Dom Robinson reviews
Special Edition
Distributed by
MGM
- Cert:
- Cat.no: 15767 DVD
- Running time: 123 minutes
- Year: 1999
- Pressing: 2000
- Region(s): 2 (UK PAL)
- Chapters: 32 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: English (and hard of hearing)
- Widescreen: 2.35:1
- 16:9-enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: No
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £19.99
- Extras : Scene index, Booklet, Documentaries: "The Making of The
World Is Not Enough", "Bond Cocktail" & "Bond Down River", Featurette: The
Secrets of 007, Music Video, Original Theatrical Trailer, Playstation Game
Trailer, Tribute to Desmond Llewelyn, Animated Main Menu, 2 Audio
Commentary tracks
Director:
(Agatha, Always Outnumbered, Blink, Class Action, Critical Condition, Extreme Measures, Gorillas in the Mist, Stardust)
Producers:
Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson
Screenplay:
Robert Wade and Neal Purvis
Original Score :
Cast :
James Bond: Pierce Brosnan (Dante's Peak, GoldenEye, The Lawnmower Man, Live Wire, The Long Good Friday, Mars Attacks!, The Mirror Has Two Faces, Mrs Doubtfire, The Thomas Crown Affair (1999), Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough)
Elektra: Sophie Marceau (Anna Karenina, Beyond the Clouds, Braveheart, D'Artagnan's Daughter, The World Is Not Enough)
Renard: Robert Carlyle (Carla's Song, Face, The Full Monty, Plunkett and Macleane, Priest, Riff Raff, Trainspotting, The World Is Not Enough, TV: Cracker: To Be A Somebody, Go Now, Hamish MacBeth, Looking After JoJo)
Dr. Christmas Jones: Denise Richards (Starship Troopers, Tail Lights Fade, Wild Things, The World Is Not Enough)
Valentin Zukovsky: Robbie Coltrane (The Adventures of Huck Finn, Alice in Wonderland (1999), GoldenEye, Message in a Bottle, Mona Lisa, Nuns on the Run, The World Is Not Enough, TV: Blackadder, The Comic Strip Presents,
Cracker: To Be A Somebody, Kevin Turvey: The Man Behind the Green Door)
M: Judi Dench (GoldenEye, A Handful of Dust, Macbeth, Mrs Brown, A Room with a View, Shakespeare in Love, Tea with Mussolini, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough)
The World Is Not Enough
is the 19th official James Bond film to hit the big screen and the third to feature
Pierce Brosnan as the superspy.
This time around Bond initially has to retrieve a large sum of money from Spain which is
owned by Sir Robert King (David Calder), with an escape bid that involves abseiling
down the side of the building. As if that wasn't enough of an impressive opener, the story
moves back to London's Bond HQ where King is as rich and as happy as a..er, King, when he
opens the briefcase. Alas, thanks to a booby trap of very clever proportions, the money
explodes and takes him with it.
Being both a personal friend of Bond and M (Judi Dench), things step up a gear and
Bond is assigned to protect King's daughter Elektra (Sophie Marceau), who inherits
her father's oil company and its continuing pipeline construction programme across a number
of countries and is thought to be in grave danger from a madman called Renard (Robert
Carlyle).
Due to an incident before this film takes place, Renard took a bullet in the head from
Valentin Zukovsky (Robbie Coltrane). It didn't kill him but it will eventually
as not even the surgeons could remove it and it continues to bury into his brain and reach
the core. Until then, it affects his senses to the point where he can no longer feel pain.
Every day he will grow stronger until he finally "bites the bullet". Until then, he plans
world domination by threatening it with a big nuclear bomb (well, the old ideas are the
best).
Bond uncovers a conspiracy that links Renard and Elektra, finding that she's not the
sweet seductress he thought she was, but something far less savoury and he hooks up
with the good Bond girl, bomb disposal expert, Dr. Christmas Jones (Denise Richards).
To divulge more would spoil the plot and then there wouldn't be much point in watching the
film, but suffice to say that there are plenty of stunts including a speedboat shoot-out
by the side of the £768 million white elephant (aka The Millennium Dome) which pitches
Bond up against the "Cigar Girl" (Maria Grazia Cucinotta), an underground explosion
of epic proportions after Renard escapes with the bomb (again) and the destruction to end
all destructions as Zukovsky's caviar production factory goes into involuntary liquidation.
About the cast, there's a wealth of talent to be found, but how much of it is actually used?
Firstly, Brosnan is on excellent form as Bond. He carries out the action sequences effortlessly
and reels off the one-liners as if he was born for it. Coltrane is entertaining as his
casino-owning role of Valentin Zukovsky, with a few one-liner quips of his own. Also, Judi
Dench finally gets more to do than just spout orders from London, moving abroad for the first
time in her character's brief history. Denise Richards also performs fine as a Bond girl.
She doesn't appear to have much up top (in her head) as she reads the lines, but she's
clearly been working out and should have been in in line for the role of Lara
Croft when they make the Tomb Raider movie, although that role
has now been taken by
Hackers
actress - and new wife to Billy Bob Thornton - Angelina Jolie,
the daughter of Jon Voight.
Now what's bad about the cast?
There's no really effective bad-guy. Robert Carlyle doesn't appear until 50 minutes into
the film and even then doesn't get to shine as you'd expect. His finest hour, for me, was as
the racist football hooligan in Cracker: To Be A Somebody, but he is so underused
here. I was also hoping for a tense confrontation to be worked in opposing him against
Robbie Coltrane, thus mirroring the same we saw in that show, but they never meet on
camera. Sophie Marceau looks very good - and one of her bedroom scenes had to be shot
16 times to avoid a nipple coming into view - but despite her much-lengthier appearance over
Carlyle, she comes across more as a cold-hearted bitch, than a conscience-free murderer.
Other actors make their presence felt, but only briefly. Gold-toothed pop star Goldie
is Zukovsky's assistant Bull, a henchman used for decorative "ugly bloke" purposes than
anything else and Serena Scott Thomas appears as Bond's GP, Dr. Molly Warmflash
but her hairstyle here really doesn't suit her one bit. Also, Minder's Mr. Chisholm,
Patrick Malahide appears in the opening scene as Lachaise, sporting another dodgy
foreign accent that makes him sound like he's got a frog in his throat.
The regulars, Miss Moneypenny (Samantha Bond), Tanner (Michael Kitchen)
and Robinson (Colin Salmon), turn up to collect their paycheques and 85-year-old
Desmond Llewelyn reprises his role of gadget-freak Q, now training his new
replacement, R (John Cleese, yet again behaving like Basil Fawlty in whatever he
does).
When I wrote my
The World is Not Enough: Cinema review
in November last year, I asked the question... "When will Q leave though?
He isn't prepared to say in this film."
Sadly, the question was answered just before the New Year as the actor was
killed in a road accident when his car crashed. I'm pleased to report that
this disc features a tribute to the man.
Finally, look out for spot-em-or-miss-em happy camp clamper Ray, from BBC1's
docusoap The Clampers, appearing before the opening credits and The Sun's
Bizarre editor, Dominic Mohan, in the casino. When watching the film, I saw the
former but missed the latter, despite having already seen his appearance mentioned and
picture in The Sun.
The film was shot in 2.35:1 Panavision and that has been faithfully represented
here. It's also an anamorphic print, to take full-height advantage of a
widescreen TV screen and the average bitrate is 5.8Mb/s, occasionally
peaking above 8Mb/s.
However, not everything in the garden is lovely as the print is rather on the
dark side with an element of grain in there, which does spoil the enjoyment somewhat.
The sound doesn't disappoint though. Presented in Dolby Digital 5.1,
dialogue is crystal clear and action scenes and explosions will leave the
neighbours deaf for weeks.
Extras :
Chapters :
The usual 32 chapters for an MGM, which is an excellent amount. If only some other DVD
companies could take a lesson from this one.
Languages & Subtitles :
English is the only language on the disc and there are subtitles
for English (and hard of hearing).
And there's more... :
MGM seem to be pulling out all the stops for their Bond collection which has
begun with the first and last film in the series.
- "The Making of The World Is Not Enough" (15 mins): Introduced by
Leanza Cornett, slight relation to IceCream, a grinning all-American
gal and a fairly-standard 'making of' with brief cast interviews with
Brosnan, Robert Carlyle, Desmond Llewelyn, Denise Richards, Sophie Marceau and director
Apted, that offer nothing objective, just yawn-inducing, pre-scripted
fluff to promote the film and the franchise, mixed in with 16:9-cropped clips
from the film. Only Llewelyn's comments are interesting because you
know he'll never be saying any more ever again.
- Bond Cocktail (23 mins): I thought this would be a 38-year
retrospective on the Bond formula and what keeps the 007 action fires burning,
as that's how it seems to set itself out, but it only doffs a cap to Dr. No
and Goldeneye and concentrates more on this film.
There are no surprises
here but more chat from more cast and crew members including Samantha Bond,
the current Miss Moneypenny, 'R' John Cleese, music composer David
Arnold and Garbage's lead singer Shirley Manson. The film
clips included are in their original widescreen ratio this time.
- Bond Down River (25 mins): Every Bond film has one and HAS to have
one - a pre-credits action opener. Hence, it's only fitting that it gets an
engaging 'making of' analysis, right down to the mention of Ray from
"The Clampers". Apted said he wanted to make the Millennium Dome look
heroic - which is only possible by tearing it down and turning it into something
useful! This section is narrated by a man with a strong Scottish accent that
sounds familiar, but I can't place it (and no I'm not trolling and implying
it's Connery at all! :)
It sounds a bit like John Gordon Sinclair, whose last film on DVD was
Gregory's 2 Girls,
but it's not quite there.
- Music Video: Garbage's theme tune, with the same name as the
film, which made No.11 in November last year.
- The Secrets of 007 (23 mins): Nine short dialogue-free pieces showing
how certain stunts were performed, with storyboards, such as Bond's opening
jump from a window, Renard's hologram head, another mention for the boat chase,
the ski scene, Bond's X-ray specs, the explosion at the Nuclear Facility,
the destruction of Zukovsky's caviar factory, the submarine and the delicious
opening credits. Unfortunately, most of the spectacles shown are cropped to
4:3 pan-and-scan.
- A Tribute to Desmond Llewelyn: A 3-minute video montage of the
late actor who starred in 17 of the first 19 official Bond films, with all
clips cropped to 4:3 pan-and-scan, apart from some from the latest film which
are cropped to 16:9.
- Theatrical Trailer (2 mins): in 2.35:1 anamorphic, the original
widescreen ratio. The quality actually looks better here than in the film itself.
- The World Is Not Enough: Playstation Game Trailer (34 seconds): Brief and flashy.
- 2 Audio commentary tracks: One from director Michael Apted
on his own and a second with production designer Peter Lamont, second
unit director Vic Armstrong and music composer David Arnold.
- Booklet: The package is nicely rounded off with a lavish 8-page
booklet containing plenty of pictures and info about the film, the series and
the characters. It also gives a brief, pictured, explanation as to why
widescreen is best.
Menu :
A classy-looking animated and scored main menu is impressive and it explosively
leads to the sub-menus which are static and silent. The initial screen offers you the
choice to start the film, select a scene, choose a language or watch the extras.
When you select 'play movie' Bond appears and gives his trademark fired shot
followed by the blood flowing down.
Also, note that if you linger on any of the sub-menus too long, a 10-second
countdown timer begins then takes you back to the main menu. A nice touch, but
I wish there was an option to stop it doing that in case you're watching late
at night and have to nip to the fridge to grab another cold one without trying
to wake the rest of the house up...
The following is a list of all the Bond films now available in production order
with their dates of release, followed by the unofficial movies:
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
Overall, this is an average Bond film, but then an average Bond film can be a lot
better than most other's best efforts. It'll certainly keep you entertained for its
duration the first time you watch it, but it's not one you'll want to go back to time
and again like some of his other 18 adventures. Also, the picture problem
needs addressing.
