“Never let them see you bleed.”
As Tom said on his review of Tomorrow Never Dies, Pierce Brosnan’s Bond movies go from best to worst. And that seems to be the case here as well. I like The World Is Not Enough, though. Not as much as the previous two, and it’s certainly far from perfect, but I think it’s better than most people give it credit for.
One thing that you can count on in TWINE is Pierce Brosnan. He remains awesome as Bond, throwing the odd quip but being extremely cold when the occasion calls for it. And he has a few ruthless moments in this films some of his best moments as Bond I reckon, like the scene at the end in which he kills Electra. TWINE also see’s the return of an awesome character, who I feel I missed out of my review of Goldeneye. It’s Valentin Zukovsky, played by the great Robbie Coltrane. Now Zukovsky had a small role in Goldeneye as an (eventual) ally to Bond. His role in this is much bigger, yet sadly is cut short by his death at the end of the movie. But his death has way more emotional weight than I was expecting, and his final act was to help James.
The Bond girls are a mixed bag. One is Electra King, played by Sophie Marceau. She’s pretty good, and when she turns out to be the villian, well she’s plays a great baddie as well. The other Bond girl is Christmas Jones, played by Denise Richards. If the fact that she’s played by Denise Richards doesn’t put you off, and if you can suspend you’re disbelief enough to believe that she knows the first thing about anything science related, perhaps you’ll have a higher tolerance for her nuclear physicist character. She’s not even all that useful, sure she can defuse a bomb or two, so what. I’m sure Bond would work it out eventually. Joining Electra on the bad guy side of things is Renard, played by Robert Carlyle. He’s an old fashioned Bond villian. His crippling debilitation is that he’s been shot in the head and the bullet is still in his brain, cutting off his senses one at a time until it eventually will kill him. This means he can’t feel pain, and he can push himself further than anyone else until the day he dies. It’s as ludicrous as it sounds, and I’m not sure if it’s even remotely possible on a scientific level. Still, this is what makes him an excellent Bond villain; he’s just so cool!
As the Pierce Brosnan films got progressively worse (still great films in my eyes) the action got bigger. There’s probably a correlation between the two, but I’ll leave that for Tom to ponder over when he looks at the scene in Die Another Day in which Bond surfs a tidal wave. In TWINE however, the action gets big, but stays on the right side of believable. One great scene is the opening rocket boat chase along the River Thames. That scene might even go down as a classic in my eyes. Another great scene is fight against the saw blade wielding helicopters on Zukovsky’s water front Beluga caviar warehouse. This scene is also great because a lot of it was done with miniatures, not special effects. This is a technique I think DAD should have stuck with more. And finally, the ending sequence on the submarine and subsequent fight against Renard is just classic Bond.
Like the last action sequence, TWINE itself is just classic Bond. The film isn’t bogged down by ropey special effects or green screen, it sticks to the classic Bond formula and comes out ok. Perhaps the times were calling for a change-up in the old formula, and TWINE definitely does not deliver on that. It’s typical Bond, and some people find it to be forgettable and it’s easy to see why. I love it though. It was never going to win any awards, but it’s just a good Bond action film and doesn’t deserve some of the hate it gets. Some of the hate at least.
Up next – Die Another Day
Reviewed by Jack 😛
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