BEFORE: Another side-effect of watching all these Bond films has occurred - my cold got worse and I stayed home from work today to sleep it off, and I had a very vivid fever dream about the end of the world that seemed very real and freaked me out. Every other night I've watched some Bond villain come very close to blowing up the planet, or starting World War III, or irradiating the water supply or something. Of course, seeing all those trailers for post-apocalyptic movies a few weeks ago when we saw "Star Trek" probably didn't help.
Pierce Brosnan carries over again, but we say goodbye tonight to the old Q, so there's sort of a changing of the guard.
THE PLOT: James Bond uncovers a nuclear plot when he protects an oil heiress from her former kidnapper, an international terrorist who can't feel pain.
AFTER: Here we go again - another bunch of a-holes going rogue with a nuclear device. The "WHY" is a little sketchy because it seems to be mixed up with a revenge plot against members of the British secret service, particularly M, and it seems to be that if you get revenge against your enemies, then blow up Europe, that's not really enjoying your victory. Fulfilling a vendetta works best when civilization is still standing, I'm just sayin'.
I think at some point the producers of the Bond series realized they'd fallen into something of a rut, using the same formula time and time again - disfigured villain, henchman with a weird power, throw in a couple of hot babes and call it a day. They broke some ground in "A View to a Kill", where Grace Jones played the henchman, er, henchwoman, and also slept with Bond, so she crossed over into the hot babe category. Same thing with "Goldeneye", where Famke Janssen was a henchman/assassin and a Bond babe as well. And "Tomorrow Never Dies" introduced a new combination as well, a beautiful woman who's also a secret agent - although I guess they did that back in "The Spy Who Loved Me", didn't they?
It does, however, point out what might be Bond's achilles heel - and it's not just sleeping with married women. Could he shoot and kill a woman, if need be? It's a new world, with equal rights for women, and if it turns out one of them needs to be killed to save the world, could he do it? I'm not so sure...
This one spins out of a line from "On Her Majesty's Secret Service", in a scene where Bond is researching his family's crest, which contains the family motto, "Orbis non-sufficit". You might think that the film would focus on Bond's family or lineage, but you would be incorrect. I suppose it is about family in one sense, but not his. Whatever new ground was broken with this film, however, was negated by the casting of Denise Richards as a nuclear research scientist. Because that's believable.
NITPICK POINT: Bond travels through an oil pipeline, which is not only very well-lit (why?) but also extremely clean - doesn't that pipeline usually carry, you know, oil?
NITPICK POINT #2: The villain here doesn't feel pain, which is an interesting idea. So why would Bond persist in hitting him? I know it's his fallback method of dealing with things, but it just won't work in this case. Find another way.
LOCATIONS: Bilbao Spain, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Istanbul Turkey
VILLAINS: Renard
BABES: Elektra King, Dr. Christmas Jones
ALLIES: M, Q, new Q ("R"?), Miss Moneypenny, Valentin Zukovsky
PASTIMES: Skiing, speedboating,
CARS: BMW Z8 convertible roadster, tiny glimpse of the Aston Martin near the end
GADGETS: credit-card lock pick, inflatable parka, experimental speedboat.
THEME: "The World Is Not Enough" by Garbage.
Also starring Judi Dench, Desmond Llewelyn, Samantha Bond (all 3 carrying over from "Tomorrow Never Dies"), Sophie Marceau, Denise Richards (last seen in "Loaded Weapon 1"), Robert Carlyle (last seen in "Being Human"), Robbie Coltrane (last seen in "Goldeneye"), John Cleese (last heard in "Winnie the Pooh").
RATING: 5 out of 10 vats of caviar
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