Main cast: Pierce Brosnan (James Bond), Judi Dench (M), Sophie Marceau (Elektra King), Denise Richards (Christmas Jones), Robbie Coltrane (Valentin Zukovsky), Colin Salmon (Charles Robinson), Desmond Llewelyn (Q), John Cleese (R), Samantha Bond (Miss Moneypenny), and Robert Carlyle (Renard)
Director: Michael Apted

Poor James Bond. With the advent of the new millennium, he’s getting more and more geriatric and increasingly getting upstaged by the special effects and villains. As we moviegoers become more and more exposed to increasingly sophisticated story lines, James Bond’s tomcat promiscuity and reliance on cartoony gadgets can become somewhat ridiculous. In The World Is Not Enough, while Mr Brosnan dons the Bond tux exceedingly well, his limelight is stolen by the other cast members, even Miss Moneypenny. Poor James.

This time James Bond protects the daughter of an oil tycoon after he unwittingly aided the bad guys in her father’s assassination. M tells him to be Elektra King’s shadow, but cautions him that shadows are always ahead or behind, never on top. A villain named Renard is out for Elektra’s head, and this Renard has a bullet lodged in his brain. The bullet will eventually kill him but in the meanwhile he can’t feel pain. Hence Renard’s the closest thing to Superman in the free world. Does that mean Renard will go around terrorizing innocent souls, pillaging and plunder at will because he can stop bullets with his hand? No, he hides in the shadows and snarls. Although he does play with burning hot coals and smash his fists through tabletops just to remind us that he can’t feel pain. Renard clearly hasn’t been watching those Superman reruns enough.

Then in the foray comes Dr Christmas Jones, a nuclear physicist who looks just like Denise Richards. That’s convincing casting. Christmas Jones is definitely pointing the way to progress, but she isn’t using her brains to do so, if you know what I mean.

Now, this is a James Bond movie, right? So why is he upstaged by his fellow cast members? M plays a larger role in this movie, and Judi Dench’s ability to deliver her corny lines with a straight face is simply marvelous. She radiates class even when she’s poking at a clock with a broomstick. Samantha Bond’s Miss Moneypenny is teasing and catty, simply a delight in the way she hisses at a dumb bimbo Doctor who succumbed to Bond’s manly pogo stick. Moneypenny’s the true Bond Girl, if you ask me. She’s the one who doesn’t end up a notch in James’ bedpost. She’s holding out for better things, aren’t you, you smart lady? There’s a subtle and rather moving tribute to the original M too (watch whose portrait is hung behind M’s desk), and other in-jokes that would delight Bond veterans. And oh, let’s hope John Cleese’s R will make a comeback in the next Bond movie. Notice that I never mentioned a thing about Bond. Somehow the scriptwriters, intent on dishing out witty lines, inadvertently gave the best lines to everyone but Bond. It says a lot that Bond’s moment of glory is in the first half-hour, when he adjusts his tie while being submerged underwater.

Electra King radiates sex appeal with every move, and her blend of feminine cunning and vulnerability is enigmatic enough to give the story the sexual tension absent in the script. Renard is surprisingly moving as a man whose villainy is touched by a somewhat noble – if twisted – love he has for the real villain, whom he is willing to spend the last days of his life pleasing. If he is to die, let he die while carrying out the mission that would prove his devotion to her. His eyes, filled with raw anguish, when Bond tells him that she is dead, is haunting; Renard is one of the best-fleshed and three-dimensional villain in a Bond movie, and his Bonnie-and-Clyde relationship with the Real Villain deserve a better movie.

But hey, if Bond is bland, he’s in good company with Christmas, who is basically eye candy and nothing else. She doesn’t even carrying pom-poms as Bond skewers the bad guys, she is more of a tag along. It seems her only function is to dress up like Lara Croft and be the brunt of Christmas jokes (“I thought Christmas only comes once a year”). I find it insulting that she’s made a nuclear physicist. Why not make her the bunny girl hired to entertain the soldiers? At least then my credulity won’t be pushed this far by this supposedly-intelligent but ultimately brainless and useless bimbo.

The World Is Not Enough has its moments, but always with everyone but Bond. This movie should be called James Bond Ain’t Delivering Enough. Perhaps it’s time to go back to the drawing board.