The World Is Not Enough (1999) - film review

A mission goes horribly wrong when James Bond is unwittingly used in an assassination plot to kill an oil tycoon named King.  The agent resolves to protect King’s daughter, Elekra, but uncovers an ambitious terrorist plot to disrupt the West’s oil supply.

By adhering unflinchingly to a tried and tested formula, the nineteenth Bond movie is a real treat for fans of the series and contains more than enough action stunts to entertain a mainstream cinema audience.   Whilst he lacks the charisma of his predecessors, Pierce Brosnan is comfortable in the role of Great Britain’s most famous fictional spy and his blend of macho resilience and sardonic wit serves the film well.  TWINE is a bog-standard Bond movie, fast moving, with an overly complicated plot, offering few surprises, but, for all that, has great entertainment value.

In contrast to previous Bond films, the characterisation is noticeably weak, and most of the main cast prove to be a disappointment.  The biggest flaw in the film is the lack of a strong central villain and a clear objective.  Just who is the enemy in this film and what are they trying to achieve?  Without a clear threat, the film feels fragmented and ultimately aimless, relying almost entirely on its adrenalin-pumping stunts to keep things moving and maintain the audience’s attention.  This may, ironically, be an accurate reflection of the world in which secret agents now serve, fighting invisible, dispersed terrorist cells, but this film demonstrates that such a scenario does not really fit the Bond formula that well.

Robert Carlyle’s character is good as far as it goes, but his sadistic nastiness is too rapidly emasculated by his compassion for his girlfriend, whilst the true villain of the piece is just too weak to carry the thing off convincingly.  For Bond to be effective, he needs a strong villain, and this is one thing this film fails to deliver.

Equally, the Bond girls are clearly not what they were.  True, in the Connery days they may have been just scantly clad bimbos, overly exploited for their decorative value, but the latest breed of Bond girls are being pushed too hard to justify themselves.  Are we really expected to take seriously a mini-skirt wearing Denise Richards playing a nuclear physicist named Christmas?  As for Elekra King... suffice it to say that there is nothing remotely credible about this character, despite a spirited effort from Sophie Marceau to make the character believable.

Fortunately, a brace of talented British actors, including Robbie Coltrane, Judi Dench and, would you believe it, John Cleese (playing Q’s replacement) just about fill in the gaps left by these traditional Bond characters.  Dench is perhaps the film’s most original element, taking the character of M, and possibly the Bond series, in a healthier new direction, at last breaking with the stuffy 1960s stereotypes.

© James Travers 2000

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