Things were looking grim for Pierce Brosnan’s turn as James Bond as both Goldeneye and Tomorrow Never Dies were relatively disappointing, but The World Is Not Enough finally gets the Bond franchise back on track. The problem hasn’t been with Brosnan- he makes a great Bond, but the stories have been less than stellar. Part of the blame goes to the PC nineties for making Bond such a wuss in Goldeneye, and Tomorrow Never Dies was just a fiasco. The World Is Not Enough is the best bond film since Sean Connery’s unofficial last hurrah in Never Say Never Again.

With a few exceptions, James Bond avoids much of the laughable implausibility and silly cartoonish villains of Tomorrow Never Dies and instead embraces a slightly less comic book persona. Sure, there are still a few ridiculous getaways and corny one-liners, but on the whole The World Is Not Enough allows Brosnan to play it tougher than he has in the last two pictures.

The supporting cast is particularly good here. Denise Richards may make the most unbelievable nuclear physicist ever portrayed on screen, but she makes a kick ass Bond girl, complete with ridiculously short shorts and cut off T-shirt. Robert Carlyle is one of the scariest Bond villains in the canon with his deformed face from a bullet wound to the head, and jungle-ist Goldie is hardly a stretch as a seedy thug. Judi Dench brings a certain level of credence to the ‘M’ character, and John Cleese makes a perfect protege and sidekick for ‘Q’ since Desmond Llewelyn surely can’t live forever.

The World Is Not Enough is paced like an action film with amazing stunt scenes and the usual level of gratuitous violence. Like the Bond of the sixties and seventies, Brosnan gets to bed almost every girl he encounters here except (most unfortunately for him) the Italian villainess from the boat chase at the beginning. Evidently, the pressure to be PC and keep Bond monogamous in each film has, thankfully, subsided. Let’s hope that was a just a lame early-nineties fad.