The World Is Not Enough


The World Is Not Enough is a 1999 action spy film, the nineteenth in the James Bond series produced by Eon Productions and the third to star Pierce Brosnan as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. It was directed by Michael Apted, from an original story and screenplay by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Bruce Feirstein. It was produced by Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli. The title is the translation of the motto on the Bond family coat of arms, first seen in On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
The film's plot revolves around the murder of billionaire businessman Sir Robert King by the terrorist Renard, and Bond's subsequent assignment to protect King's daughter Elektra, who was previously held for ransom by Renard. During his assignment, Bond unravels a scheme to increase petroleum prices by triggering a nuclear meltdown in the waters of Istanbul.
Filming locations included Spain, France, Azerbaijan, Turkey, and the UK, with interiors shot at Pinewood Studios. Despite receiving mixed reviews from critics, with the plot and Denise Richards' casting frequently targeted for criticism, The World Is Not Enough earned over $361 million worldwide, becoming the eighth highest-grossing film of 1999. It was also the first Eon-produced Bond film officially released by the mainline Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer label instead of United Artists, the franchise's original owner and distributor.
The World Is Not Enough was followed by Die Another Day in 2002.

Plot

In Bilbao, MI6 agent James Bond meets Swiss banker Lachaise to retrieve money for Sir Robert King, a British oil tycoon and friend of M. Bond interrogates the banker to identify the assassin of an MI6 agent, but Lachaise is killed before revealing this information, and Bond is forced to escape with the money. At MI6 headquarters in London, the money is revealed to be laced with explosives that kill King. Bond chases the assassin by boat on the Thames to the Millennium Dome, where she attempts to escape via hot air balloon. Bond offers her protection; she refuses, fearing he would not be able to protect her, and blows up the balloon at the cost of her life.
Bond traces the recovered money to Renard, a KGB agent turned terrorist. Following an earlier attempt on his life by MI6, Renard was left with a bullet embedded in his brain, which makes him immune to pain but will eventually kill him. M assigns Bond to protect King's daughter Elektra, whom Renard had previously abducted and held for ransom. Bond flies to Azerbaijan, where Elektra oversees the construction of an oil pipeline. During a tour of the pipeline's proposed route in the mountains, Bond and Elektra are attacked by a hit squad in snowmobiles.
Bond visits Valentin Zukovsky at a casino to acquire information about Elektra's attackers. There, Bond grows suspicious as Elektra immediately loses $1 million on a game of high card draw, and discovers that her head of security, Sasha Davidov, is secretly in league with Renard. Bond kills Davidov and boards a plane bound for an ex-Soviet ICBM base in Kazakhstan. Posing as a Russian scientist, Bond meets American nuclear physicist Dr. Christmas Jones, who is cooperating with Russian armed forces in overseeing the dismantling of the site. Renard removes the GPS locator card and weapons-grade plutonium core from a nuclear warhead. Before Bond can kill him, Jones exposes Bond's cover. Renard steals the bomb and flees, leaving everyone to die. Bond and Jones escape the exploding silo with the locator card.
In Azerbaijan, Bond warns M that Elektra may have succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome when she was Renard's hostage and hands M the locator card as proof of Renard's theft. An alarm sounds, revealing that the stolen bomb is attached to a pipeline inspection pig heading towards the oil terminal. Bond and Jones enter the pipeline to deactivate the bomb, and Jones discovers that half of the plutonium is missing. They jump clear of the rig and a section of pipe is destroyed. Bond and Jones are presumed killed. Back at the command centre, Elektra reveals that she killed her father as revenge for using her as bait for Renard. She abducts M, whom she resents for having advised her father not to pay the ransom.
Bond accosts Zukovsky at his caviar factory in the Caspian Sea, and they are attacked by Elektra's helicopters. Zukovsky reveals his arrangement with Elektra was to accept a payoff via bets in his casino in exchange for the use of an old nuclear Soviet-era submarine captained by Zukovsky's nephew in the Black Sea Fleet. The group goes to Istanbul, where Jones realizes that if Renard were to insert the stolen plutonium into the submarine's nuclear reactor, the resulting meltdown would destroy Istanbul, sabotaging the main alternative oil pipelines passing through the Bosporus. Elektra's pipeline, planned to go around Istanbul, would increase in value. Bond gets a signal from the locator card at the Maiden's Tower before Zukovsky's henchman Bull blows up the command centre. Zukovsky is knocked unconscious, and Bond and Jones are captured by Elektra's henchmen. Jones is taken aboard the submarine, which was seized by Renard's men. Bond is taken to the tower, where Elektra tortures him with a garrote and reveals that she cut off part of her own ear to prevent any suspicion about her relationship with Renard. Zukovsky and his men seize the tower, but Zukovsky is shot by Elektra. Before dying, Zukovsky uses his cane gun to free Bond, who frees M and kills Elektra.
Bond dives after the submarine, boards it, and frees Jones. The submarine's hull ruptures as it sinks into the Bosporus. Bond fights Renard and impales him by firing the plutonium rod into his chest. Bond and Jones escape from the submarine, leaving the flooded reactor to detonate underwater. Later, they celebrate the New Year and have sex in Istanbul while being monitored by MI6 satellites. M is appalled by Bond's conduct with Christmas, but "R", the successor to Q, Bond's quartermaster, dismisses their sexual activity as a glitch on the satellite screen.

Cast

  • Pierce Brosnan as James Bond, MI6 agent, codename 007.
  • Sophie Marceau as Elektra King, an oil heiress who is seemingly being targeted by Renard, the world's most wanted terrorist. M gives Bond the task of protecting her at all costs, although he suspects that there is more to her than meets the eye. Sharon Stone and Vera Farmiga were also considered for the role before Broccoli saw Marceau's performance in Firelight.
  • Robert Carlyle as Victor "Renard" Zokas, a former KGB agent turned high-tech terrorist who previously kidnapped Elektra. After a failed assassination attempt he has a bullet lodged in his brain, rendering him impervious to pain as well as slowly killing off his other senses, and ultimately killing him as well. Before the casting of Carlyle the role was offered to Javier Bardem and Jean Reno.
  • Denise Richards as Dr. Christmas Jones, an American nuclear physicist assisting Bond in his mission. Richards stated that she liked the role because it was "brainy", "athletic", and had "depth of character, in contrast to Bond girls from previous decades". Richards stated that a lot of viewers "made fun of" the character's attire but that "these Bond girls are so outrageous and if I did really look like a scientist, the Bond fans would have been disappointed." Jones was originally written as a French-Polynesian insurance investigator before but the studio insisted on changing her nationality after the casting of Marceau. Tiffani Thiessen also auditioned.
  • Robbie Coltrane as Valentin Zukovsky: A former Russian mafia boss and Baku casino owner. Bond initially seeks out Zukovsky for intel on Renard and is subsequently aided by him when Zukovsky's nephew falls into Renard's captivity. Coltrane reprises his role from GoldenEye.
  • Desmond Llewelyn as Q: MI6's quartermaster who supplies Bond with multi-purpose vehicles and gadgets useful for the latter's mission. The film would be Llewelyn's final performance as Q. Although the actor was not officially retiring from the role, the Q character was training his eventual replacement in this film. Llewelyn was killed in a car crash shortly after the film premiered.
  • Maria Grazia Cucinotta as "Cigar Girl": An experienced hitwoman working alone, who appears as an assistant who supplies Bond and Lachaise with cigars during their meeting in Bilbao but tries to kill Bond in London. In the novelisation, the character is given the name Giulietta da Vinci.
  • Samantha Bond as Miss Moneypenny: M's secretary.
  • Michael Kitchen as Bill Tanner: M's Chief of Staff.
  • Colin Salmon as Charles Robinson: M's Deputy Chief of Staff.
  • Serena Scott Thomas as Dr. Molly Warmflash, an MI6 agent and doctor assigned to examine Bond, as well as describing Renard's seeming invincibility due to the terminal bullet in his brain that will kill him when it reaches the center of his brain.
  • Ulrich Thomsen as Sasha Davidov: Elektra King's head of security in Azerbaijan and Renard's secret liaison.
  • Goldie as Bull: Valentin Zukovsky's gold-toothed and gold-haired bodyguard, secretly working for Elektra and Renard. Although listed as 'Bull' in the credits, Zukovsky also refers to him as 'Mr. Bullion' in the film.
  • John Seru as Gabor: Elektra King's bodyguard who is seen accompanying King wherever she travels.
  • Claude-Oliver Rudolph as Colonel Akakievich: The leader of the Russian ICBM base in Kazakhstan.
  • Judi Dench as M: The head of MI6.
  • Patrick Malahide portrays Lachaise, the Swiss banker killed early on in the film.
  • Gary Powell as Submarine Crewman
  • John Cleese as R: Q's assistant and appointed successor. Bond humorously refers to him as "R": "If you're Q, does that make him R?"

    Production

Development

In November 1997, a month prior to the release of Tomorrow Never Dies, Barbara Broccoli watched a news report on Nightline detailing how the world's major oil companies were vying for control of the untapped oil reserves in the Caspian Sea in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse, and suggested that controlling the only pipeline from the Caspian to the West would be an appropriate motivation for a potential Bond villain. She and Michael G. Wilson hired screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade to work on the film following their work on Plunkett & Macleane; Purvis and Wade would eventually write or co-write all of the following Bond films up to No Time to Die. The screenwriters incorporated material from the abandoned Bond screenplay Reunion with Death, which had been conceived in 1993 with Timothy Dalton as Bond. Broccoli was especially impressed by the writers' suggestion of a female main villain, stating that "With Elektra, Bond thinks he has found Tracy, but he's really found Blofeld".
Joe Dante, and later Peter Jackson, were initially offered the opportunity to direct the film. Barbara Broccoli enjoyed Jackson's Heavenly Creatures, and a screening of The Frighteners was arranged for her. She disliked the latter film, however, and showed no further interest in Jackson. Jackson, a lifelong Bond fan, remarked that as Eon tended to go for less famous directors, he would likely not get another chance to direct a Bond film after The Lord of the Rings. Barbara Broccoli also was in talks with Alfonso Cuarón to direct, who nearly accepted. Hoping to find a director capable of eliciting strong performances from women, the producers eventually hired Michael Apted, as his work with Sissy Spacek in Coal Miner's Daughter, Sigourney Weaver in Gorillas in the Mist and Jodie Foster in Nell has earned all three actresses Oscar nominations. Apted's then-wife Dana Stevens did an uncredited rewrite, primarily to strengthen the female characters' roles, before Bruce Feirstein, who had worked in the previous two films, was hired to work on Bond's role.
Initially the film was to be released in 2000, rumoured to be titled Bond 2000. Other rumoured titles included Death Waits for No Man, Fire and Ice, Pressure Point and Dangerously Yours. The eventual title The World Is Not Enough is an English translation of the Latin phrase Orbis non sufficit, the motto of Bond's supposed real-world ancestor Sir Thomas Bond. In the novel On Her Majesty's Secret Service and its film adaptation, it is first claimed to be James Bond's family motto as well.
The phrase Orbis non sufficit is thought to originate from the Pharsalia by Lucan. It appears twice, both with uncomplimentary associations: the first reference is to a group of villainous mutineers, and the second is to the ambitious Julius Caesar. It was then applied to Alexander the Great by Juvenal in his collection of satirical poems, the Satires: "The world was not big enough for Alexander the Great, but a coffin was". Phrased as Non sufficit orbis, it became the motto of the Spanish king Philip II after ascending the Portuguese throne in 1580.