankly has always been pretty easy, and Elektra played him like a violin. Ms. Marceau is nearly in danger of going over the top when she sits on Bond's lap and asks if he knows what happens to a man being strangled. I'm deeply afraid this is a reference to involuntary turgidity and therefore raises some disturbing possibilities. Still Brosnan insists on spouting one of his trademark witless quips about "one last screw" so once again he seems in need of mocking. Rather than seeming kinky, Elektra seems to be too merciful in allowing this boob any physical contact whatsoever. When the most shocking moments arise and we see Bond brandishing a weapon in her face, Ms. Marceau again projects the perfect picture of put-upon femininity in the face of masculine brutishness. Her death comes across as Bond's moment of madness. Rather than a deserved comeuppance, Bond's shooting of an unarmed woman seems not only to be a senseless barbarity but an ineffectual attempt to salve his own ego over his many personal failures. I have to give the filmmakers and/or Brosnan credit for recognizing what happened here and following it up with a show of deep regret on Bond's part.
As I've already mentioned, this film has somewhat the structure of a hard-boiled detective novel and given that it could do with some explanatory flashbacks. A big mystery that remains unsolved here is the nature of Elektra's relationship with Renard. It's obvious that Renard is smitten, but Elektra's feelings remain unclear. Is Renard a mere stooge being led around by the nose, or does Elektra love him? There's ample evidence for either interpretation here. When the film nears its climax, we see Elektra jumping with girlish glee at seeing Renard's return to their hideout. Yet while she throws her arms around him and plants a big wet one on his mouth, he is after all bringing the plutonium she needs for her evil plan. Later Renard and Elektra are in bed together and he says something to the effect of "so warm, so smooth" as he caresses her. In the most lacerating way imaginable she poutily asks how he would know. Recall that Renard has a bullet in his brain and that we have clearly been told that he is incapable of feeling anything. Presumably this implies that he is also incapable of sexual response, so a more cutting reference to his masculine inadequacies is hard to imagine. Still and all married man all over the world are aware that feelings of vague dissatisfaction on the part of the missus are eminently capable of causing a host of unwarranted rebukes. Did Renard have too many beers and come to bed bombed or was he playing cards half the night with his men? Furthermore his subsequent inquiries on the subject of Bond's time with Elektra amount to just asking to be hurt. Is Elektra's subsequent attempt to soothe his ego and recall happier times before his injury part of keeping him on the line or indicative of serious intimacy? There is no clear answer to these questions.
While a little ambiguity is a good thing, I'm afraid that the ambiguity discussed above does tend to undercut Robert Carlyle's performance as Renard. Over all the performance is reasonably good, but as I've mentioned his role can only support one of two interpretations. Either he's being played the sap, or he is Elektra's partner in evil and love. There is no room here for soul-searching portraits of Euro-trash nihilism and unfortunately there is an attempt to shoehorn some in. Certainly the man is destined to die soon, so there is justification for a certain resignation and world-weariness. When Carlyle takes it to extremes, however, we start to question why Renard would be helping Elektra at all. If he's so despondent that he all but demands Bond put him out of his misery in the weapons facility, why is he even bothering to go to all the effort needing in stealing the plutonium? When he's going off on his final suicide mission to meltdown the sub's reactor, Elektra warmly kisses him but he responds with cold indifference. This doesn't seem quite right whether he's playing the sap or he's her partner. In either event, it seems he should demonstrate some kind of longing or desire. He still has some good moments at the weapons facility, however, when taunting Bond about having Elektra first. Renard's relationship to Elektra only becomes clear later on so at this point Bond thinks Renard is speaking of violating her. While I thought the scene didn't feel right when I first saw it, on a second viewing it seems shrewdly done. While Renard's speaking of breaking Elektra in and having her while she was innocent is undeniably repulsive and crude, it does seem that this brutal and thuggish man would be incapable of speaking of his feelings in any other way. As we will see below, another problem with Renard here is that he is not given a scene in which to prove himself a true physical menace to Bond. Given Carlyle's death's head makeup and ghoulish demeanor, he could have been used to much better effect in this regard.
A character I've been scrupulously trying to avoid discussing until now is one Dr. (?!) Christmas (!?) Jones played by Denise Richards. Ms. Richards has taken a lot of ribbing about playing a nuclear scientist, but I feel compelled to present a qualified defense of her performance. It is true that she appears far too young to play a doctor, but she frankly appears too young to be convincing as Bond's romantic interest in any guise. When the movie nears its end and her and Bond are sitting on a terrace with drinks, one gets the distinct feeling that they don't check I.D.'s in Turkish bars. Still when it comes to spouting expository dialogue about reactor coolant and weapons-grade plutonium, Ms. Richards does an adequate job. She's by no means an evident ditz, and one certainly must suspend disbelief while watching a Bond film. In fact, this casting is looking less and less questionable given Halle Berry's embarrassing attempt to pass as a secret agent in Brosnan's latest. Anyone that can swallow that casting won't even give Ms. Richards' turn as a doctor a second thought. Ms. Richards' true problem is that she is trapped in what may be the most inessential role in franchise history and even if she weren't, she would vanish into the woodwork in any event when Ms. Marceau appears. As I tried to stress with my synopsis above, Jones has absolutely no important plot function whatsoever. She does go along with Bond to defuse the nuclear weapon in the oil pipeline, but Bond has done that alone himself in earlier films. It's even strange how she apparently doesn't even have any important job to do in the world of the film itself. After meeting up with Bond at the Russian weapons facility, she just abandons whatever she was doing there to tag along after Bond. In the last analysis, Jones only real reason for appearing is to provide Bond with someone to canoodle with when the end credits role. Her being named Christmas in itself only serves as the weakest possible rationale for a pair of smutty quips at the film's end. Confronted with such an utterly unnecessary character such as Christmas Jones, even someone as long-winded as myself finds it impossible to say much concerning her.
The most disappointing aspect of this film by no means the job done by the unfortunate Ms. Richards. The sad fact is that, other than the excellent pre-credits sequence, the film is completely lacking in exciting action set-pieces. I don't find it coincidental that the Brosnan film that pays the least attention to muddled gun fights and car chases also turns out to be his most intriguing film. Still there is such a total lack of action here that a simple fist fight could have raised this film one or two spots in the countdown. At least we get nearly a full quota of action from the nearly 15 minute long teaser itself. The teaser starts with Bond's trip to Spain to recover Sir Robert King's money and get a lead on the person that killed an MI-6 agent. The Spanish offices of Swiss bankers apparently come stocked to the gills with heavily armed goons and Bond is forced to knock a couple of them around before pressuring the banker for names. The banker is disposed of before he can talk and Bond, showing a reasonable reluctance to let the arriving police get their hands on the suitcase full of money, repels down the side of the building using a goon as a counterweight. Back in London at MI-6 headquarters, Bond turns the money over to King only to have it explode when King approaches it. The teaser could have easily ended here and still started things off with a literal bang, but the explosion only makes the teaser's midpoint. After the blast, Bond looks out a hole in the wall over the Thames to see a woman that was at the banker's office earlier standing in a boat on the river. Since the bomb has successfully killed King at this point, the woman on the boat doesn't really need to start firing at Bond but we're probably supposed to think that she opened fire in response to Bond's recognizing her. Bond commandeers "Q"'s powerboat and speed off down the river in pursuit of her. The ensuing chase is quite well done, especially in contrast to the interminable mess that dragged Live And Let Die to a dead stop. The Thames locale makes for an interesting backdrop, the screen time taken up by the chase is not excessive, and the powerboat's gimmicks serve to spice things up. I have some very minor quibbles about the Moore style silliness that sees Bond motoring down the street and through a restaurant in the boat, but I don't recall any animal double takes. Even the end of the boat chase doesn't quite mark the end of the teaser as the woman from the boat leaps ashore and commandeers a hot air balloon. The police finally show up while Bond clings to a mooring rope. The woman commits suicide by blowing up the balloon's gas tanks and Bond plunges down onto the roof of London's Millennium Dome. Some things appear questionable in retrospect concerning the woman's relationship to the plot. She clearly seems to be working for Renard, but Renard never comes to seem the sort that a woman would kill herself over. Really though this is just a bit of a nit-pick of one of my favorite teasers.
Next up for our viewing distraction is one of the franchise's signature ski chases. Yet again I wonder if the nod to On Her Majesty's Secret Service is just coincidental. The chase comes immediately after Bond appears at Elektra's side with notions of bodyguarding her. Bond insists on tagging along with her during her inspection of pipeline locations and they are both accosted while skiing by parahawks. It's a pity that the resulting chase falls so flat on screen because there are some flashes of technical competence. For the first time in many years it seems as though the actor playing Bond is actually the one doing the skiing. Either blue screen technology has advanced by leaps and bounds since Moore was in the role or Brosnan did indeed hit the slopes for some of the shots. Still the chase itself is regrettably uninvolving and I think that the problem stems from the fact that the parahawk contraptions are made the center of the action. The parahawks are interesting machines and are apparently capable of sliding along the ground like snow mobiles and motoring through the air while supported by parachutes. But in featuring these machines, the filmmakers have given the stunt skier nothing to do other than stay ahead of them on the slopes. The whole sequence plays more as an advert for winter sports equipment than as an action set piece. Just note one of the segment's key moments when Bond succeeds in causing one of the things to sail off the mountain. Instead of crashing into the rocks below, the thing deploys another parachute and flies back for another go at him. This is clearly meant to be a "Gee Whiz" type moment for the viewer, but at this point I was just hoping to move on and instead of being awed I ended up damning the indestructibility of these things. In the end the sequence just provides another of the series' expensive object lessons, and in this case that lesson is that simpler is better. The basic team of armed men on skis featured in On Her Majesty's Secret Service would have provided immeasurably more excitement here.
What is even worse is the fact that fans of stunt work will find even less to thrill to as the movie continues. The next thing that could loosely be called "action" is a gun fight between Bond and Renard's men at the Russian weapons facility. I doubt, however, than anyone would be so starved for entertainment that they would find the lackluster exchange of machine gun fire found here all that exciting. Bond's attempt to flee a fireball produced by a detonating bomb by hanging from a chain attached to a track in the ceiling looks downright goofy. When Brosnan swings around on the end of the chain after being pushed down the track by an on-set grip, he reminds me of my schoolyard days when we would attempt to twist around while in the air on a playground swing. And while it's questionable enough that one could possibly move fast enough to escape a fireball, here I also have to wonder if one could move faster hanging on a chain than they could by simply running away. Even more annoying is a truly interminable run-in between Bond and some helicopters that occurs while Bond is pressuring Zhukovsky for a lead on Elektra. In an effort to dispatch both Bond and Zhukovsky, Elektra has sent helicopters sporting saw blades on their undercarriages to slice them both up. What follows has to be the series' least-welcome action set-piece, although the endless boat chase through Louisiana runs it a close second. Bond eludes the helicopters' saw blades by running around a lot, squeezing off a few shots, and firing off some rockets from his gimmicky car. The whole thing is not only totally unexciting, but insultingly played for laughs as well. The helicopters saw Zhukovsky's warehouse to pieces and the building collapses at the scene’s end. Unbelievably the 'copters are capable of sawing Bond's car in half as well! I guess "Q" was just blowing smoke up Bond's Clymer with all that talk of "titanium armor" earlier in the film. And by this time I'm becoming thoroughly convinced that, as Bond, Brosnan must spend fully two thirds of his time on screen running away from things. With Bond ever more taking on the attributes of the Road Runner, I half expect Wile E. Coyote to show up next time out on a pair of ACME rocket powered skates.
The truly debilitating disappointment comes at the end of the film, however, when one last chance for salvation comes to naught. Renard has been set up as a man who feels no pain and one who is possessed with extraordinary endurance and strength because of that. As the dénouement approaches Bond has both cuckolded him and killed his lover. This elaborate set-up simply screams for a vicious mano a mano grudge match between Renard and Bond to close the film. By simply bringing back the fight choreographers from Goldeneye here the filmmakers could have caused me to bump this film up several rungs in the countdown. Unbelievably, incredibly, even tragically, however, the movie fails to deliver on its promised battle. The climax of the film takes place aboard the sinking Russian sub and the struggle between Bond and Renard in the ship's reactor room is lackadaisical in the extreme. The pair of them do a lot of that Moore style grabbing of ceiling fixtures to launch a few anemic kicks into each other and with that the fight essentially closes. Even worse, the tussle also has a faint air of absurdity brought about by Renard's attempts between blows to stick this huge cylindrical object in a hole in the submarine's reactor. Even though I want to think that nothing Freudian was being implied here, it still looks slightly silly. The thought of being trapped underwater has always given me the heebie-jeebies, and in a different context I might have found the scenes of the sub sinking to be quite suspenseful. The leads' gasping for air and bulkheads slammed ahead of encroaching seawater sure played well back in The Poseidon Adventure, but I can't accept them in lieu of the brutal hand-to-hand combat that I was being psyched up to expect.
I'm a little sad to have to end this review on downbeat notes because I still find the film quite enjoyable - faults and all. The World Is Not Enough may be the most frustrating film in the franchise's history, however, because it could have easily been a true Bond classic. Just a handful of minor changes to the plot and a modicum of attention to crafting a memorable post-credits action sequence could have put this one over the top. The addition of the promised fight between Bond and Renard is the most obvious quick fix for this film. Perhaps abandoning the sinking sub idea for a brawl on land over a ticking nuclear bomb would have amply fit the bill in this regard without altering the plot in any way. While it is probably inconceivable now for the filmmakers to release a Bond film that doesn't see him in bed with a woman at the end, this film could have benefited greatly from the elimination of the extraneous Dr. Jones. Ms. Marceau's fascinating Elektra is more than capable of carrying this movie by herself. Given Bond's extreme irresponsibility here, it also would have been fitting were Bond to end up with no one but that sour old prune "M" at the end as his "reward". It is also probably too late to hope for less Moore style levity in a Bond film, but this movie would have also benefited from a more somber tone. And finally of course, a hint of exposition concerning Renard and Elektra's relationship and history would have worked wonders in guiding the actor's performances. Despite its obvious faults, however, I think that this is the one Brosnan outing that time will be the kindest to. The audacity that went into making a female lead the feature's villain is something that most likely can't be repeated and something that in itself will make this movie a unique addition to the Bond filmic canon. Before seeing this film I would have thought that, like womanly preaching, it was something that would be incredible to do at all. The World Is Not Enough, however, proves that it can be quite well done indeed.
James Bond will return on the edge and not playing by the rules.
