Review of The World Is Not Enough (1999) by Kai82 — 04 Jan 2021

The nineteenth James Bond movie and the end of an era as it is the last appearance of Q played by Desmond Llewelyn. He became a pop culture legend along with James Bond and everyone of us wanted his awesome gadgets or be as smart as him.

I want to thank him for everything. John Cleese is introduced here and took over. Good decision for me and Desmond Llewelyn wanted someone to take the mantle as he got old and thought that he could not be forever Q (He will always be Q in our memories;-).

The story starts when Sir Robert King a close friend of M is assassinated inside the MI6 headquarter and James Bond gives a great chase after the assassin. Later he is send to protect Elektra King the daughter of Robert King who does not trust the MI6 because of their failing with her father and rescuing her when she was kidnapped.

The rest after this intro I wont spoil. This is the strangest movie in the franchise for me. On paper it has an awesome story or good ideas but it never got me hooked. I never felt much immersion and still today I do not know why exactly.

It has a great intro, an amazing twist and characters that work. The action scenes are also well done. If I have to explain it I would say it feels like they did a to do list and try to fill the rest up with awesomeness.

It is somehow a bit empty. The acting is good for franchise standards. Pierce Brosnan delivers and Sophie Marceau is truly excellent. Renard is an interesting villain but will not be that high in the favorite list.

The older movies have the best villains like Scaramanga, Jaws, Goldfinger and Blofeld. Strangely the newer movies often struggle with creating good villains. But back to this review. The action and special effects work well.

I see no missteps here. The soundtrack is decent, neither great nor awful. Overall this is my least liked James Bond movie to date. I know “Die Another Day” is considered by many as inferior and worst movie in the franchise.

However “Die Another Day” has good ideas and even if there are awful scenes it got more immersion for me.