The World Is Not Enough (1999) – Pierce Brosnan

I rate this movie on a par with the other three Bond movies starring Pierce Brosnan. I rate it just OK – no better or worse – on a par with most Bond movies from the previous three strong eras (Connery, Moore and Dalton).

The main women in this movie include French actress Sophie Marceau who plays Elektra King, with vibes of Liz Hurley with a French twist – not quite as beautiful as Hurley but not terrible far off. Not the best Bond girl of all time, but comfortably above average. She’s roughly on a par with Polish actress Izabella Scorupco (playing Natalya Simonova) from Brosnan’s first Bond movie, GoldenEye. An hour in, we meet the second of two Bond girls from this movie, the silicone-enhanced American actress Denise Richards who plays Dr Christmas Jones. Sshe’s also not the best Bond girl ever, but is probably above average if you can forgive her plastic components. She provides a nice mix of styles when contrasted with Sophie Marceau here.

We know a James Bond movie loves a ski chase, and this one is no different. It’s pretty good one too, with parahawks (paraglider snowmobiles with extra parachutes and guns) chasing James & Elektra down a snowy mountainside.

We know a James Bond movie loves a boat chase, and there’s a decent one in this movie too, near the start.

Cool gadgets James is equipped with here include a protective bouncy ball that wraps around him and Elektra when he sees an avalanche coming, and x-ray vision glasses.

The main antagonist, called Renard, played by Robert Carlyle, comes across as a fairly feeble guy acting like a hard man, which is never impressive to see. He has vibes of Richard Hammond (from Top Gear) on steroids. Brosnan acting slick is bad enough.

The ending is quite hard to rewatch when you’ve seen it a few times before and remember the rough gist of it. By the time James gets captured by Bullion and led to Elektra & Renard, all the good stuff has pretty much passed and it’s a hard-to-rewatch ending from there on out.

Bullion himself is a secondary character (not a main character, but it’s not a very minor role either – somewhere in the middle) played quite well by British DJ, Clifford Joseph Price aka Goldie. He stands out with his golden tooth caps and could have been just as good a main antagonist as Robert Carlyle, if not better. Probably much better in fact.

The closing catchphrases and punchlines are also a bit more explicit and over cheesy than they ought to be, for my taste, not only because the characters don’t deliver them well. The humour is really substandard in the Brosnan era altogether, with the exception of the odd genuinely funny line in each movie. Still, these movies are far more watchable than those from the Daniel Craig era, for my taste – I’ve never actually managed to watch a single one of his Bond movies for more than a few minutes – that’s how much worse it gets when Brosnan’s gone, as if the intrinsic quality of the series hasn’t nosedived enough already. No amount of crazy high budgets can turn Brosnan into a better Bond than Connery, Moore or Dalton, and no amount of crazy high budgets can make Craig remotely convincing as James Bond.