The World Is Not Enough (1999)

Budget 135 million. Opening dates: UK November 26, 1999; US November 19, 1999

World Box Office $352.030660 million

Originally Written
Thursday, April 19, 2007 

The World Is Not Enough is in my opinion the best of the Brosnan Bond films.  I'm sure plenty of people would disagree with me (all you Goldeneye fans) but this is the first Brosnan films that actually attempts to take itself seriously and has a nice balance in terms of good action, quality acting and a descent storyline. And believe it or not I even liked Denise Richards!

 

I love how the critics seem to have pretty quickly written off the Brosnan films as silly and a wastes of time (the lone exception being Goldeneye, which in my opinion was the worst) yet if you look back at some of the worst Bond films, mainly starring Roger Moore, all of those seemed to pull off high ratings from the critics. So while Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day are all settling in the range of a 50% on the Rotten Tomatoes scale some of the worst Bond's such as Live And Let Die seem to receive a fresh rating up in the 70%, doesn't quite add up to me!

In this adventure Bond takes it upon himself to offer protection to the lovely Electra King who recently became the heiress of her family's vast oil pipelines. Bond believes King's life could be in danger after the murder of her father and believes it all might be tied to her recent abduction by terrorists. Bond soon begins to think he may have the wool pulled over his eyes when he meets Renard, King's former captor and an international terrorist. Too much doesn't correctly add up and it appears that the only people who might truly be in danger are himself, M and anyone standing between Electra King and her oil empire!

What I liked about The World Is Not Enough is that it was pretty consistent in terms of entertainment value and the story's progression. While Tomorrow Never Dies only had outstanding action sequences and nothing more, this film manages to balance every aspect of the Bond franchise nicely into a package that is never boring. Also another plus compared to the previous film is the story isn't nearly as ridiculous and corny, the acting is better, the villains are better and the Bond girl hearkens back to the franchises better days.

 

Overall, The World Is Not Enough is in my opinion the strongest Brosnan Bond film out of the four, slightly beating out Die Another Day. Still nothing worthy of a 9 and certainly not a 10 but still a worthy edition to the franchise. In the end, the film's entertainment value is high and prior to watching this for the first time I half expected it to be total crap, but it turned out to be a pleasant surprise.  I also found Bond going to Kazakhstan to be quite amusing, after the country's recent claim to fame with Borat.  

8/10