Twenty years ago, back in 1999, The World Is Not Enough was released. The third James Bond film that starred Pierce Brosnan as 007, the internationally famous (or infamous, depending on your POV) British secret agent, TWINE has Bond trying to protect Elektra King, an oil heiress (played by French actress Sophie Marceau) from a terrorist named Renard (Robert Carlyle) who had kidnapped her years earlier. King had escaped from Renard’s captivity after shooting dead two of his men. But when Elektra’s father is assassinated by Renard, Bond suspects the terrorist is now coming after her for further revenge.
TWINE was a different Bond film right out of the gate with the selection of Michael Apted as the director. Apted is most famous for the “7 Up” documentary series, which follows a group of British people starting from age seven and revisiting them every seven years onward. He’s also directed Sigourney Weaver to a Best Actress Oscar in Gorillas in the Mist, as well as helming Thunderheart, with Val Kilmer and Sam Shepard, and Blink, with Madeline Stowe and Adrian Quinn and Nell, with Jodie Foster.
Yet given Apted’s gritty taste in films both true and fictional, TWINE still has its fair share of the James Bond series’ over the top stunt work, which can oftentimes boarder on the ridiculous. A clear example of this is the opening boat chase on the Thames in London, where Bond somehow briefly “drives” his boat over dry land via a shortcut (did his boat sprout wheels from the hull?). But this is nothing new; the Bond films stopped being spy movies long before TWINE, focusing instead on being action films with big-budget stunt sequences that strain belief.
TWINE still attempts to shake up the familiar Bond formula by having Elektra--who starts out as the typical Bond girl who goes to bed with 007--wind up being the central villain of the film. Sophie Marceau was perfectly cast for this part, easily playing both the sympathetic “wounded bird” whom Bond falls for, as well as the conniving manipulating mastermind who even has Renard under her spell, who turns out to be Elektra’s willing sidekick all the way back to when he first abducted her.
Robert Carlyle is also superb here as Renard, who’s slowly dying from a old bullet wound to his head, which numbs him to pain. Like Marceau, Carlyle also excels at playing the duality of his character: at first a tough, ruthless killer with nothing to lose, and then a cuckolded puppet whose strings are being pulled by Elektra. This complexity in the villains is a welcome change after the one dimensional baddie, the media mogul Elliot Carver, in the previous Bond outing, Tomorrow Never Dies.
However, TWINE is not without its own one dimensional characters, like Dr. Christmas Jones (Denis Richards), who seems to be given this name just so the writers could have Bond make some lame jokes at her expense at the tail end of the film. To her credit, Richards earnestly does her level best to play a nuclear physicist who aids Bond (and in doing so, becomes the de facto Bond Girl of TWINE) but is unfortunately sabotaged by the costume designer, who dresses her in a “barely there” outfit in her initial scene. While she may not be memorable, if nothing else, Richards has a sturdy presence, and I think she’s undeserving of the “worst Bond Girl” title some have given her since this movie’s release.
The rock group Garbage provides the splendid title song, and TWINE winds up being not only the very last Bond film of the twentieth century, but, sadly, it’s also the last appearance of Desmond Llewelyn. The actor played the beloved ’Q’, the legendary quartermaster going back to the Sean Connery films who outfitted James Bond with all the gadgets he needed for his missions--and who was always annoyed with Bond for constantly breaking his toys. Llewelyn would die in a car crash at the age of 85 the same year TWINE was released. TWINE gives him a nice sendoff scene that has become poignant to watch since the actor’s death.
So how does The World Is Not Enough hold up after twenty years? Very well. Despite the silliness that creeps in, Apted manages to invoke a few surprises here and there by tweaking the old Bond film tropes, and the climatic battle aboard a hijacked Russian submarine is genuinely riveting to watch. Pierce Brosnan turns in a solid performance as Bond, dealing with the conflicting emotions of having to battle a villain who is also a woman he sincerely loves. TWINE remains one of the better, more enjoyable Pierce Brosnan films (it's my favorite of Brosnan's Bond films) and is still highly recommended. --SF
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