The World Is Not Enough

Updated June 26, 2020 | Infoplease Staff

Pierce Brosnan gives his best performance yet as suave British super-agent 007 in The World Is Not Enough. The plot is more or less like every other Bond film: He must stop an arch villain who has a gambit for world destruction (Robert Carlyle), and along the way he runs into a buxom American physicist (Denise Richards), a voluptuous oil heiress (Sophie Marceau), and hordes of henchmen who prove that brute force is nothing against post-imperialist sophistication.

Brosnan embraces the Bondian ethos of calm and well-pressed clothes under pressure, under fire, underwater (where, in a highly memorable scene, he straightens his tie), under the covers, etc.

Sure, Bond's best outing runs on formula, but 007 has been successfully dodging bullets with this formula for about 40 years now. A more valid complaint is that The Thomas Crown Affair had Brosnan acting out a Bond role in a more creative flick earlier this year.