The World is
Not Enough
Directed by Michael Apted
Starring Pierce Brosnan, Sophie Marceu, Robert Carlyle, Robbie Coltrane,
Goldie,
Judi Dench and Denise Richards.
available on video.
* (One Star)
no
time to read the whole review?
THE
JIST of MY PROSE
Deja Vu? It's following a pattern : It's hopelessly
dumb, full of boring actors and action sequences that couldn't pass for
cool even in the throws of intoxication. The 007 films need an injection
of freshness.
‘The World is Not Enough’
starts out as a wonderfully self-mocking shrine of a
throwaway (ie : scene after scene unfolds in such a deliriously familiar
way, I began to
wonder - “Do they know? Are they doing this purposefully? Are they
aping Austin
Powers?”) About fifteen minutes after the pre-title sequence (nice,
catchy tune by
Garbage, by the way) this, the nineteenth James Bond film, shifts into
the ultimate in
hollow plots : the chaos for chaos’ sake plot (with a smidgen of the
revenge plot).
Let me get this straight - Sophie Marceu has to blow up her family’s
oil pipeline
(located in the 007 stomping grounds - Eastern Europe) because she
fell in love with this
guy who kidnapped her (who just happens to be the strongest guy in
the world, but it
dying of a bullet that’s killing him very, very slowly) and now, in
this pipe destruction,
she’s both getting back at her father (for not paying her ransom right
away - and
something really arcane and obtuse about ‘her mother’) and fulfilling
a lover’s duty by
causing the chaos necessary for a Bond villain to save face. And also,
the explosion has
something extremely ambiguous to do with plutonium (so that we can
have the darkest
hour made glorious light by 007), in which case we’ll need Christmas
Jones (your
friendly neighborhood nuclear bomb de-fuser), played by Denise Richards
mostly with
her boobs (which elicit more suspense in our longing to see them than
any of the action
sequences). Bond will have to bed both Christmas Jones and Sophie Marceau,
complete
with really explicit quips like “just another screw” and “Christmas
comes but once a
year”. And also, since the plot didn’t have enough malfunctions buzzing
throughout, Judi
Dench’s M, the only character that seems to have any real clout in
the recent Bond films,
will become part of the action when she’s kidnapped by the supervillian,
Rennard, played
by the indispensable Robert Carlyle (the only actor that seems to be
having any fun, uh,
acting).
Now I know this was
only supposed to be fun - and it’s not, but I can’t abide
watching a film like ‘The World is Not Enough’ until the producers
admit they’ve
botched a perfectly good series of movies by obeying some sort of unbendable
rules (that
date back to 1960 - ‘Dr. No.’). Until I see some serious changes (the
formula for a 007
picture is practically subtitled in the bottom corner in this one),
I’m going to have to keep
wondering : who are Mr. Broccoli and MGM/UA trying to please? When
are these films
going to take a few risks and be dangerously independent, boldly sexual
or just plain
weird?
And am I the only one
who saw the greedy prick in Timothy Dalton’s Bond - the
one that produced the dark and really entertaining ‘The Living Daylights’
and the weird,
nostalgically one-note ‘License to Kill’? Brosnan is enjoying that
millionaire Hugh
Hefner side of Bond way too much to work as any kind of a risk taker.
Anytime he
declares his action-extravaganza intentions, we want to take him seriously
- but we just
can’t. It would be too much a weight on our consciences. He had more
fun in films like
the ultracool ‘The Thomas Crown Affair’, in which he seems to slither
about with a
self-assuredness that could crush a metal cup (not to mention ‘Mars
Attacks!’, where he
does a nice little turn as a professor that ends up with his head severed
and reattached to
a Chihuahua). As Bond, no matter how much the audience likes him, he’s
a great big
snore.
We need to give fresh,
strange directors a turn at the wheel for the Bond films.
It’s a good idea. Until they begin handing out a crane with each viewing
(for gigantic
suspension of disbelief at both the content and the travesty of ruin
the series has
descended into), I’m going to have to pass on whatever the meaning
of “James Bond Will
Return” turns out to be.
[This review has a strange
voice to it, eh? Almost a high school newspaper review? Yeah,
I went back in time and had my former self write it. Yeah.]
home
1999