'World' marks new addition to Bond series

There are precious few constants in this world, but we're lucky for those that we have: The stock market will go up and down and up, the seasons will change and every other Thanksgiving, James Bond saunters back into theaters with more of the same old, same old dressed in a sharp new tux with a brand new girl on his arm. This year they're calling it "The World Is Not Enough," which may or may not refer to Bond's voracious appetite for love.

It's hard to review a movie from the Bond franchise because they appear like clockwork and act like it, too. Sure, they usually shift writers and directors, sometimes even introducing a new Agent 007. But the beginning, middle and end are always the same: Bond fights some minor bad guy in the prologue who turns out to be a minion of the bigger bad guy; Bond chases after the bigger bad guy, bedding various women along the way (for the record, Her Majesty's favorite spy bags three leggy babes du

Courtesy of MGM Pierce Brosnan is Bond. James Bond.

ring "The World Is Not Enough"); Bond goes through death-defying heroic after heroic in his effort to defeat said big bad guy, which he does. And afterward he has his celebratory, er, roll in the hay.

There's something to be said for the Bond movies of old. Sean Connery - and Roger Moore - had a special way of making Bond more than just some guy with cool gadgets in a monkey suit. With Connery, Bond took himself seriously. There weren't just great villains, but great villain sidekicks. There hasn't been a character to rival Jaws for decades now. I miss him, the big galoot.

As the James Bond of the '90s, Pierce Brosnan does a serviceable job, but I can't help feeling that his Bond sees his work as a game. There's no urgency to him - it's like he's too cool to be cool. There's no doubt that he looks great in formalwear, but Bond is more than just a slick haircut and a pocketful of puns. Somewhere along the way, the franchise has forgotten that.

But enough complaints about Mr. Bond. "The World Is Not Enough," for all its formulae, is still entertaining. There are a couple of chase scenes that surely have not been duplicated in the past, and as much as I'm loathe to admit it, they're a lot of fun. Much of "World" is fun, in fact, and Bond fanatics will not go home disappointed. Sophie Marceau and Denise Richards are suitably wooden (read: terrible yet hot) as the women in Bond's life. Brosnan is debonair as ever.

Which brings me to the villain of "World," Renard, played by Robert "fooking coont" Carlyle ("Trainspotting," "The Full Monty"). Renard is one of the most pathetic, uninteresting Bond baddies to come along in quite a while. He looks like Dr. Evil on Slim-Fast, with the lazy eye and the cancer victim haircut and the strangely clipped, nasal speech. It doesn't help that he's also after a nuclear warhead in the former Soviet Union, in a location which I suspect is quite close to the Kreplachistan of "Austin Powers." Were the writers of "World" so hard up for a bad guy that they actually stole from the shagadelic 1997 comedy? Or did they think that because Mike Myers borrowed so liberally from the Bond franchise that it was time for a little payback? It's not the cribbing that irks me. It's the fact that it was done so blatantly and so poorly.

Luckily, "World" doesn't spend a lot of time on Renard, who stays hidden in the shadows. I can only presume that he's offscreen so much because he's hidden in his lair, watching the two "Austin" movies over and over again to get pointers on his technique. Most of the film is devoted to Bond's interactions with Electra King (Marceau) and Dr. Christmas Jones (Richards - yes, we're actually supposed to believe that the cue card-reading vacuous vixen has gone through medical school. I didn't know that they were now awarding diplomas to telephone poles with big nubbies. Perhaps it was Evil medical school...) both in and out of the bedroom. There's also a decent subplot in which M (Judi Dench) actually gets to leave MI6 headquarters and get out into the field, although her success rate isn't exactly as high as her younger, male counterpart's.

There isn't much to say about the plot of "The World Is Not Enough." If you've seen any Bond picture before, you'll know what's going on the minute the lights go down. If you haven't, you'll still know. The specifics this time out involve the aforementioned warhead and a lengthy oil pipeline. The film runs a bit on the chubby side at over two hours.

This Bond movie is, like so many others, ageless. James Bond is a character caught out of time, preserved with the best skin care and fashion technology available in Hollywood. As long as he keeps making money for his studio, they'll keep bringing him back from the dead. Every once in a while I think about how neat it would be to see a young James Bond movie. Then I remember that the thing everybody loves about 007 is that he has no past, no present, no future. He has only corruption to fight, women to sleep with and one-liners to deliver. He's a smooth-talking and walking cardboard cut-out. He's a constant. Sometimes there's nothing wrong with being predictable. Sometimes it's the best thing for everyone.

11-19-99