DVD
James Bond
The World is Not Enough

Starring: Pierce Brosnan
MGM
£19.99
15767DVD Z1
Certificate: 12
Available now


James Bond is assigned to protect Elektra King, an oil heiress who could be the next target of her one-time kidnapper, Renard - a ruthless terrorist who is impervious to pain...

Having firmly established Bond as an action hero for the 1990s in Tomorrow Never Dies, the creative team strive to give us more for the new millennium in The World is Not Enough. The action is still up-front (the opening boat chase on the Thames ranks among the finest examples ever) as is the sly innuendo (from Samantha Bond's Moneypenny telling Bond "I know exactly where to put that" to Brosnan's inevitable but no less hilarious "I thought Christmas only comes once a year"). However, Brosnan and director Michael Apted ensure that their film also offers depth, human interest plus a few surprises, the likes of which we haven't seen since the Dalton movies. Brosnan displays a meaner streak, from his opening confrontation with Swiss banker Lachaise (Patrick Malahide) to his shocking showdown with Elektra (Sophie Marceau), and also develops Bond's humanity. Not only is 007 vulnerable to injury, something that proves pivotal to the plot, but he is also susceptible to Elektra's charms - unlike most of his previous, more casual conquests, Bond is unable to shrug off her betrayal.

The surprises provided by scriptwriters Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Bruce Feirstein include the very nature of Elektra (or rather, this would have been surprising, had the movie's pre-publicity not spilled the beans). Thanks to a splendid two-faced performance by Marceau, Elektra defies Bond-movie convention by being both a Bond girl and a villain on equal par with Robert Carlyle's sadistic yet almost sympathetic Renard. The heavy involvement of M (the dependable Judy Dench) is also extremely welcome, and the danger in which she is placed quite unexpected, though it does owe a debt to Kingsley Amis' Bond novel Colonel Sun. The writers also find inspiration for Elektra as villain/love interest in John Gardner's For Special Services. Nor is the work of Ian Fleming overlooked. Aside from the title (the Bond family motto first mentioned in On Her Majesty's Secret Service) the torture chair used on 007 is very Fleming, being a more brutal and less fantastical instrument than the usual Bond-movie devices, such as Goldfinger's laser or the centrifuge in Moonraker.

On the subject of the title, The World is Not Enough is about as relevant to the plot as A View to a Kill's title was back in 1985, justified only by a single name check in the dialogue! And while I'm splitting hairs, if Renard has no sense of touch, how is he able to climb without constantly looking to check the positions of his hands and feet? It would be like climbing a ladder with numb limbs.

TWINE is also note-worthy for the touching swansong of Desmond Llewelyn as Q. It is eerily uncanny that he died in a road accident so soon after completing this movie. The region 2 special edition DVD includes a tribute to Llewelyn, with a medley of Q's greatest moments.

Making his first appearance as Q's successor, R, John Cleese provides an amusing couple of scenes. It's also great to see the return of Robbie Coltrane as GoldenEye's Valentin Zukovsky, in a significantly larger role this time - larger in terms of screen time, I mean! And Denise Richards provides glamour, conviction and witty repartee as Bond's ultimate love interest, Dr Christmas Jones, who is also deeply involved in the thick of the action.

Composer David Arnold develops the deliberately traditional style of his action music in Tomorrow Never Dies, adding punchy layers of synthesised dance rhythms, a similar but more intricate approach to that taken by John Barry in The Living Daylights.

The special edition DVD is absolutely packed with features, including two audio commentaries, three documentaries, two trailers and the video to Garbage's title song (one of the better examples of recent years). In addition, The Secrets of 007 dissects nine stunt or effects-based sequences, revealing storyboard excerpts, various views of the filming, and individual elements that went into creating the finished product. A gadget worthy of Q himself, the weekend will not be enough to fully explore the joys contained on this DVD.

Richard McGinlay