The World is Not Enough (1999) | Also Not Good Enough

As the 1990s came to a close, we were graced with one last James Bond film for the millennium. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t say it was that great of a sendoff as The World is Not Enough is the Pierce Brosnan Bond film I remembered the least before AND after watching it again. Until my recent viewing, the only things I remembered were the boat chase in the beginning, Robert Carlyle’s melodramatic villain, and “I thought Christmas only came once a year.” The World is Not Enough is not as memorably bad as the movie that came after it, nor is it better than the mildly entertaining Tomorrow Never Dies. It sits in the worst, amnesiac realm of opinion: Meh Valley.

Pros

Action scenes, particularly with the boat chase in the beginning, are fun and shot relatively well
Opening title sequence has a better song with better graphics than last time
Plot is slightly based on the plot of better Bond movies
John Cleese as a Q stand-in

Cons

Christmas Jones
Renard is “getting stronger” up until he dies?
Electra’s motivations and goals are a bit aimless
CGI special effects and sequences in front of a green screen are pretty rough around the edges
Inefficient killing methods get overly absurd in this movie
Christmas Jones

Plot & Thoughts

James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) manages to retrieve the money of a wealthy oil tycoon and return it to him at MI6 headquarters. Unbeknownst to him and everyone else, the case carrying the money is a bomb that manages to kill the tycoon when he opens it. Bond, spotting a sniper on the water, races after her in a fun and over-the-top boat chase. He injures his shoulder in the chase which ends up being an important detail that comes up multiple times. It finally ends spectacularly with the sniper’s death in an exploding hot air balloon. The opening is strong, exciting, and has a decent title sequence that comes right after it with one of the best theme songs of the franchise. Then, the rest of the movie starts and things slow down, substantially.

The daughter of the departed oil baron, Electra King (Sophie Marceau), is following in her father’s footsteps and attempting to connect a pipeline from Georgia (the country) to the Mediterranean. Terrorists who claim responsibility for her father’s death are causing a ruckus for her company, however. They are blowing up pieces of the pipeline and likely working with competing oil companies in the region to cause her trouble. The leader of the terrorist group is known as Renard (Robert Carlyle), someone who kidnapped and ransomed Electra years ago for $5,000,000. Bond is following the only leads he has while also protecting Electra from any assassins who may be after her. Bond, as usual, lets his genitals do the thinking and talking for a little while until he finally realizes there might be more to Electra and Renard than he initially thought.

Now, I’m compelled to discuss spoilers because I have some issues that aren’t just tied to its overall blandness and Christmas Jones, namely with the big twist of the movie and the evil plot of the villains.

Renard and Electra are actually lovers. (GASP!) Electra is using his terrorist group to blow up pieces of her own pipeline to cover her tracks and true intentions. There is even a scene, early in the film, in which she and Bond are skiing down a mountain and they’re attacked by people who work for Renard. This gunfight actually causes an avalanche and nearly kills Bond and Electra. Seems a little counterintuitive, but I’m willing to look past seemingly stupid plot points if their ultimate goal makes sense. What is their ultimate goal? To cause a nuclear catastrophe in Istanbul where all the other competitor pipelines flow, thus ensuring that Electra gains a monopoly as the primary oil seller in the region. Hmmm, this sounds rather familiar…

That’s right. This is yet another play on the plan of eliminating your competition to drive up the value of your own product as seen in Goldfinger and A View to a Kill. Goldfinger was going to irradiate Fort Knox with a radioactive device to make his own gold more valuable. The body count for Goldfinger’s plan was relatively small and would mostly consist of the guards at Fort Knox. Zorin from A View to a Kill massively expands the body count in his similar plan to wipe out the microchip manufacturers in Silicon Valley with whom his company was competing by destroying a reservoir and flooding the region. With Goldfinger and Zorin, their characteristics and motivations were relatively clear. Goldfinger was a greedy man who didn’t care who got in his way, but he wasn’t a bloodthirsty villain seeking death. Zorin was a psychopath who was driven to be successful, so the thought of wiping out a few million people probably barely crossed his mind as something other than a fun statistic. You also don’t get the impression that Zorin is in it for the money; he seems more interested in the power and control over a market. The reason I bring the two of them up is because both the plots of their movies make sense for the characters. They’re far easier to summarize and understand their motivations.

So what about Renard and Electra and their motivations? Renard is certainly the simpler of the two. He’s an anarchist terrorist who is slowly dying due to a bullet in his brain. The movie pulls a little anime/comic book super-villain nonsense out of its ass with this detail because, apparently due to his bullet wound, he no longer feels pain and is “getting stronger” up until his death. It’s really stupid because I don’t know how he would be getting stronger while dying at the same time. Was the bullet laced with PCP and steroids or something? Regardless of the stupid details around Renard and his superpowers, he just wants to blow sh*t up and kill people, so his desire to nuke a region with him in it is somewhat justified.

Electra’s motivations, however, are more difficult to nail down. She has the potential to be an interesting villain as a girl who developed Stockholm syndrome when she was kidnapped and has some mental issues as a result. She clearly holds a grudge against M (Judy Dench) for being the person who advised her father against paying the ransom, however, we never get a full understanding of her as a character by the time the movie ends. She tortures Bond, does some other heinous things, and exhibits narcissistic qualities you expect out of a Bond villain, but the movie never fully justifies her psychotic behavior enough to make her decision to nuke an entire region for the sake of controlling the oil in the Mediterranean reasonable for her character. She’s damaged, and crazy, but she doesn’t come across as greedy, power-driven, or psychotic like Goldfinger or Zorin. She is just an evil character for the sake of being evil, so despite being more complicated than Renard, she ends up being less interesting because her motivations don’t match her character.

The villains are not the worst thing in The World is Not Enough, however, and she goes by the name of Christmas Jones (Denise Richards). Richards has already caught her fair share of flak for her performance in this movie—including Razzie nominations—so I won’t be too harsh in my criticism. She’s bad and everyone knows it. Or, at least everyone should know it because Pierce Brosnan, being the gentleman that he is, tried to defend her when she was receiving criticism, but he said something along the lines that people didn’t understand the character she was portraying. She was supposed to be a ditzy super-genius, you see? Sorry, but that’s not why people complained about Christmas Jones.

Richards is limited in her acting abilities, and that’s okay because there are plenty of A-listers out there who would really struggle in certain genres. Keanu Reeves does fine as the monotone and ruthless John Wick, but he cannot do an English accent to save his life in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Denise Richards is good in dark comedies and self-aware movies like Drop Dead Gorgeous. In The World is Not Enough, she is out of her element and just looks lost most of the time. More importantly, her line delivery is extremely flat. With such flat delivery, it makes Christmas Jones sound stupid, not ditzy—and she’s supposed to be a nuclear physicist. She’s also a character that feels tacked on to the plot. A lot of Bond girls get tacked on in their respective movies, but if you look at how the last two films introduced and utilized their Bond girls, all of them were essential to the plot. Jones is important in the scene she’s introduced, but then she just sticks around afterward because we need a nuclear physicist to disarm some nuclear devices when the time arises.

Characters and their flaws aside, how does this movie hold up as a Bond film? There are some decent action sequences. The boat chase, in the beginning, is probably the biggest highlight, but the skiing and avalanche sequence is pretty good as well, as is the gunfight that takes place in the nuclear silo. The big climax on the submarine is okay and has the tension of water getting into the vessel with a ticking clock while Renard fights Bond, but it’s not as memorable or iconic as other Bond finales. Then there are sequences that don’t hold up, like the one in which Bond and Christmas Jones ride the inside of the pipeline to disarm a bomb. The effects in this scene look pretty awful and there are a few other scenes involving greenscreen that have not aged well. Compared to the stunts and action scenes from Goldeneye and Tomorrow Never Dies, The World is Not Enough simply does not measure up.

Now, I realize I am being a little overly harsh towards The World is Not Enough, but don’t get me wrong. I still like this movie, overall. As I mentioned in my previous review, you kind of knew what you were getting with Brosnan. There are still some fun action sequences, lots of explosions, cool gadgets, funny quips, and badass Bond moments. It just happens to be not as memorable as other films in the franchise. If I were to compare it to other Bond films of similar quality and memorability with different actors this is the equivalent of Octopussy to Moore, Diamonds Are Forever to Connery, and Quantum of Solace to Craig. These movies are still watchable and two of them are still relatively fun, just not quite as interesting as their numerous counterparts.

Lastly, this is the final James Bond film to feature Desmond Llewyn as the gadget scientist Q. He was the only actor to have still been part of the team since the Sean Connery days and he was featured in the vast majority of Bond films in one way or another. Unfortunately, Llewyn would tragically die in a car accident within a few years of his retirement, but the character and actor were given a nice sendoff in The World is Not Enough with John Cleese stepping up to fill in for him for the rest of the franchise—until Die Another Day was so poorly received they decided to reset the franchise. John Cleese was a suitable choice to fill in for Llewyn and adds a small bit of humor in his introduction before Llewyn bows out. Llewyn was always a fun addition to the Bond films in which he appeared by bringing his wisened charisma and playful charm to the role which made his character iconic and irreplaceable to the franchise.

TL;DR

Despite a strong opening, The World is Not Enough fizzles out before long and gets less memorable the longer it goes on. The plot, villains, action scenes, and love interests have all been done better in previous films. Even as I was writing this review, I felt more and more details leave my mind. It’s not the most forgettable of the Bond franchise, and it’s still a relatively enjoyable affair, but it is a far cry from the best the series has to offer.

Hair of the Dog Drinking Game Rule

Denise Richards’ performance as Christmas Jones is probably the most memorable thing about The World is Not Enough, for better or for worse. She doesn’t appear in the film until a little before the halfway point, but once she’s there, she sticks around to the end. So, you’ll have to endure one flat line delivered after another. To help appease your pain, perhaps you should have a sip of your beverage.