The World Is Not Enough (1999)

 

007 is assigned by M to protect an oil heiress from her former kidnapper Renard, an international terrorist who can’t feel pain.

We are into film three of the Brosnan era, the film was released just on the verge of a new millennium and is the last Bond film of the twentieth century. A lot to live up to? Don’t fear, not for this film crew. The films opening sequence sets you up for exactly what your watching, the films pre-titles runs in at fifteen minutes, with three individual action sequences and a meeting in M’s office culminating with a boat chase on the Thames which ends just outside the Millennium Dome, handy considering it’s the Bond film of the millennium! With little time to catch your breath, as the audience, you know you’re watching an event, not just a film.

In the early stages of the film after the titles have run, Bond has his usual Q briefing scene. However, in this film it’s all more poignant as this is Desmond Llewelyn’s final appearance. In the scene we are introduced to his ‘junior’ assistant, R played by the legendary John Cleese. From an assistant being introduced and Llewelyn being at the times in his eighties, you can tell that the producers were putting things in place for the actor to leave the series. What a tragedy that, after a long career and life, Llewelyn died in a car crash just a few months after the release of this film. The scene is a great end to a legend of the Bond family and he is missed as Q still to this day.

The rest of the cast of this adventure is very impressive, well, apart from one entry! Pierce Brosnan by this film could relax and just play the part with his eyes closed, thankfully he does not do this! He again keeps surprising us the viewer, he shows more sides to this character than we’ve seen before. We have the stone killer, charming spy from GoldenEye, the vulnerability that he showed in Tomorrow Never Dies and here we get all that and more. Brosnan brings a loyalty to M, a friendship to his commanding officer, a brothers-in-arms mentality. Brosnan humanises Bond, not just vulnerability, but questions of why he does this life, what does he get from this and who does he truly trust.

Robert Carlyle is billed as the main villain; he plays the terrorist Renard. a man who is slowly dying and feels no pain. Carlyle could have easily overplayed this role and hammed it up. Wisely, he doesn’t and shows his acting skills, he gives us a subtle presence of menace, a man enjoying the evil side of life before his accepted soon demise.

Sophie Marceau is a first, a Bond Girl who is revealed to be the real mastermind villain – Renard is her henchman. She plays the part exceptionally, a true femme fatale, menacing bitchiness without being a screaming banshee villainess. She pays this manipulating evil woman so well, it worries me of the person she really is! I’m sure she’s just a fantastic actress.

Judi Dench’s M has a lot more involvement with this plot, M is even held hostage, not surprising when you have talent like Dench signed to this role and after two previous adventures to introduce Bond’s female boss. Like Brosnan does with Bond – she humanizes her role and shows a vulnerability to her character that pulls you in. You genuinely care about her M. What’s nice is the solid relationship between M and Bond.

The weak link I mentioned, Denise Richards as Dr Christmas Jones, the worst miscasting in Bond films for years. A nuclear scientist? Really? REALLY! She’s useless, just obviously here for the teenage men!

The film, like GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies before it, is again wall-to-wall action, deliberately delivering a high octane fueled adventure. Highlights are the boat chase on the Thames, the ski chase (the first ski action we’ve seen since fourteen years earlier in A View To A Kill – it’s a nice welcome return of ski action), the shoot out in the nuclear bunker where Bond meets Dr Christmas Jones, the bomb inside the pipeline, the helicopter sequence at Zukovsky’s factory and of course a showdown aboard a sinking submarine.

This is a great Bond film, wall-to-wall action and more importantly a strong plot, a plot with twists and turns, and solid performances by the cast (not including Richards!). This Bond film is very much overlooked and underrated by many. This is what a Bond film should be.

Rating: 5 out of 5

 Rhys 

'Now, Pay Attention, 007...': A Tribute To Desmond Llewelyn

For the first time since Daniel Craig has donned the legendary tux, the character Q is to appear in a Bond film. In Skyfall, Q will be played by Ben Whishaw.

Whilst there have been several actors to take the role of Q but, to me, there is only one man worthy of that initial: the late, great Desmond Llewelyn.

Llewelyn played Q, MI6's gadget-master, in no less than seventeen Bond films (starting with From Russia With Love and ending with The World Is Not Enough; Q is only absent from Live And Let Die as producers Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman felt the films were getting too reliant on the gadgets and decided to play them down). Very little is known about Q beyond his work for MI6 although he is referred to as ‘Major Boothroyd’ by Anya in The Spy Who Loved Me.

The gadgets are as integral a part to a Bond film as the villains and the Bond girls. Each film has a scene where Q equips Bond with whatever he may need for that particular mission. Rhys has written a brilliantpiece about the gadgets, so I won't mention too many, but some of my favourites include Bond's attaché case in From Russia With Love, the tooled-up Aston Martin DB5 in Goldfinger and the gyrocopter Little Nellie in You Only Live Twice.

The relationship between Bond and Q is an interesting one. Q seems to view Bond as an eternal adolescent, unable to take things seriously or appreciate the tech he's being given. Q frequently has to ask Bond to 'pay attention' whilst he explains how the gadgets work. Q seems to be generally exasperated with Bond's playboy lifestyle- in Octopussy, he jokes ‘007 on an island populated exclusively by women? We won't see him till dawn!' Q can often be irascible and a bit grouchy but he always takes pride in his gadgets, frequently pointing out a feature he's particularly proud of, and- as he says in Goldfinger- 'I never joke about my work'.

Despite this seeming antagonism, there are hints that Bond and Q have a depth of mutual respect. When Bond gets married at the end of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, he offers Bond a helping hand should he need it outside of MI6 and he poses as Bond's uncle in License To Kill to get some needed kit to him once he's had his 00 status rescinded. Bond tries to dismiss him, but Q rightly states: ‘Oh, don't be an idiot, 007. I know exactly what you're up to, and quite frankly, you're going to need my help. Remember, if it hadn't been for Q Branch, you'd have been dead long ago’

Perhaps the best example of their mutual respect is in The World Is Not Enough. Bond seems genuinely moved at the news of Q's retirement and Q gives him a last piece of advice:

As final exits go, that's a pretty good one. This was Llewelyn’s last Bond film, with John Cleese taking over the role of Q for Die Another Day.

What about the man behind the role?

Llewelyn was born in Newport, South Wales on 12 September 1914. He originally wanted to become a minister but caught the acting bug during his time at Radley College. He has accepted to RADA in the mid 1930s but his acting ambitions were put on hold due to the start of the Second World War. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers but was captured by the German army in France in 1940 and was held as a prisoner-of-war in Colditz for five years. After the war, he resumed his acting career, working with longtime Bond director Terence Young on war movie They Were Not Divided (1950) and was eventually cast as Q. Ironically, despite playing a gadget master on film, Llewelyn was ‘hopeless’ with them in real life.

Outside the Bond franchise, he appeared in uncredited roles in Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet (1948) and Ealing comedy The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), as well as playing George Coggins in Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang (1968) and The Colonel in television series Follyfoot.

Llewelyn sadly passed away in December 1999, at the age of eighty-five, in a car accident, a few weeks after the premiere of The World Is Not Enough. His contribution to the Bond franchise is immeasurable and he is sadly missed.

Ben Whishaw's got some pretty big shoes to fill.

Tez