The World Is Not Enough

Lacking the rejuvenated freshness of the first two Pierce Brosnan Bond movies, this 19th franchise outing seems both desperate for fresh material (M gets kidnapped? Oh, please!) and hopelessly ball-and-chained to its past. Rock'em-sock'em action sequences are double-espresso retreads from old Bond movies (boat chase, ski chase, helicopter chase) and the bad guy (Robert Carlyle) is a half-assed anarchist with a character gimmick (a bullet lodged in his brain has made him impervious to pain) that the movie completely fails to exploit. The plot finds Bond protecting oil baroness Sophie Marceau from Carlyle's scheme to disrupt the world's crude supply, but where her loyalties lie is the movie's only creative twist. The film also features Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist in a wet tank top and John Cleese as the new Q. Still, given the popularity and the sell-through price, this one's pretty much a no-brainer (in both senses). (R. Blackwelder)