The World Is Not Enough

****

Starring: Pierce Brosnan, Sophie Marceau, Denise Richards, Robert Carlyle

Director: Michael Apted

Rating: Opens: December 26
Review: Graham Reid

Even before the opening credits, this new outing from the Bond franchise leaves you breathless: big trouble in Bilbao (cue the new Guggenheim), complications in London (cue the Millennium Dome), and a white-knuckle chase around the waterways of London (cue Dockland developments). And that's only the first few minutes.

This travelogue-Bond later takes in various parts of central Asia and ends with a threat to blow Istanbul off the map.

Yep, Bond is back with a storyline which makes Ian Fleming's originals look like Little Golden Books in comparison.

This Bond involves something improbable about oil cartels and power players (the misty-eyed and smouldering Marceau), ruthless terrorists (Carlyle as the man with a bullet in his brain and who can now literally feel no pain) and family matters of dad-and-daughter rejection.

But best of all in this rowdy two-hour romp is Bond's new busty sidekick, the Lara Croft lookalike Richards improbably cast as nuclear physicist Dr Christmas Jones (true!) who delivers lines out of Physics for Beginners with all the passion and plausibility of an intermediate school end-of-term production. Yep, she's that perfect as a Bond girl.

So there are chases and explosions, and Q all but announces his retirement from the series and anoints a successor (John Cleese as, yes, R). It also comes with terrific opening credits, the customary in-jokes and innuendo and a great Garbage soundtrack.

As a slightly more sadistic Bond than we are used to, Brosnan looks a little more lined and you can't see him credibly lasting more than maybe one other in the franchise - although for now he still manages to look very cool in a suit or bedsheet.

But it's Bond, James Bond - and really that's all you need to know. Still licensed to thrill.