The World is Not Enough

The World is Not Enough

In 1995, Goldeneye resurrected the 007 franchise, and the next film Tomorrow Never Dies showed that it would be alive and well for the long haul.  The world belonged to James Bond once again.  I wish I could make some cool pun here about the world not being enough for Bond because he was about to ascend to greater heights.  But alas, the opposite is true because everything was about to come crashing down.  The world, so to speak, was about to collapse.

Creatively, at least.  I'll just lead with the fact that The World is Not Enough was a huge hit, and the most financially successful film to that point (not adjusting for inflation, of course).  The studios had to have been happy with the film's performance, but that doesn't change the fact that very few people actually liked it.  The World is Not Enough is a stinker, plain and simple - a dull, plodding film with multiple missed opportunities that could have truly elevated it into something cool.

But let's not dwell on the bad quite yet.  This movie has so few good qualities that I can actually list them easily!  Here we go:

The basic premise is actually solid.  After wealthy oilman Sir Robert King is assassinated, Bond has to solve the murder and also protect King's daughter Elektra (Sophie Marceau, Braveheart).  The number one suspect is a vicious anarchist named Renard who had kidnapped Elektra years before. Elektra managed to escape and Renard was subsequently tracked down by British agents and shot in the head.  He somehow survived and was now coming back for revenge on his former captive.  It sounds fairly basic, but on paper it's a solid plot, especially when you tie in the interesting politics behind Sir Robert King's attempts to build a pipeline in Azerbaijan.  There is some intriguing material here that they fail to capitalize on (more on that later).

What else is good?  Pierce Brosnan is good, but then he always is.

The title song, by Garbage, is a great song.

The cinematography is nice.  Adrian Biddle (who shot V for Vendetta and Aliens, and was Oscar nominated for Thelma and Louise) is a true pro and the film looks great.

There is a heckuva good scene late in the film, which I'll also come back to later.

What else is good?  Out of all his Bond films, this one gives Pierce Brosnan his best wardrobe.  He has some incredible suits in this movie, especially the white suit with the blue shirt that he wears during the climactic fight.  Wait a second, is this movie so bad that I am more interested in Brosnan's tailor than I am in what is happening onscreen?

Well, yes.  Yes, it is.  I can't think of anything else I liked in this movie.  And I am trying really hard. To be fair, it's not like the rest of it is outright awful.  It never approaches the stench of A View to a Kill, for example, but there just isn't that much to like.

I think the problem starts with the director, Michael Apted, who is actually a fine filmmaker.  He directed the fascinating Up series of documentaries and several solid dramas, including Nell, Coal Miner's Daughter, and Gorillas in the Mist.  If I were a producing a drama, he'd be on my list of potential directors. But I would be leery about hiring him for an action film, much less a Bond film. And as expected, he seems out of his element here.  The action scenes are just completely stale, and lacking of any sort of momentum, tension or excitement.  They are all just BLAH, as if no one had any interest in making them exciting at all.  Which doesn't surprise me because Apted seems to have zero interest in action films (this being the only one on his filmography).  When I watch The World is Not Enough, I just keep scratching my head because I can't figure out why they hired this guy.  I can only imagine Eon brought him on board to help with the female characters - but if he is able to add some degree of strength to Elektra, he completely fails with Dr. Christmas Jones, who is one of the worst Bond Girls of all time.

Let's move on to her for a moment, shall we?  About halfway through the movie, James Bond runs into a nuclear physicist named Dr. Christmas Jones, played by Denise Richards (Wild Things).  Look, no one should take Bond films too seriously.  These movies are often absurd, but this casting decision just jumped the shark.  And this is not me being a film snob.  When Richards was cast as a nuclear physicist, the entire world gasped a collective "WTF?!"  Maybe in the crazy days of Roger Moore, she could have pulled his off.  But The World is Not Enough is a darker film, and for the most part attempting to be more serious, and Richards just looks lost.

In the end, I think the biggest problem with The World is Not Enough is that it is a film full of missed opportunities.  SPOILER TIME!  The villain Renard has some real potential.  When he was shot in the head, the bullet severed the nerves that cause him to feel pain.  So you can hit him, punch him, stab him, shoot him...makes no difference to him.  He can't feel a thing.  That is a neat concept, and a worthy character trait for a Bond baddie, and the movie does...absolutely nothing with it.  There are so many cool things they could have done with this idea.  Instead, the only time they really go into any depth into Renard's special ability is in badly written love scene full of psychoanalytical malarky, where he laments that while he physically feels nothing, emotionally he still feels SOOOO much for the love of his life, Elektra King.

Yep, that's right.  The woman he kidnapped, Elektra King, who actually turned the Renard over to her side by seducing him and then cooking up this master plan to kill her own father, is the true villain of the film.  This is an interesting idea - there are hints, a few throw-away lines, about hating her father.  Her mother had been from Azerbaijan, and Elektra always hated the fact that her father seemed to be stealing the legacy of her mother's people, an interesting statement on British Imperialism.  There is a lot more they could have done with this idea - killing her father (a symbolic representative of the Western world that she feels raped her homeland) was only the first step in striking at Europe itself.  That is a goal that could have made Elektra truly scary, but it is a motivation only lightly hinted at.  Instead, her primary goals seem to involve blowing up rival pipelines and destroying Istanbul - oh, and most importantly, getting back at daddy for not doing enough when she was kidnapped.  Can't forget that.  That's her character's defining trait, according to this movie, not all the interesting politics and the struggle over her cultural heritage.  Sophie Marceau does what she can, but she isn't particularly well-written, and there is only so much she can do with the role.  You do end up liking her performance by the end of the film...but I think it is because of the strength of one fantastic scene, and also because even in her worst moments, she is miles beyond Denise Richards.

What else was a wasted opportunity?  Why did they have to kill Robbie Coltrane's Zukovsky?  This was his second appearance (after a memorable turn in Goldeneye), and he could have really been a fun recurring character.  Instead, he's killed off, and in ridiculous fashion, too.  What a sad ending to a character with so much potential.

You know what?  I'm done.  I can complain about this movie for hours.  Look, it's not as bad as Bond at its worst.  But it's also not any good.  Ugh, I'm done.  All the good will Brosnan engendered because of Goldeneye and Tomorrow Never Dies was at risk.  For me, at least, a lot was riding on his next film.  Would Die Another Day deliver?

RANKINGS:

What to do, what to do.  I really don't like this movie, but it's definitely not as bad as the worst of the worst of the franchise, though it is close.  Maybe it's the best of the worst?  If that is the case, I should put it right below Diamonds are Forever, which isn't a particularly good film, but one that I still enjoy...

1. Thunderball
2. From Russia with Love
3. Goldfinger
4. The Spy Who Loved Me
5. Goldeneye
6. The Living Daylights
7. Dr. No
8. Octopussy
9. For Your Eyes Only
10. Tomorrow Never Dies
11. Live and Let Die
12. License to Kill
13. Man with the Golden Gun
14. Diamonds are Forever
15. The World is Not Enough
16. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
17. Moonraker
18. You Only Live Twice
19. A View to a Kill


MVP:

This is an easy one.  I could say Brosnan, who puts in his usually reliable performance, or Garbage, who performed a really terrific Bond song.  But instead, I am going to give the award to a specific scene - the one truly great scene in the film.  Near the end of the movie, Bond is captured and strapped to an old Byzantine torture device, one that will eventually break his neck as Elektra slowly turns a wheel - which she does, while straddling Bond very suggestively.  It's an odd sequence - sensual yet dangerous, sexy yet deeply disturbing...the more you think about it, the more uncomfortable you are about what Elektra King is doing to Bond.  Is she trying to arouse him while she is killing him?  It's a strange scene, and absolutely one of the only moments in the film that crackles with any sort of energy or excitement.  It's well-written, well-directed, and well-acted by Marceau and Brosnan, and it's easily the best part of the movie.  Shame Zukovsky shows up and ruins the scene and then dies a ridiculously death that sends the entire film spiraling down from really bad to almost unbearable to watch.

BEST LINE:

Here is a nice pun in the aforementioned torture scene...and what Bond intends as his last words before Elektra turns the screw one final time to break his neck.

James Bond: You meant nothing to me.  Just one...last...screw.


TRIVIA:

When the real MI6 learned that the film would shoot a scene around their headquarters, they immediately moved to block it because of the obvious security concerns.  But the nation's Foreign Secretary Robin Cook stepped in, saying, "After all Bond has done for Britain, this is the least we could do for Bond."

I thought that was pretty cool!