Post by ronnierocketago on Nov 28, 2008 17:43:24 GMT
THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH (1999) - **1/2
Watching this and DIE ANOTHER DAY, I may have figured out the fatal flaw in each of those lame Pierce Brosnan 007 entries. They both suffer in that they each had great potential to be pure action pulp entertainment, and they both friggin blew it by being pointlessly convulted, and hampered by sticking to the ole creaking franchise formula, boom or bust.
THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH though is different in that it also suffers from the fact that the producers at EON apparently never did agree on what the exact plot is, and wow that just infuriates the hell out of me. To use a sports analogy, WORLD is Peter Warrick. If you don't remember him, he was an all-star college football wide-receiver at Florida State University and front-runner for the Heisman Trophy until he and a friend decided to shoplift. Yes, a guy that surely was going to make millions in the NFL from a contract signing bonus alone gets busted by the cops for stealing $400 worth of clothes. He loses the trophy, and he might in fact be more remembered by some for that crime than leading FSU to a national championship.
In other words, so much potential but it just fucked itself needlessly.
I mean why until CASINO ROYALE did EON finally figure out not to ruin some badass action cinema potential? EON at this time reminds me of the current Oakland Raiders, that once proud NFL franchise now wonders why it can't win anymore, and it's usually blamed on bad coaches, overpaid players, biased news reporting, an outdated stadium...you know, everything but the foolish meddling Nazi-fan dinosaur of an owner in Al Davis.
Take for instance the villain in Renard (Robert Carlyle), a terrorist who survived a gunshot to the head, but the bullet can't be removed, and it's a terminal wound. That's right, if Bond had decided instead to go on vacation instead of trying to kill or stop him, then Renard is dead anyway. That's so damn brilliant in that instead of trying to conquer or destroy the world or whatever politicalism, Renard could simply be a dying man who decides to leave our world in a big bang that nobody will ever forget, which makes him unpredictable of the worst kind. Consider the scene when Brosnan threatens to shoot him to find out the scheme, and Renard calls on his bluff. I mean what is Bond gonna do, kill a dead man?
But instead EON blows this great opportunity for the 007 franchise because they mixed it with another plot, that of an oil heiress (Sophie Marceau) that Renard had captured years earlier and tortured/brainwashed this side of Patty Hearst. With Bond assigned to protect her, the problem with her whole tragic seductress that Bond falls for is that you just see her true allegiances revealed by at least half a hour before the movie finally gets around to it (it's DIE ANOTHER DAY all over again) and wow we're bored waiting for the inevitable.
Now look, if you've seen enough movies you earn a basic predictability of what will happen and detect possible plot turns, but even then the good films have a certain dance or protocol to them. To put it another way, if WORLD had made us buy or believe that Bond falls hard for a woman that he will have to murder to save the Earth, then we the audiences flirt right back in playing coy. I mean did anyone before seeing THE DARK KNIGHT or PREDATOR or IRON MAN or RETURN OF THE JEDI or any 007 picture in general, expect the main hero to seriously die? Of course not, but those pictures certainly tried to convince us that it was a very distinct possibility.
That my friends is the magic of moviemaking right there, when you still surprisely engage people, even after they think they have the medium figured out down to a cold science.
But with WORLD, we don't ever buy or even give a damn about Marceau being in league with the villain the whole time, which really shocks me in retrospect considering the director. WORLD wasn't shot by some action hack auteur monkey like DIE ANOTHER DAY helmer Lee Tamahori, but a generally respected filmmaker in Michael Apted. His filmography includes COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER (which won Sissy Spacek her Oscar), the underrated adaptation of GORKY PARK (where William Hurt kicked ass), and GORILLAS IN THE MIST (which got Sigourney Weaver an Oscar nomination). My point is, Apted knows how to generally work with actors and muster the best out of them. But if I know Brosnan is money and maybe Marceau is capable (haven't seen her French movies), I just fail to understand how Apted fails with them. Then again, he also shot the idiotic Jennifer Lopez feminist exploitation picture ENOUGH. I certainly had enough of WORLD.
What's worse about that whole bungled and badly mismanaged femme fatale angle, it really pisses away the great potential of the dead-man-with-nothing-to-lose angle by making him help pull off the nuking of a Russian oil pipeline so to help an ultra-rich capitalist bitch even wealthier at the cost of millions of lives, ala GOLDFINGER. Each plot seperately could have worked individually into a solid 007 movie (hell, the previous flick TOMORROW NEVER DIES reused that GOLDFINGER model) but together, whatever attributes or positives are neutralized and we get stuck with a big blog of nothing worth a shit.
You probably have noticed that I haven't written anything about Denise Richards. Everyone and their mothers have mocked WORLD for the former Playboy model being casted as a nuclear scientist, and I'll just say that they all discriminate against beautiful smart scientists worldwide who also have posed nude for magazines on several occasions and were foolish enough to marry Charlie Sheen. Not all of them are stereotypical ugly or very plain or carry common sense, you know? This is the 21st Century folks, let's try to progress ok? But I'll agree with them though that from WORLD to STARSHIP TROOPERS to WILD THINGS, Richards's acting caliber is similar to Bridgette Nielsen, which is none. Plus her stupid name of Christmas Jones is the source of arguably the worst 007 pun of all time. Wait for it....
"I thought Christmas only came once a year."
ARRRRRRRRRRRRGH! [/i] Damn that groaner makes the audience want to pull a Van Gogh on their ears.
All that said, or in spite, WORLD flows as a very forgettable mindless expensive action extravaganza. If DIE ANOTHER DAY annoyed me hard, WORLD doesn't as much if only because I was more bored than jerked around. There are even some small things I liked in WORLD. I dug that shot when Brosnan outright murders a henchman, steals his uniform, stuffs the corpse into a car trunk, and drives off. No self-defense nonsense, Bond is willing to be a bad mother fucker to get the dirty job done. I also liked how after yet another snow chase sequence within the 007 franchise, and several motor snowmobiles crash and burn, that one of the villain's thugs whines that all those wrecked vehicles were rental and were due back by thursday. Do superbaddies get special insurance to deal with such everyday problems?
I also sorta liked how a character surprisingly gets killed off, and the boat chase at MI6 is thrilling and well-coordinated by Second Unit Director/stuntman Vic Armstrong. Also the theme song by Garbage might very well be better than the movie itself.But alas, if THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH, then there just wasn't enough of those good moments within WORLD to make up for a bland fusion of two potentially good plottings.
Now I've bitched repeatedly about EON reusing the same Bond franchise formula for decades, which includes the ritual scenes with Q (Desmond Llewelyn) showing off his new deadly and helpful gadgets. Even if most of those 007 films could have been superior if without such obligations, but I do must admit that I still always enjoyed Llewelyn, if because the humor arises from his Q being a hardworking professional but practical nerd who always is pained by the fact that Bond from Sean Connery to Brosnan always wrecked his beautiful inventions. WORLD was Llewelyn's 17th and last 007 flick, and died in a car crash a month after WORLD's release.
I do wonder if the reason that the recent Daniel Craig 007 movies haven't rushed to bring back Q is because, besides wanting to freshen up the Bond formula, is that nobody could really replace Llewelyn. He did what no Bond star has ever done, which was defined a role so well that nobody afterwards could ever stand out in that part, not even the great John Cleese.
So Q finally gets one over James Bond after all....