Bond-arama: No. 0018 The World Is Not Enough (1999)

Today we continue our journey through the James Bond films with No. 0018 of 0023: The World Is Not Enough. Bond films always seem to have a theme. . . sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. The theme in this film was “confused.” The motives, the plot, and even the action were all confused. This film probably should have been lower on our countdown except for the stiff competition it faced.

Plot Quality: The plot stinks. World revolves around the assassination of a billionaire oil tycoon by KGB agent-turned-terrorist Renard (Robert Carlyle). This turns into a scheme to trigger a nuclear explosion near Istanbul so that a Russian oil pipeline would be useless, which would increase the value of a competing pipeline. The plot is hatched, possibly, by Renard. I say “possibly” because the film isn’t all that clear. It might also have been hatched by the billionaire’s daughter Elektra (Sophie Marceau). She was a kidnap victim of Renard who now seems to be his lover and his boss, though she also answers to him. . . depending on the scene.

Anyhoo, the story begins with Bond and the billionaire visiting a Swiss banker to buy a report stolen from MI-6. The banker gets killed. Why? Something to do with the plot. Then Bond and the banker return to MI-6 Headquarters, where the billionaire gets blown up by booby-trapped money – this is one of those booby traps which takes precognition to work. Bond, of course, sees the killer, who just happens to be hanging around outside in the Thames river waiting to be spotted. A boat chase ensues, which results in a hotair balloon escape... because those are fast and agile escape vehicles.

Bond then flies to scenic Upper Krapistan (f.k.a. Azerbaijan) where villainess Elektra tries to convince him that he’s got nothing to worry about. She then has him attacked by winged monkey, i.e. guys on paraglider-equipped motorcycles, which kind of contradicts her plan of telling Bond there’s nothing to worry about. Bond then discovers that Elektra’s head of security is linked to Renard. Oh no!

Bang! We’re off to scenic Lower Krapistan (f.k.a. Kazakhstan) where we meet silicon-based ditz Denise Richards who is actually playing nuclear scientist Christmas Jones. Bond and Renard fight and everyone gets trapped in a nuclear silo. Bond escapes and goes back to Krapistan, where M gets kidnapped by Elektra because she’s angry at M as well. Bond is then attacked by helicopters with tree-cutting blades because that looks cool. He is captured by Elektra, but freed by a Russian mobster, and kills Elektra and saves M. Eventually, they all end up on a submarine where Renard intends to inject plutonium taken from the missile in Lower Krapistan and blow up Istanbul. Good riddance, I say. Of course, Bond saves the day.

Bond Quality: This was Brosnan’s third film and overall he was a decent Bond. He was always suave and, once his confidence grew, he handled the other aspects of Bond quite nicely as well. Unfortunately, he probably peaked in his prior film, Tomorrow Never Dies, and this was not his best outing. For one thing, Brosnan was stuck with some very poor material. By and large, he was just a tourist in his own movie as he rarely drove events. Even worse, he seemed to struggle with his chemistry with the Bond girls. Elektra was too much in control of their relationship for him to come across as Bond and he seemed too uninterested in Jones. In fact, the only person he really had solid chemistry with was M (Judy Dench).

The Bond Girl: This film has two Bond girls, but I’m only going to talk about Denise Richards here. Casting Richards as anything more than a stripper or cheerleader is a stretch and casting her as a nuclear scientist fell flat. She’s a ditz who adds little to the film. Most Bond girls add a sense of glamour, she didn’t. Most Bond girls add a high degree of sexual tension with Bond, Richards didn’t. Most Bond girls present a challenge for Bond; they are always involved some way in the scheme and they either need to be won over, controlled or killed. Not Richards. She’s just a bystander Bond runs across. If most Bond girls are on unobtainable object of desire wrapped in a dangerous package, Richards is a stripper looking for a ride home.

Villain Quality: There are two villains in this film, if you exclude the writer. Unfortunately, neither is all that great. On the one hand, you have Robert Carlyle as Renard. He’s an ex-KGB agent who has become a world famous terrorist. The other is Elektra, the daughter of the dead billionaire.

The problem here is that the relationship between the two isn’t clear and it appears contradictory. Renard kidnapped Elektra at one point and they became lovers. Yet, Elektra kills her father as revenge for using her as bait to catch Renard. That is a confused motive as one would assume that she would feel happy to have found Renard. Moreover, as the plot moves forward, it is implied that Renard is taking orders from her. I say “implied” because the film is never clear, but the film basically shifts midway through from having Renard driving the scheme to having Elektra driving the scheme. At one point, Elektra even seems happy to let Renard die. This doesn’t make a lot of sense. If he’s the evil terrorist mastermind, why is he taking orders from his former victim? I suspect we’re supposed to believe that Elektra is a psychopath and Renard fell for her in some sort of reverse Stockholm Syndrome, but the story just never makes any of this clear.

Moreover, Elektra’s revenge motive doesn’t mesh with her motive being economic, which is the motive driving the main plot. According to the main plot, Elektra wants to blow up Istanbul to destroy a Russian pipeline. She wants to do this to raise the value of her own pipeline and she’s clearly been planning this for months. But think about that. Until she killed her father a few days ago, she didn’t own the pipeline, so why is she so obsessed with coming up with insane ways to improve its value? That doesn’t make a lot of sense. You would think she would own it for a while and see how it works before she decided her best plan was to set off a nuke to destroy a competitor.

Further, the scheme itself is bizarre. Bond schemes always need to be larger than life, but they simultaneously need to sound plausible. This scheme sits on the border of plausible. The problem here is the proportionality. There are easier ways to increase the value of a pipeline. And even if she pulls this off, she still won’t even own a monopoly as there are other pipelines and thousands of tankers that could be used as alternatives. Nor is a monopoly all that great in this instance because she doesn’t own the oil, she just transports it, and with oil being a commodity, there no chance she can demand more than market prices.

Ultimately, everything here is confused. Is her motive personal or business? And if it’s business, why be so psychotic about a business she didn’t own until a couple days ago and without more reason to believe it will really benefit her? The whole relationship with Renard feels like an add-on just to give the plot a “big reveal” halfway through as Bond discovers she’s the real villain. Beyond that, their relationship is simply confused and inconsistent. Why she thinks she can get away with playing innocent as she has Bond attacked and then kidnaps M isn’t clear either. And if she really wanted to kill Bond, why not just shoot him on one of their dates? Why try any number of low-probability-of-success attacks? It feels like the writer was writing a caricature of a James Bond story.

All in all, the film has the elements of a Bond film, so you can’t complain about that. It just doesn’t use them very well. It’s not that the film ever insults you, it just doesn’t quite come together. That’s why this film is No. 0018 of 0023.