The World Is Not Enough opens with a pre-title Thames speedboat chase of such sustained ambition that it sets an appetite for scale the rest of the film largely honours. Michael Apted's 1999 film is held back not by a failure of craft but by a single casting decision that its best elements cannot fully absorb.
At a Glance
Director: Michael Apted
Runtime: 128 minutes
Starring: Pierce Brosnan, Sophie Marceau, Robert Carlyle, Denise Richards, Judi Dench
Release: 1999
Critics Rating: ★★★ (3/5 stars, ambitious and often rewarding, undermined by casting)
Audience Rating: ★★★ (3/5 stars, entertaining despite its limitations)
Plot
Bond is assigned to protect Elektra King, the daughter of a murdered oil magnate, and uncovers a plot involving the anarchist terrorist Renard to detonate a nuclear device in Istanbul. The pre-title Thames speedboat chase is the franchise's most spectacular pre-title sequence, a piece of large-scale practical action filmmaking that remains one of the most impressive openings in Bond history, establishing an energy and a physical ambition the film sustains through its best passages. The plot's central revelation, that Bond's apparent protectee is in fact the film's primary villain, is among the franchise's most structurally satisfying twists, and the script handles the double identity with more care than the franchise usually brought to its more complex narrative turns. The nuclear device plot is the film's weakest structural element, a conventional third-act mechanism that sits uneasily against the more psychologically engaged material that precedes it.
Characters
Sophie Marceau's Elektra King is the franchise's most sophisticated female villain, a woman of personal complexity whose identity as Bond's apparent protectee gives the plot its most satisfying revelation. Marceau plays the character with a theatrical authority and an emotional intelligence that make Elektra the franchise's most fully realised female antagonist, and her scenes with Brosnan in the film's second half carry a psychological tension the franchise had rarely attempted. Robert Carlyle's Renard is a terrorist who cannot feel pain whose condition gives the character a genuine pathos the more formulaically motivated franchise villains seldom achieved. Brosnan's Bond is given the franchise's most emotionally demanding material in this entry, and his performance in the scenes with Marceau is the most engaged of his franchise career. Denise Richards' Christmas Jones is the film's central casting problem, a nuclear physicist whose credibility gap no amount of directorial craft can bridge, and the film's strongest passages are consistently those in which she is least prominent. Judi Dench's M is given her most substantial role to this point, with her personal connection to Elektra giving the film its most resonant supporting arc.
Meaning / Themes
The film's central concern is the relationship between victimhood and villainy: Elektra's status as a kidnapping survivor and her transformation into the film's primary antagonist is a meditation on trauma and moral corruption the more rigidly motivated franchise villains seldom explored. The suggestion that Bond's institutional loyalty blinds him to the human cost of his own methods gives the film a critical edge the more straightforwardly heroic franchise entries rarely attempted, and it is this dimension that gives the film its claim to being the Brosnan era's most searching entry. The film asks uncomfortable questions about the relationship between protection and control that it does not entirely answer, and is more interesting for the attempt.
Direction
Apted's direction is measured and attentive, with a command of the film's varied international locations and its more complex moments that gives the film a visual coherence and tonal range the franchise's more conventional entries rarely sustain. The pre-title Thames speedboat chase is the directorial centrepiece in terms of scale, but Apted's more significant achievement is the handling of the character scenes: the exchanges between Brosnan and Marceau in the film's second half are directed with a restraint and a psychological attentiveness that give them a tension the franchise had rarely managed. The Azerbaijani pipeline sequence lacks the invention of the film's best set-pieces, but the Bilbao opening and the Istanbul submarine climax demonstrate a consistent command of varied locations and registers. Apted pitches the film at a register of psychological weight and emotional intelligence, with a tonal depth the more conventionally action-focused Brosnan entries seldom pursued. The tonal shift between the film's more psychologically engaged passages and its more conventional action sequences is occasionally jarring, and the film never fully resolves the tension between its ambitions and its obligations to the franchise formula. Garbage's title song is one of the franchise's most atmospheric, and David Arnold's score gives the film a weight that suits its more searching intentions.
Final Verdict: The Brosnan era's most layered entry, elevated by Sophie Marceau's franchise-best female villain performance and held back by a casting decision that its best elements cannot overcome. Marceau's Elektra is the franchise's most psychologically compelling female antagonist, Carlyle's Renard is a villain of real pathos, and Apted's handling of the character scenes gives the film a tension and an intelligence that make it a more rewarding film than its central limitation might suggest. Its treatment of trauma and moral corruption is now recognised as one of the franchise's most thoughtful achievements, and it is increasingly discussed as a transitional work pointing toward the psychological depth the Craig era would later pursue more fully.