Well, I'm mostly joking - then again, I think Barbel has been a bit tense with me also since I told him to piss off on a point regarding Vincent Price in a fictional movie universe early one morning. BTW when Barbel really hates a Bond movie he types out his review in passive aggressive bold!
Barbel is having a few days rest…apparently something is more important than AJB??? 🤷🏻♂️ 😏😁🤣 or maybe he’s working on his passive/aggressive typography 😬
This is a definite upgrade on GE, well, it couldn’t possibly have been worse.
It doesn’t start well. I hate it when MI6 is looking in on the action and organising what happens next, Bond just becomes a puppet. There’s a lot of shooting and a Firefox scene from the early 80’s. A dirge of a title song follows spoiling a good title sequence from Daniel Kleinman who has taken over from Maurice Binder more than adequately.
Roger Spottiswoode directs very well, his action scenes are exciting and keep the film moving along nicely. We get a proper Bond villain with a decent plot (Jonathan Pryce is excellent) and Michelle Yeoh is a fearless partner for Bond. Brosnan loses the inane grinning from GE but he still cannot deliver the puns with any confidence. Stamper is a decent henchman, by far the best of the Brosnan era. Joe Don Baker returns as Jack Wade and he does his best to imitate Clifton James but fails miserably (James can act). Vincent Schiavelli as Dr Kaufman is a superb character, what a pity his role is so small. The repartee between Bond and Moneypenny is excruciatingly bad. Judi Dench tries to act sternly but fails once again, she is just unbelievable. David Arnold’s score is a marked improvement but the James Bond theme is overused. The Thailand GoldenGun location is used once again without even a mention from Bond that he’s been there before.
It’s an improvement, but Brosnan is not a convincing Bond, he’s too lightweight in the fight scenes, on a par with Roger but way behind the other three who displayed grit in their action scenes.
I must admit TND is one I prefer over GE, even though I can see it’s probably the weaker film. It kicks off so well with one of the best PTSs in the series, and the first couple of acts are incredibly strong. The concept for the villain is one of the best in the series and -sadly- hasn’t aged at all. I love Jonathan Pryce but he’s just missing the menace a truly great villain should have, and Stamper is a bit of a wet squib.
Michelle Yeoh is great though, although it’s one where it’s kind of a shame they end up getting romantically involved at the end because I don’t really buy it with these two; they have little chemistry. The film tends to fall off a bit in the latter half and isn’t as strong as its opening, but it’s still lots of fun.
TND has two of the series all-time best action set pieces in the PTS and car chase, which makes it worth a watch, Brosnan is even stronger, the locations are good, and Arnold’s score is good fun even if it sounds a bit thin nowadays (and I’m still glad the pastiche song Surrender was relegated to the end credits). It’s just loads of fun really.
I tend to be agreeing with @emtiem on all things Bond these days. Yes, I can see that GoldenEye is a more intelligent and more interesting film, with more entertaining and outlandish action scenes - but its interest and intelligence seems to work against it, by showing up how far-fetched or silly the whole thing is. I struggle with those Cold War Bonds, aside from FRWL, as they don't quite gel, I find them not quite enjoyable or credible enough. In particular, stuff like GE or TLD has a few confusing things on early in the movie that don't quite sit right with me.
TND avoids that and it is a warmer, more enjoyable ride that leans into being a modern Bond movie. It doesn't struggle so much. The first hour or so is good stuff on the whole, it hits the beats of YOLT or MR in that we see the villain's dastardly plan unfold early on, then some interaction between Bond and the main villain, Bond being undercover perhaps, then a sexual liaison with the villain's associate, (TND is a bit refreshing in that it's made clear Bond isn't sleeping with Paris just to procure info), some breaking and entering, the villain's payback and so on, but with different locales and updated to a 90s context.
The movie had copious rewrites while filming - has the original script involving the handover of Hong Kong ever surfaced? Rewrites seem to be a staple of the Barbara Broccoli-Wilson years, sadly. Given their loathing for NSNA, it seems to be something they have in common with that film. So TND is saved by some nifty dialogue, like NSNA, but falls off badly after an hour where it's just going through the action motions.
The first hour is undermined by a couple of things. The villain's opening gambit is quite horrible and lacks any suspense or aesthetic pleasure, there's no lovely John Barry music, either. It's just nasty and ugly. The machine gunning of the sailors is just horrible, so it kills the mood. Then it jars with our first sight of our panto villain Elliot Carver, and only now I see that Pryce is doing a sort of Alec Guinness or is it Peter Sellers impersonation? His look of joy might be Guinness in The Lavender Hill Mob, or Sellers as Dr Strangelove. And it's a great performance but it belongs in a different film, maybe something like I'm Alright Jack.
I suppose events have caught up with this film and it's easy to imagine Carver on Twitter/X, as a kind of Elon Musk or Trump figure. Things is, these characters may carry consequences but they don't see themselves as villains, they sort of lack gravitas, I don't know. Carver's villainy isn't very credible really.
The pre-credits aside, as with NSNA the action isn't lovely to look at and a lot of it is dully lensed. Jokes in the action make it more a Roger Moore type film - the backseat driver stuff, the Avis car crashing into the rental shop... Wai Lin turning up at the sunken Derbyshire at the same time as Bond...
Nitpicking, but Colin Salmon's dialogue or line reading in the pre-credits seems a bit ropey, it's all exposition which some actors struggle with. As directed, it starts off all tense and urgent and gives the scene nowhere quite to go, I'd have thought it would be better if it began happy albeit brisk - their man has infiltrated the arms market after all, almost relaxed, then the sinking misery as they realise they have a weapon heading to the place with a nuclear bomb about to go off. As it is, it is doing the thing of making all the action urgent, hey, it's a Bond film!
What happened to Stamper, what did he go on to?
Ah, now that is menacing.
Not much more to add, yes the Dr Kaufman scene is great. Brosnan and Hatcher didn't get on on set, you don't really buy that they were ever an item so I'm not sure if that makes the scene with the Doctor better or worse, you can lean in to the dark comedy a bit more if you don't care so much she's gone. I agree that Brosnan and Wai Lin don't exude much chemistry either but her dialogue is all 'Don't get any ideas, Mr Bond' it's not sparkling.
Brozzer looks good in the very first scene, 'Filthy habit!', and in bed with the German woman at Cambridge, then puts on a stone or so in weight and looks a bit thick set, a bit Steven Seagal for most of the movie.
I don't hate Sheryl Crow's song, it's okay, it's just a bit low energy. It would be diminishing returns for themes really, I mean it's better than the last one by Billie Eilish which I can't even hum. I don't prefer kd lang's Surrender. Arnold wouldn't incorporate Crow's theme into the movie but it seems churlish. Maybe he didn't have time?
The stealth boat finale is eminently switch offable. But once you get to the bike chase in Thailand, it starts to feel less special. It's sort of like any old thing really, like that Cruise Diaz movie - only the film doesn't have the comic chops to sell that. The climax with the helicopter was a dud, wasn't it. I switched off before then.
Comparison is the thief of joy, and NSNA suffered in comparison with that year's other Bond film, with previous Connery Bond films and with our own expectations of a Connery comeback. Now, I can happily watch an hour of TND and struggle with 10 mins of NSNA, so there's no comparison there. But TND does suffer in comparison with other movies that year - The Truman Show had Ed Harris as a much more sinister and convincing media mogul. Titanic really pushed the boat out on spectacle and ambition, while the shots of the sunken Derbyshire resemble my drowned toy boat. Face/Off's action scenes were head and shoulders above anything here. These three films had a polish and intelligence and a sense of breaking boundaries that Tomorrow Never Dies lacks. That said, decades later, the lack of ground-breaking action is less telling as everything has moved on anyway. So one can appreciate what it does have.
I actually prefer this one to GE. It lacks the Campbell flair but the overall execution feels more Bond-like.
The good:
Roger Spottiswoode is a decent workmanlike director. He's had a few duff films that I've seen but also some good ones (he did the really, really solid SHOOT TO KILL, for instance). He's not an auteur or anything but he has decent compositional skill and knows how to tell a story visually.
Brosnan is great here. I'd argue that this is his best overall performance as Bond...he was really good in GE but he feels 100% dialed in here and more confident.
The narrative, similar to GE, is solid. Very few lapses in logic to ruin immersion.
The action sequences are all good. There's nothing particularly great but nothing particularly bad either. Nothing really goes on too long with one exception (the ending fight).
Michelle Yeoh is awesome. She has an easy presence and charm, fitting in well with Brosnan. They're great together, with the Vietnam sequence in the Chinese secret base (where Brosnan is playing around with the Chinese gear) being a lot of fun.
The David Arnold score is good. It's not up to John Barry standards but it's positively Mozart compared to the Eric Serra score from the prior film.
Elliot Carver is a good villain. He's even better today (almost 30 years later) considering what's happened in real life.
The not so good:
Stamper is kinda a weak henchman in terms of presence. Kinda blah.
Too many machine gun action sequences. That said, Brosnan looks really skilled with the gunplay here compared to in GE, especially in the climactic action sequence on the stealth boat. I'm no expert in firearms but he really looks like he knows what he's doing.
The climactic fight on the stealth boat goes on too long. Also, the interior set of the boat is visually uninteresting...just a wide open shell.
The Sheryl Crow theme song is pretty weak. The k. d. lang song is much better. Indeed, it's interesting how the overall Arnold score utilizes the chord structure from the lang song instead of the Crow song.
That's about it for nitpicks on TND. Sometimes you don't need to reinvent the wheel...you just need to make a really great wheel.
In 1997 I was having a very bad time both personally and professionally. No relief from pressure either at home or at work.
One day I skipped out, everything was just getting too much. I turned off my phone (new things back then) and my work beeper, went to the cinema and watched TND.
For the next two hours or so I got lost in the world of James Bond. The film brought ease to my worried mind, to paraphrase Eric Clapton. I loved it then and I love it now.
Yes, I had to come out and face the world again but that small burst of escapism genuinely helped me at a tough time. So, any review I write would be with rose-coloured glasses firmly in place.
I'll just settle for praising David Arnold and the best Bond score since the John Barry days.
Oh, okay. Just occurred to me that Angela Scoular who was also in You Rang... as one of Donald Hewitt's bits on the side was Ruby in OHMSS. And Her Flick's mate, one of the portly German officers, was one of the Russian countdown announcers in YOLT I think.
From ze Gestapo to the 00-branch in two generations - that's quite a journey! I've tried some 'Allo 'Allo quotes on my French collegue, but she's far to young to apriciate them.
I caught bits of Tomorrow Never Dies tonight. It was on while Dad and I cooked the BBQ food and ate in the garden. It's been nice weather in south London. I am laid up after my CTS decompression op, so it's all a bit awkward at the moment. Typing however does not seem to be an issue.
So, Tomorrow Never Dies?
This, of all the post Cubby Bond films, is the one that most resembles his 'classic' formula. I don't want to elaborate, it is too late, I am sure you'll all note the similarities. Somewhere I have read an excellent online article which justifies my own feelings about this film: that it is a successful update of Bond for the 1990s, fairly pounds along with energy and humour, has a still contemporary plot, a blast of gadgets, a series of stunts and excitin set pieces that fairly take your breath away. Performances fairly good all-round. Photography, editing, music, design, all up to or above par. Yes, the script could maybe have done with another polish, but given the film's swift turn around from GoldenEye, I see it as remarkably compact and complete. The title song is dreary though and I am not surprised David Arnold refused to use it in his score.
The only down sides narratively are two. 1) Bond and Wai Lin's relationship should have remained chaste; I think someone else raised this point and they are correct that the unconventional relationship is spoiled by a stereotypical love scene. 2) the stealth boat climax ought to have involved a Navy SBS attack force; as someone else mentioned Brosnan's Bond does seem to regularly go all submachine gun on us. The climax here, as the two agents virtually wipe out every crew member on the boat is way too Rambo for OO7.
Sometimes TND creeps into my top 5. Usually, it is number 6.
The last Bond movie of the 20th century has good action scenes and a weak perplexing plot. It’s too obvious that Electra was a villain. Brosnan still can’t deliver the puns properly and his performance veers from wildly comical to sham seriousness.
The PTS starts with Minder detective Chisolm, now a banker, handing Bond a suitcase full of money. A decent action set piece follows with a boat chase down the Thames. Another good set piece is the snowmobile chase. Robert Carlyle is a weak villain. Denise Richards gets a lot of stick in general in this one but she’s no better or worse than most of the Bond girls that have gone before her.
This turns out to be Desmond’s last performance as Q (he was tragically killed in a car accident soon after release) but I do wonder if this was going to be his last appearance anyway, the script certainly intimates it as we are introduced to a Basil Fawlty assistant played by John Cleese. His scenes add a jollity to the movie.
The title song is another horror show performed by a group called Garbage - I couldn’t think of a better name.
So, the original “team” of Bernard Lee, Lois Maxwell and Desmond Llewelyn had now all passed away. They were absolutely superb. No one before or after them came close to being as good.
Lois Maxwell was alive when this movie was released and would be for another eight years.
TWINE is perhaps fourth place in my Brosnans: it’s got lots of great ideas and felt genuinely new and quite daring for a Bond film at the time (Bond injured! MI6 attacked! M kidnapped! The Bond girl is the villain!) but doesn’t feel quite as dramatic nowadays, although it’s great that they were trying to develop it a bit and push Bond forwards. What’s left is a slightly dull Bond film with a lack of the glamorous sheen a Bond should have, and it feels a little lifeless here and there. That banker’s office opening is almost unforgivably drab (why am I in a tiny boring office in an unremarkable Spanish town? It’s a Bond film!) and eventually we segue to a really dirgey bland title song, which unfortunately we have to be reminded of all the way through in Arnold’s score.
Apted was a great director but perhaps not the right guy for a Bond movie.
Brosnan is as good a lead as ever, it’s nice to see Michael Kitchen again, but Robert Carlyle feels a bit miscast. The action scenes feel a notch down from last time too: the boat chase is fun but doesn’t have the flow of something like the BMW chase, and the ski chase is absolutely terrible and seems to have been shot from half a mile away.
There are positives in there but it’s just not one of my favourites: I don’t hate it but I don’t love it. Good title though.
Okay sure, I think 'passed away' is usually taken to mean 'has died' though. Don't tell anyone at work that someone who has retired has 'passed away' otherwise you'll give your colleagues a real shock! 😅
I caught The World Is Not Enough because I couldn't be bothered to flick through the dozen or so recorded movies I have stored for night's like last night when the telly lets me down. I mean, there wasn't a single program on any of the free channels worth a look (IMO) so I lamped on this.
It isn't a terrible Bond film, but it has a whole host of structural details that needed addressing - mostly geographically - Bond traverses a lot of difficult terrain in very quick time. I could go on and on about all the little things I hate in this movie which are all small individually but added together make a disspiriting experience.
Just to start, I rather like the opening. However, it doesn't have any of the prerequisite tongue-in-cheek humour of a GF or TB PTS, although the Bilbao scene is about the same length. It needed a better escape route, one feels, something we could really go "WOW" at, and there isn't. When Bond strides away from the Guggenheim, this was meant to end the PTS, which for me would be fine even without a grand escape [I dislike all the epic pre titles]. As a brilliant stunt was missing, the producers lumped the next sequence into the PTS. That meant cutting dialogue and explanations to the bone. They don't cut the river boat chase which is stupidly longwinded and features an assassin who can't shoot Bond when he's directly in her sights. The chase should have been edited by about half its length - a recurring problem with every action sequence in this film. By the time Bond is hanging off an anchor rope and pleading for the girl to give herself up [why doesn't she shoot him? or was that not in her orders? - never explained, again] I was bored. There is also a mystifyingly bad edit of Moneypenny watching Bond sprint through her office when he's already sprinted through her office. As said above by @CoolHandBond the theme song is garbage.
Then we are in Scotland [why? - is M suddenly Queen of MI6?] and the whole of the SIS is up there with her. Why? Just because Robert King was buried up there doesn't mean the whole ops room and Q branch should be relocated. Just stupid.
Bond is off the active service list because he's busted a collar bone. So he seduces the doctor to get a clean bill of health. Ugh. Horrible. Why did the writers do this? I thought the cunning linguist joke and all that poppycock was poor in TND [the bit I disliked most in that film] but this is even worse. Bond's behaving badly right on M's Scottish doorstep, under her roof, she could probably smell the sex on him. Moneypenny could. Just digusting. Hate it. There must have been a better way to get OO7 on the case - oh yes, there is and they use it anyway - he uncovers M's guilty secret about Elektra's kidnapping. That's enough isn't it? So the only reason for the sex stuff was to slip in some low-grade indecent jokes. Horrible. Garbage.
Q and R are quite funny, but I gave up on poor old Desmond years earlier. I know it was nice to have him around but nice is all it was. Lovely send off though. Welcome John Cleese. A good piece of casting who could easily have slotted into GE and TND without a blink, but the producers were too kind.
Do I need to go on? Sex jokes keep recurring and they keep getting steadily more boring. In fact, sex is quite prevalent in this one because the basis of Bond's suspicions is Stockholm Syndrome. However four (six including the doctor and then later Miss Jones) sex scenes seems a bit over the top even for bed-hopping Bond. In fact during the Maiden's Tower scenes Elektra seems to spend most of the time wearing nothing but a silken bed robe which is odd. It's winter, I see no fires, wasn't she cold? Anyway, all the scenes between her and Reynard could have been shortened to the one scene beside the submarine. There's also a horrifcally bad line for Bond when he tries to explain how he forrgets the past [his wife] "I take pleasure in great beauty". That's about as Un-Bond-Like an answer as you could possible have. Trite first of all and frankly also untrue. Come on Purvis, Wade, Firstein - Bond likes thrills, spills, excitement, life on the edge, danger, the turn of a card, the racing change of an Aston Martin, gunfights, karate fights, extravagant dinners, sking the black runs - we know the kind of thing, why the hell didn't they?
Robbie Coltrane is in it. Why? M get's kidnapped. Why? I mean, I get why, I just don't really care because the reasoning is slotted in via a single line and without any back-and-forth. Faced with adversity, M is extremely reticent. "What time is it?" sums up her contribution to things. And a slap to the face for the world's naughtiest grown up child. Later on, chased by Bond up a staircase, rather than escaping the same grown up child stops and shouts "You can't kill me, James" as if she's taking part in a game of playground tag. For goodness sake woman, just run. Horrible. Garbage.
The parahawk ski chase was too long, the battle in the nuclear repository too long, the destruction of Zuchovsky's caviar factory too long, the pipe line "chase" too long, the climax too long. The whole thing was achingly long winded. The body count is enormous. The destruction equally so - all thos explosions - geez. By the end, I didn't really care what was happening. It was just noise and water. The film lacks any idea of pace, time and suspense.
When M is freed, she returns to Scotland and witnesses another awful sex joke. It was like watching Roger Moore all over again. The music was equally underwhelming. At a push, I might say some of Adrian Biddle's photography was decent and I liked the oil slicked title sequence from Daniel Klienman. Good title.
The movie has always sat in my bottom half. Usually towards the bottom.
I quite like the Q goodbye; it's kind of sweet that Bond is suddenly sincere and we can tell he actually does have affection for Q after all, but the 'never let them see you bleed' line is just a bit weird as Q would never really say anything like that, and Desmond looks a bit scared as he's being lowered into the pit. It's an odd moment, really.
On first watch I thought the PTS too long, but I’ve got used to it now and enjoy what’s happening. It was the right decision to keep things going after the underwhelming lawyer’s office scene so we could enjoy the Thames boat chase much sooner, and also to cut Renard from the PTS thus making his eventual entrance more dramatic.
The music is down a step from TND, though “Elektra’s Theme” in it’s various guises is exactly right and IMHO better than the title theme.
Why does every movie have to have bagpipes to show that the scene is in Scotland? I’ve been making music professionally in Scotland for many years (decades) and I think I’ve met a piper twice without going looking for them.
It’s Brosnan’s best performance as Bond and he gets more chances to show what he can do. Dench and co do fine, and it’s sad to watch Q’s last scene knowing what was about to happen IRL.
The snow chase isn’t as good as earlier ones, as said above, but I still enjoy it.
Sophie Marceau does okay, she’s not terrible like …er … certain other actresses who may or may not also be in this film.
Robbie Coltrane was good, though he was better in GE. Robert Carlyle is far from the best villain/henchman we’ve had or indeed will have.
I liked the caviar factory sequence and the submarine ending was okay.
Basically I like this film because at the time it was attempting to strike a balance between doing something different with the Bond formula and giving us more of the same. I’d have been happy with more of the same, but can see that wasn’t going to happen.
The World Is Not Enough is my favourite Pierce Brosnan film - in fact, it's the only one I really like - and the only one I enjoyed unreservedly since Moore's finale in A View to A Kill over a decade earlier. Which, you might argue, tells you more about me than the film.
It's the only Brosnan film that didn't undergo significant rewrites up to or even during filming - this has been a bugbear of most of the post-Cubby years. Consequently, the dialogue works well for me, it all feels happier and more natural, like they actually know what they're doing.
Stuff like 'I think you and I need to have a little drink' or 'He should have put his money where his mouth is' or 'I don't know any doctor jokes' or 'See you back at the lodge' or 'I never miss' and so on, not all sparklers but they feel happy and connected.
Much of the tone is due to directer Apted who has that English civility we had in the days of Young, Hamilton and Gilbert but not quite I sense with Campbell, Spottiswoode or Tamohari. In another thread, John Cleese speaks of his good impression on set, due to the director, who set the tone and composer David Arnold praised him on the basis that, if asked if he would have him in his own house, he'd say yes. One senses that might have been a sideswipe at the caustic Spotiswoode, I don't know, but if so I must say I can sympathise with the TND director who really felt he was involved in a shambles much like Connery did with NSNA (he did pretty much make this clear in an interview at the time with the Evening Standard, eventually saying 'This is going to have to be off the record'). The other director similar to Apted I'd have like to see do Bond is the one who did The Queen with Helen Mirren.
That all said, as I think @emtiem said, it's clear that Apted isn't doing the action and it has a second-unit perfunctory feel to it, despite its ambition, particularly with the MI6 building and the boat chase. With Campbell and Spottiswoode you do feel the action was fully engaged, as it should be in a Bond film, here it is not though it often moves along okay.
And, tuning in after watching Simon Schama's History of Britain about whether Revolution would spread to the UK, well, I like Denise Richards - she is one of the few onscreen beauties who awaken something visceral in me, and I never see her do any fake or faux emoting, so she seems okay to me. But just jumping in, it seems the film may not work for you if you are not already invested in the plot, and as with Spectre, if you don't feel invested in the plot, there isn't much to fall back on otherwise.
Brosnan is good in this but if you were tuning in to any Connery movie, you'd have Connery there and that would be it, he would own the screen. At that point, like a kid with a brilliant toy, you want to put it and test it in lots of different contexts and situations to see how it works - Miami! Switzerland! Nassau! Japan! Vegas! and so on. With Brosnan, it's not quite like that, instead he needs lots of other actors and characters to bolster him up; it gets quite busy, and the same could be said of Craig and his Scooby gang. But all films were moving away from that lone guy we all look up to formula and more towards a clubbable team player thing. I recall Barry Norman presenting his film show, then Jonathan Ross, and I'm not sure you can do that now, just one guy mouthing off. Claudia Winkleman took up that show and sort of pooled opinion instead, though it couldn't quite be called 'Film 2010 with Claudia Winkleman' given she simply turned to a bloke on the sofa and asked what he thought of the movie - but there you go.
If Connery's Bond is the main event, the holiday, then thereafter, with, say, Brosnan, we are looking at the holiday snaps or the brochure. It's that attempt to prolong the enjoyment.
I like the music where Bond and Electra were skiing - it's the best of Barry really, and the Scott Walker track too, not used as a vocal in the film. Yeah, I do find Arnold's attempt at the song and some of his strings a bit straining.
One snag is that for a film called The Word Is Not Enough you should ideally have, say, international spy rings, action along the Kremlin, a shootout in a Manhattan penthouse, a pre-credits in Jamaica and an assassination in Hong Kong, all tied in with the sense of a male villain who wants it all but will always be dissatisfied. At times, this film seems a bit limited in its scope given its title. And the film is just not that colourful looking, it's not vivid. I worked around Vauxhall at the time and most weeks that stretch along the Thames was bathed in brilliant sunlight against cloudless blue skies. The week they picked to film, it was cloudy and overcast.
Still, I wouldn't enjoy a Bond film as much as this until Spectre - which, again, you may feel tells you more about me than the film.
I'm going to have to see how DAD plays this time around but I have a feeling I'm going to rate it higher than TWINE. This one is just dull, and I recall that DAD...for all of its faults...at least moves.
Anyways...
The good:
This is probably David Arnold's best Bond score. The theme song by Garbage is first rate as well.
The pre title sequence is the only part of the film with any real oomph to it. The initial briefcase retrieval in Bilbao, Spain works as s nice, short burst of credible action, and the boat chase on the Thames is pretty slick. The boat chase goes on maybe a tad too long but it's overall effective and makes you think you might be watching one of the great films.
Setting Bond, as a character, up with a movie-long injury is an interesting hook that is unfortunately not really capitalized on. Oh well.
The opening oil-based graphics playing over the theme song are great. This is probably Kleinman's best effort.
It's fun to see Robbie Coltrane back. The film picks up a bit whenever he's present to add some humor.
The production design is top notch. The sets are all full and lush, and the submarine in the finale is particularly believable looking and functioning.
The bad:
The film is dull. The pacing never really gets out of 2nd gear, even in the action sequences. I get that there was a desire to focus more on character than action but holy cow, even the character work is dull. I found myself bored and multi-tasking while watching the film, something I'd yet to do in this franchise rewatch. My wife was also quite bored.
Many of the action sequences are flat out bad. The entire parahawk sequence is particularly insulting with the languid pacing and the incompetent pilots. The assault on Coltrane's caviar facility...with the helicopters and the sawblades...is also stupid and goes on far too long.
The character of Renard is set up to be a fantastic bad guy. A man with a bullet in his brain who knows he's going to die and can't feel pain? Played by Begbie???? This should have been a grand slam. Instead, he's barely a base hit. What a phenomenal waste of opportunity and talent. Carlyle deserved much better.
The character of Christmas Jones is clearly modeled after Lara Croft in terms of appearance and Dr. Goodhead in terms of competence. A better actress might have been able to make this character work but she's simply a bad character conceptually. I doubt Meryl Streep could have made this character work, so expecting Denise Richards to carry the role is a unfair. She's clearly not up to the task in terms of acting but there have been other actresses in other films who have been just as bad or worse. Barbara Bach didn't fare much better in TSWLM and Tanya Roberts was far worse in AVTAK.
The acting quality is inconsistent. Both GE and TND were solidly acted without anyone standing out as being bad. TWINE has several actors duff it, not just Denise Richards. A lot of the supporting cast just aren't up to snuff. Brosnan is on point but he often looks angry at some of the actors who are clearly not operating at 100%, something I seemed to catch with Dalton in his two films as well.
The humor rarely works. In both GE and TND, the one-liners from Bond felt natural and 'in the moment'. Here, they're stiff.
Comments
Well, I'm mostly joking - then again, I think Barbel has been a bit tense with me also since I told him to piss off on a point regarding Vincent Price in a fictional movie universe early one morning. BTW when Barbel really hates a Bond movie he types out his review in passive aggressive bold!
Roger Moore 1927-2017
You joking NP, surely not!
Barbel is having a few days rest…apparently something is more important than AJB??? 🤷🏻♂️ 😏😁🤣 or maybe he’s working on his passive/aggressive typography 😬
Not in the least, NP. And I'll try to remember to turn the bold off before posting ... unless it's one I really hate.
Meanwhile, I'm going to try to fit TND in today.
TOMORROW NEVER DIES (1997)
This is a definite upgrade on GE, well, it couldn’t possibly have been worse.
It doesn’t start well. I hate it when MI6 is looking in on the action and organising what happens next, Bond just becomes a puppet. There’s a lot of shooting and a Firefox scene from the early 80’s. A dirge of a title song follows spoiling a good title sequence from Daniel Kleinman who has taken over from Maurice Binder more than adequately.
Roger Spottiswoode directs very well, his action scenes are exciting and keep the film moving along nicely. We get a proper Bond villain with a decent plot (Jonathan Pryce is excellent) and Michelle Yeoh is a fearless partner for Bond. Brosnan loses the inane grinning from GE but he still cannot deliver the puns with any confidence. Stamper is a decent henchman, by far the best of the Brosnan era. Joe Don Baker returns as Jack Wade and he does his best to imitate Clifton James but fails miserably (James can act). Vincent Schiavelli as Dr Kaufman is a superb character, what a pity his role is so small. The repartee between Bond and Moneypenny is excruciatingly bad. Judi Dench tries to act sternly but fails once again, she is just unbelievable. David Arnold’s score is a marked improvement but the James Bond theme is overused. The Thailand Golden Gun location is used once again without even a mention from Bond that he’s been there before.
It’s an improvement, but Brosnan is not a convincing Bond, he’s too lightweight in the fight scenes, on a par with Roger but way behind the other three who displayed grit in their action scenes.
OHMSS - TB - FRWL - LTK - GF - YOLT - DN - FYEO - TSWLM - LALD - TLD - DAF - TND - AVTAK - TMWTGG - MR - OP - GE
I must admit TND is one I prefer over GE, even though I can see it’s probably the weaker film. It kicks off so well with one of the best PTSs in the series, and the first couple of acts are incredibly strong. The concept for the villain is one of the best in the series and -sadly- hasn’t aged at all. I love Jonathan Pryce but he’s just missing the menace a truly great villain should have, and Stamper is a bit of a wet squib.
Michelle Yeoh is great though, although it’s one where it’s kind of a shame they end up getting romantically involved at the end because I don’t really buy it with these two; they have little chemistry. The film tends to fall off a bit in the latter half and isn’t as strong as its opening, but it’s still lots of fun.
TND has two of the series all-time best action set pieces in the PTS and car chase, which makes it worth a watch, Brosnan is even stronger, the locations are good, and Arnold’s score is good fun even if it sounds a bit thin nowadays (and I’m still glad the pastiche song Surrender was relegated to the end credits). It’s just loads of fun really.
I tend to be agreeing with @emtiem on all things Bond these days. Yes, I can see that GoldenEye is a more intelligent and more interesting film, with more entertaining and outlandish action scenes - but its interest and intelligence seems to work against it, by showing up how far-fetched or silly the whole thing is. I struggle with those Cold War Bonds, aside from FRWL, as they don't quite gel, I find them not quite enjoyable or credible enough. In particular, stuff like GE or TLD has a few confusing things on early in the movie that don't quite sit right with me.
TND avoids that and it is a warmer, more enjoyable ride that leans into being a modern Bond movie. It doesn't struggle so much. The first hour or so is good stuff on the whole, it hits the beats of YOLT or MR in that we see the villain's dastardly plan unfold early on, then some interaction between Bond and the main villain, Bond being undercover perhaps, then a sexual liaison with the villain's associate, (TND is a bit refreshing in that it's made clear Bond isn't sleeping with Paris just to procure info), some breaking and entering, the villain's payback and so on, but with different locales and updated to a 90s context.
The movie had copious rewrites while filming - has the original script involving the handover of Hong Kong ever surfaced? Rewrites seem to be a staple of the Barbara Broccoli-Wilson years, sadly. Given their loathing for NSNA, it seems to be something they have in common with that film. So TND is saved by some nifty dialogue, like NSNA, but falls off badly after an hour where it's just going through the action motions.
The first hour is undermined by a couple of things. The villain's opening gambit is quite horrible and lacks any suspense or aesthetic pleasure, there's no lovely John Barry music, either. It's just nasty and ugly. The machine gunning of the sailors is just horrible, so it kills the mood. Then it jars with our first sight of our panto villain Elliot Carver, and only now I see that Pryce is doing a sort of Alec Guinness or is it Peter Sellers impersonation? His look of joy might be Guinness in The Lavender Hill Mob, or Sellers as Dr Strangelove. And it's a great performance but it belongs in a different film, maybe something like I'm Alright Jack.
I suppose events have caught up with this film and it's easy to imagine Carver on Twitter/X, as a kind of Elon Musk or Trump figure. Things is, these characters may carry consequences but they don't see themselves as villains, they sort of lack gravitas, I don't know. Carver's villainy isn't very credible really.
The pre-credits aside, as with NSNA the action isn't lovely to look at and a lot of it is dully lensed. Jokes in the action make it more a Roger Moore type film - the backseat driver stuff, the Avis car crashing into the rental shop... Wai Lin turning up at the sunken Derbyshire at the same time as Bond...
Nitpicking, but Colin Salmon's dialogue or line reading in the pre-credits seems a bit ropey, it's all exposition which some actors struggle with. As directed, it starts off all tense and urgent and gives the scene nowhere quite to go, I'd have thought it would be better if it began happy albeit brisk - their man has infiltrated the arms market after all, almost relaxed, then the sinking misery as they realise they have a weapon heading to the place with a nuclear bomb about to go off. As it is, it is doing the thing of making all the action urgent, hey, it's a Bond film!
What happened to Stamper, what did he go on to?
Ah, now that is menacing.
Not much more to add, yes the Dr Kaufman scene is great. Brosnan and Hatcher didn't get on on set, you don't really buy that they were ever an item so I'm not sure if that makes the scene with the Doctor better or worse, you can lean in to the dark comedy a bit more if you don't care so much she's gone. I agree that Brosnan and Wai Lin don't exude much chemistry either but her dialogue is all 'Don't get any ideas, Mr Bond' it's not sparkling.
Brozzer looks good in the very first scene, 'Filthy habit!', and in bed with the German woman at Cambridge, then puts on a stone or so in weight and looks a bit thick set, a bit Steven Seagal for most of the movie.
I don't hate Sheryl Crow's song, it's okay, it's just a bit low energy. It would be diminishing returns for themes really, I mean it's better than the last one by Billie Eilish which I can't even hum. I don't prefer kd lang's Surrender. Arnold wouldn't incorporate Crow's theme into the movie but it seems churlish. Maybe he didn't have time?
The stealth boat finale is eminently switch offable. But once you get to the bike chase in Thailand, it starts to feel less special. It's sort of like any old thing really, like that Cruise Diaz movie - only the film doesn't have the comic chops to sell that. The climax with the helicopter was a dud, wasn't it. I switched off before then.
Comparison is the thief of joy, and NSNA suffered in comparison with that year's other Bond film, with previous Connery Bond films and with our own expectations of a Connery comeback. Now, I can happily watch an hour of TND and struggle with 10 mins of NSNA, so there's no comparison there. But TND does suffer in comparison with other movies that year - The Truman Show had Ed Harris as a much more sinister and convincing media mogul. Titanic really pushed the boat out on spectacle and ambition, while the shots of the sunken Derbyshire resemble my drowned toy boat. Face/Off's action scenes were head and shoulders above anything here. These three films had a polish and intelligence and a sense of breaking boundaries that Tomorrow Never Dies lacks. That said, decades later, the lack of ground-breaking action is less telling as everything has moved on anyway. So one can appreciate what it does have.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Stamper? Isn't that Staggerer in the photo? 😁
Copy/paste from last year:
TND:
I actually prefer this one to GE. It lacks the Campbell flair but the overall execution feels more Bond-like.
The good:
The not so good:
That's about it for nitpicks on TND. Sometimes you don't need to reinvent the wheel...you just need to make a really great wheel.
Current ranking on this rewatch:
Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
Full Disclosure:
In 1997 I was having a very bad time both personally and professionally. No relief from pressure either at home or at work.
One day I skipped out, everything was just getting too much. I turned off my phone (new things back then) and my work beeper, went to the cinema and watched TND.
For the next two hours or so I got lost in the world of James Bond. The film brought ease to my worried mind, to paraphrase Eric Clapton. I loved it then and I love it now.
Yes, I had to come out and face the world again but that small burst of escapism genuinely helped me at a tough time. So, any review I write would be with rose-coloured glasses firmly in place.
I'll just settle for praising David Arnold and the best Bond score since the John Barry days.
"Just as well it wasn't Die Another Day."
Roger Moore 1927-2017
😅😅😅
That was a great bit with M&W and Elton.
To link with your You Rang M’Lord fact, I just found out that new video game James Bond 007 Patrick Gibson is the son of none other than… HERR FLICK.
Oh, okay. Just occurred to me that Angela Scoular who was also in You Rang... as one of Donald Hewitt's bits on the side was Ruby in OHMSS. And Her Flick's mate, one of the portly German officers, was one of the Russian countdown announcers in YOLT I think.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
From ze Gestapo to the 00-branch in two generations - that's quite a journey! I've tried some 'Allo 'Allo quotes on my French collegue, but she's far to young to apriciate them.
Sorry to gatecrash your Bank Holiday Weekend @Barbel but you've just over 90 minutes to do your 'rose-tinted' review of Tomorrow Never Dies.
I won't have standards slipping on this thread.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I caught bits of Tomorrow Never Dies tonight. It was on while Dad and I cooked the BBQ food and ate in the garden. It's been nice weather in south London. I am laid up after my CTS decompression op, so it's all a bit awkward at the moment. Typing however does not seem to be an issue.
So, Tomorrow Never Dies?
This, of all the post Cubby Bond films, is the one that most resembles his 'classic' formula. I don't want to elaborate, it is too late, I am sure you'll all note the similarities. Somewhere I have read an excellent online article which justifies my own feelings about this film: that it is a successful update of Bond for the 1990s, fairly pounds along with energy and humour, has a still contemporary plot, a blast of gadgets, a series of stunts and excitin set pieces that fairly take your breath away. Performances fairly good all-round. Photography, editing, music, design, all up to or above par. Yes, the script could maybe have done with another polish, but given the film's swift turn around from GoldenEye, I see it as remarkably compact and complete. The title song is dreary though and I am not surprised David Arnold refused to use it in his score.
The only down sides narratively are two. 1) Bond and Wai Lin's relationship should have remained chaste; I think someone else raised this point and they are correct that the unconventional relationship is spoiled by a stereotypical love scene. 2) the stealth boat climax ought to have involved a Navy SBS attack force; as someone else mentioned Brosnan's Bond does seem to regularly go all submachine gun on us. The climax here, as the two agents virtually wipe out every crew member on the boat is way too Rambo for OO7.
Sometimes TND creeps into my top 5. Usually, it is number 6.
She gave you a clean bill of health so you could return to duty then?
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Alas, NP, as I implied above that's all the review I'm writing for that one. I checked with the OP and that's okay.
Okay everyone, here's a heads up for UK Bond fans!
ITV4 is showing The World Is Not Enough tomorrow evening (Tues) at 9pm
ITV4 is showing Die Another Day on Wednesday evening at 9pm.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH (1999)
The last Bond movie of the 20th century has good action scenes and a weak perplexing plot. It’s too obvious that Electra was a villain. Brosnan still can’t deliver the puns properly and his performance veers from wildly comical to sham seriousness.
The PTS starts with Minder detective Chisolm, now a banker, handing Bond a suitcase full of money. A decent action set piece follows with a boat chase down the Thames. Another good set piece is the snowmobile chase. Robert Carlyle is a weak villain. Denise Richards gets a lot of stick in general in this one but she’s no better or worse than most of the Bond girls that have gone before her.
This turns out to be Desmond’s last performance as Q (he was tragically killed in a car accident soon after release) but I do wonder if this was going to be his last appearance anyway, the script certainly intimates it as we are introduced to a Basil Fawlty assistant played by John Cleese. His scenes add a jollity to the movie.
The title song is another horror show performed by a group called Garbage - I couldn’t think of a better name.
So, the original “team” of Bernard Lee, Lois Maxwell and Desmond Llewelyn had now all passed away. They were absolutely superb. No one before or after them came close to being as good.
OHMSS - TB - FRWL - LTK - GF - YOLT - DN - FYEO - TSWLM - LALD - TLD - DAF - TND - AVTAK - TMWTGG - MR - TWINE - OP - GE
Lois Maxwell was alive when this movie was released and would be for another eight years.
TWINE is perhaps fourth place in my Brosnans: it’s got lots of great ideas and felt genuinely new and quite daring for a Bond film at the time (Bond injured! MI6 attacked! M kidnapped! The Bond girl is the villain!) but doesn’t feel quite as dramatic nowadays, although it’s great that they were trying to develop it a bit and push Bond forwards. What’s left is a slightly dull Bond film with a lack of the glamorous sheen a Bond should have, and it feels a little lifeless here and there. That banker’s office opening is almost unforgivably drab (why am I in a tiny boring office in an unremarkable Spanish town? It’s a Bond film!) and eventually we segue to a really dirgey bland title song, which unfortunately we have to be reminded of all the way through in Arnold’s score.
Apted was a great director but perhaps not the right guy for a Bond movie.
Brosnan is as good a lead as ever, it’s nice to see Michael Kitchen again, but Robert Carlyle feels a bit miscast. The action scenes feel a notch down from last time too: the boat chase is fun but doesn’t have the flow of something like the BMW chase, and the ski chase is absolutely terrible and seems to have been shot from half a mile away.
There are positives in there but it’s just not one of my favourites: I don’t hate it but I don’t love it. Good title though.
@emtiem said: Lois Maxwell was alive when this movie was released and would be for another eight years.
Yes, of course she was. I was meaning to say the three actors who played those characters had now gone from the franchise.
Okay sure, I think 'passed away' is usually taken to mean 'has died' though. Don't tell anyone at work that someone who has retired has 'passed away' otherwise you'll give your colleagues a real shock! 😅
I caught The World Is Not Enough because I couldn't be bothered to flick through the dozen or so recorded movies I have stored for night's like last night when the telly lets me down. I mean, there wasn't a single program on any of the free channels worth a look (IMO) so I lamped on this.
It isn't a terrible Bond film, but it has a whole host of structural details that needed addressing - mostly geographically - Bond traverses a lot of difficult terrain in very quick time. I could go on and on about all the little things I hate in this movie which are all small individually but added together make a disspiriting experience.
Just to start, I rather like the opening. However, it doesn't have any of the prerequisite tongue-in-cheek humour of a GF or TB PTS, although the Bilbao scene is about the same length. It needed a better escape route, one feels, something we could really go "WOW" at, and there isn't. When Bond strides away from the Guggenheim, this was meant to end the PTS, which for me would be fine even without a grand escape [I dislike all the epic pre titles]. As a brilliant stunt was missing, the producers lumped the next sequence into the PTS. That meant cutting dialogue and explanations to the bone. They don't cut the river boat chase which is stupidly longwinded and features an assassin who can't shoot Bond when he's directly in her sights. The chase should have been edited by about half its length - a recurring problem with every action sequence in this film. By the time Bond is hanging off an anchor rope and pleading for the girl to give herself up [why doesn't she shoot him? or was that not in her orders? - never explained, again] I was bored. There is also a mystifyingly bad edit of Moneypenny watching Bond sprint through her office when he's already sprinted through her office. As said above by @CoolHandBond the theme song is garbage.
Then we are in Scotland [why? - is M suddenly Queen of MI6?] and the whole of the SIS is up there with her. Why? Just because Robert King was buried up there doesn't mean the whole ops room and Q branch should be relocated. Just stupid.
Bond is off the active service list because he's busted a collar bone. So he seduces the doctor to get a clean bill of health. Ugh. Horrible. Why did the writers do this? I thought the cunning linguist joke and all that poppycock was poor in TND [the bit I disliked most in that film] but this is even worse. Bond's behaving badly right on M's Scottish doorstep, under her roof, she could probably smell the sex on him. Moneypenny could. Just digusting. Hate it. There must have been a better way to get OO7 on the case - oh yes, there is and they use it anyway - he uncovers M's guilty secret about Elektra's kidnapping. That's enough isn't it? So the only reason for the sex stuff was to slip in some low-grade indecent jokes. Horrible. Garbage.
Q and R are quite funny, but I gave up on poor old Desmond years earlier. I know it was nice to have him around but nice is all it was. Lovely send off though. Welcome John Cleese. A good piece of casting who could easily have slotted into GE and TND without a blink, but the producers were too kind.
Do I need to go on? Sex jokes keep recurring and they keep getting steadily more boring. In fact, sex is quite prevalent in this one because the basis of Bond's suspicions is Stockholm Syndrome. However four (six including the doctor and then later Miss Jones) sex scenes seems a bit over the top even for bed-hopping Bond. In fact during the Maiden's Tower scenes Elektra seems to spend most of the time wearing nothing but a silken bed robe which is odd. It's winter, I see no fires, wasn't she cold? Anyway, all the scenes between her and Reynard could have been shortened to the one scene beside the submarine. There's also a horrifcally bad line for Bond when he tries to explain how he forrgets the past [his wife] "I take pleasure in great beauty". That's about as Un-Bond-Like an answer as you could possible have. Trite first of all and frankly also untrue. Come on Purvis, Wade, Firstein - Bond likes thrills, spills, excitement, life on the edge, danger, the turn of a card, the racing change of an Aston Martin, gunfights, karate fights, extravagant dinners, sking the black runs - we know the kind of thing, why the hell didn't they?
Robbie Coltrane is in it. Why? M get's kidnapped. Why? I mean, I get why, I just don't really care because the reasoning is slotted in via a single line and without any back-and-forth. Faced with adversity, M is extremely reticent. "What time is it?" sums up her contribution to things. And a slap to the face for the world's naughtiest grown up child. Later on, chased by Bond up a staircase, rather than escaping the same grown up child stops and shouts "You can't kill me, James" as if she's taking part in a game of playground tag. For goodness sake woman, just run. Horrible. Garbage.
The parahawk ski chase was too long, the battle in the nuclear repository too long, the destruction of Zuchovsky's caviar factory too long, the pipe line "chase" too long, the climax too long. The whole thing was achingly long winded. The body count is enormous. The destruction equally so - all thos explosions - geez. By the end, I didn't really care what was happening. It was just noise and water. The film lacks any idea of pace, time and suspense.
When M is freed, she returns to Scotland and witnesses another awful sex joke. It was like watching Roger Moore all over again. The music was equally underwhelming. At a push, I might say some of Adrian Biddle's photography was decent and I liked the oil slicked title sequence from Daniel Klienman. Good title.
The movie has always sat in my bottom half. Usually towards the bottom.
I quite like the Q goodbye; it's kind of sweet that Bond is suddenly sincere and we can tell he actually does have affection for Q after all, but the 'never let them see you bleed' line is just a bit weird as Q would never really say anything like that, and Desmond looks a bit scared as he's being lowered into the pit. It's an odd moment, really.
@chrisno1 Great review, I enjoyed reading that.
THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH (1999)
On first watch I thought the PTS too long, but I’ve got used to it now and enjoy what’s happening. It was the right decision to keep things going after the underwhelming lawyer’s office scene so we could enjoy the Thames boat chase much sooner, and also to cut Renard from the PTS thus making his eventual entrance more dramatic.
The music is down a step from TND, though “Elektra’s Theme” in it’s various guises is exactly right and IMHO better than the title theme.
Why does every movie have to have bagpipes to show that the scene is in Scotland? I’ve been making music professionally in Scotland for many years (decades) and I think I’ve met a piper twice without going looking for them.
It’s Brosnan’s best performance as Bond and he gets more chances to show what he can do. Dench and co do fine, and it’s sad to watch Q’s last scene knowing what was about to happen IRL.
The snow chase isn’t as good as earlier ones, as said above, but I still enjoy it.
Sophie Marceau does okay, she’s not terrible like …er … certain other actresses who may or may not also be in this film.
Robbie Coltrane was good, though he was better in GE. Robert Carlyle is far from the best villain/henchman we’ve had or indeed will have.
I liked the caviar factory sequence and the submarine ending was okay.
Basically I like this film because at the time it was attempting to strike a balance between doing something different with the Bond formula and giving us more of the same. I’d have been happy with more of the same, but can see that wasn’t going to happen.
The World Is Not Enough is my favourite Pierce Brosnan film - in fact, it's the only one I really like - and the only one I enjoyed unreservedly since Moore's finale in A View to A Kill over a decade earlier. Which, you might argue, tells you more about me than the film.
It's the only Brosnan film that didn't undergo significant rewrites up to or even during filming - this has been a bugbear of most of the post-Cubby years. Consequently, the dialogue works well for me, it all feels happier and more natural, like they actually know what they're doing.
Stuff like 'I think you and I need to have a little drink' or 'He should have put his money where his mouth is' or 'I don't know any doctor jokes' or 'See you back at the lodge' or 'I never miss' and so on, not all sparklers but they feel happy and connected.
Much of the tone is due to directer Apted who has that English civility we had in the days of Young, Hamilton and Gilbert but not quite I sense with Campbell, Spottiswoode or Tamohari. In another thread, John Cleese speaks of his good impression on set, due to the director, who set the tone and composer David Arnold praised him on the basis that, if asked if he would have him in his own house, he'd say yes. One senses that might have been a sideswipe at the caustic Spotiswoode, I don't know, but if so I must say I can sympathise with the TND director who really felt he was involved in a shambles much like Connery did with NSNA (he did pretty much make this clear in an interview at the time with the Evening Standard, eventually saying 'This is going to have to be off the record'). The other director similar to Apted I'd have like to see do Bond is the one who did The Queen with Helen Mirren.
That all said, as I think @emtiem said, it's clear that Apted isn't doing the action and it has a second-unit perfunctory feel to it, despite its ambition, particularly with the MI6 building and the boat chase. With Campbell and Spottiswoode you do feel the action was fully engaged, as it should be in a Bond film, here it is not though it often moves along okay.
And, tuning in after watching Simon Schama's History of Britain about whether Revolution would spread to the UK, well, I like Denise Richards - she is one of the few onscreen beauties who awaken something visceral in me, and I never see her do any fake or faux emoting, so she seems okay to me. But just jumping in, it seems the film may not work for you if you are not already invested in the plot, and as with Spectre, if you don't feel invested in the plot, there isn't much to fall back on otherwise.
Brosnan is good in this but if you were tuning in to any Connery movie, you'd have Connery there and that would be it, he would own the screen. At that point, like a kid with a brilliant toy, you want to put it and test it in lots of different contexts and situations to see how it works - Miami! Switzerland! Nassau! Japan! Vegas! and so on. With Brosnan, it's not quite like that, instead he needs lots of other actors and characters to bolster him up; it gets quite busy, and the same could be said of Craig and his Scooby gang. But all films were moving away from that lone guy we all look up to formula and more towards a clubbable team player thing. I recall Barry Norman presenting his film show, then Jonathan Ross, and I'm not sure you can do that now, just one guy mouthing off. Claudia Winkleman took up that show and sort of pooled opinion instead, though it couldn't quite be called 'Film 2010 with Claudia Winkleman' given she simply turned to a bloke on the sofa and asked what he thought of the movie - but there you go.
If Connery's Bond is the main event, the holiday, then thereafter, with, say, Brosnan, we are looking at the holiday snaps or the brochure. It's that attempt to prolong the enjoyment.
I like the music where Bond and Electra were skiing - it's the best of Barry really, and the Scott Walker track too, not used as a vocal in the film. Yeah, I do find Arnold's attempt at the song and some of his strings a bit straining.
One snag is that for a film called The Word Is Not Enough you should ideally have, say, international spy rings, action along the Kremlin, a shootout in a Manhattan penthouse, a pre-credits in Jamaica and an assassination in Hong Kong, all tied in with the sense of a male villain who wants it all but will always be dissatisfied. At times, this film seems a bit limited in its scope given its title. And the film is just not that colourful looking, it's not vivid. I worked around Vauxhall at the time and most weeks that stretch along the Thames was bathed in brilliant sunlight against cloudless blue skies. The week they picked to film, it was cloudy and overcast.
Still, I wouldn't enjoy a Bond film as much as this until Spectre - which, again, you may feel tells you more about me than the film.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Copy/paste from last year:
THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH
I'm going to have to see how DAD plays this time around but I have a feeling I'm going to rate it higher than TWINE. This one is just dull, and I recall that DAD...for all of its faults...at least moves.
Anyways...
The good:
The bad:
Not a good entry.
Current ranking on this rewatch: