It's Strictly Plutonic: Twenty Years of The World Is Not Enough (1999-2019)

Well, the third of our anniversaries are upon us. Dig in, get going when you're ready. For now we're in the dark world of the Brosnan Bond.

I was wondering what quote you were going to use as you've done MR and LTK. I was rather lax with the LTK review (which I still aim to do at some point!) but I have a sense of purpose for TWINE.

I confess to racking what's left of my brain a month or so back and it snuck up on me.

Still time for your LTK review. I'm gearing up to watching TWINE soon. Maybe next week on my next pair of days off.

I'll be giving it a watch this week I imagine. The review might take a little longer.

“…shadows stay behind…never on top”

The film holds a curious place. It was the first film of any type I saw at my towns new cinema, late 1999 (Christmas week if I remember). The greater ignomy at the time was the couple of quid I paid for the roasted cashews.

But since, TWINE has bubbled downwards. So, in that festive mood, the 20th anniversary watch.

In the bankers office Bond seems suitably peeved about something. his posture, his delivery of lines (“I’m giving you the opportunity to leave with your life”), the close-up of his expression prior to hauling the banker to his feet (“Get up! Get up!”). Having given the expanded score a listen lately, I was reminded of the sound when Bond leaps off the ledge. Post-Clinton affair cigar usage (I’m strongly reaching there, I suppose).

Then whoom, into the boat chase. You forget by now you’re well into the PTS still. Some decent music and shots of London. Much like the car chase in Bullitt, TWINE manages to find a way to get the boats across London without doing so succinctly (no sweeping shot of the boats going under Tower Bridge, going down a dead end at St. Saviour’s Dock –you see the cars across the bottom as cigar girl bombs down it- the Ornamental Canal, etc). In 1999, there was a reality show about wheel-clampers and so there they are, the ‘stars’ getting drenched. Bit by bit, as he draws closer, Bond looks pissed and you would had you spent miles drinking in Thames water.
And of course, it was the late 90s, the ‘Millennium’ was fast approaching and what better way to have Bond bomb his way into the Thames before the Dome (now known as the o2 Centre). Blast of the theme (something Arnold said he made sure of doing for the Dome) and what better way to celebrate the soon-to-be-opened white elephant than having Bond fall onto it?

(Perhaps to firmly ram it all home for the Blair government, Bond should’ve either accidentally brought down the Millennium Bridge or ran across it before being bounced off the ‘wobbly bridge’ and given the new offices for the MPs a blasting).

The film looks to be stylish enough with certain camera angles and so forth but something about Bond, either via his injury or the mission is a bit sharp and annoyed. Even with ‘R’ (“Let’s see shall we?”) or maybe it’s Brosnan trying to harden his Bond a little. He’s just not in the mood.
Nice to see another SIS HQ and indeed, what you assume are other 00’s (first time since Thunderball) and the portrait of Sir Miles. Quite like Warmflash, more is the pity she didn’t return for DAD (“I hear the prison was quite tough”/”Yes, not everything has thawed out yet”) and I still think there’s something about how Bond reacts when she appears at the hologram. Not quite embarassament, nothing huge, just as soon as she walks in he jerks the finger back as if caught doing something he shouldn’t. Bit of a ‘meow’ with Moneypenny.
Bond is jerkily coming into the 21st Century, using the PC’s to hunt the money, the hologram and so forth. TND was somehow still entrenched in the 90s, but TWINE is trying to enter the new century if bit by bit.

Elektra is a decent enough character, certainly from the off. She won’t mess about when with the villagers but there’s that certain immaturity lurking –trying to taunt Bond with “who’s afraid now” and her panic to being snowed under (natural enough, but the veneer is ebbing. Got to love Bond’s expression when the parachute blossoms. (And subtle hint to Tracy, “Have you ever lost a close one?”)

Good to see Zhukovsky back. He has some of the best lines in this film. Bond has a bit of fun with the x-ray specs, like he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing and what he’s seeing is more than enough. Bond ruins a martini by gulping it down. Last drink and all that I suppose.

And so it goes. Plodding about we get to Christmas. She has a sharp opening (the glimmer line) and the “protection…from me” line but yes, the “I don’t know any doctor jokes” still makes me laugh or titter. Not mad on the “He caught a bullet…instead of the plane”.

“A man tires of being executed.”

Renard is not too bad, he’s played decently enough and some of his lines are okay. When the cavalry turns up in the basement, no one questions Renard until after he’s sort of taken charge (“I suppose you let him down here”) and the fact Christmas seems to take her cue from him. Good to see that Bond’s shoulder follows him round, the fact he can’t push the trolley properly. Yet little things like his reaction to Renard’s quotation of Elektra’s maxim. Seems enough to derail Bond a little. He at least goes about the subsequent few minutes matter-of-factly, the diving through doors, dispatching of henchmen and leaping to freedom. (And Renard’s escape, how he and his surviving henchmen dispatch people as they drive off).

We’ll skirt past the Bond, James Bond with brief flare of the theme.

Christmas for her faults at least seems to know her stuff. Jury rigging whilst Bond goes after Renard. And yet…and yet, is it me or Bond keeps his head down in her top a fraction longer after they make it to the surface?

I do like M’s expression after Elektra says Bond left her villa in the middle of the night. A mother whose son is persistently disobedient. And Tanner’s face after she snaps at him about going out there. Not for the first time M is in pissed mode at a wandering agent, or maybe this is the first time in a long line until Skyfall. Indeed there’s an element of “mommy is angry” with Elektra and M in the computer room. At last the pretence is over, but now we’re halfway in and it’s bubbled along.

There’s something a little disjointed between Bond and Christmas. Clearly he likes the look of her (after her “my ass” line) and so on but it is a little at odds with the ‘get Elektra/Renard, get M back’. Not for the first time I wonder the likelihood of Brosnan’s Bond going solo after the villains. And it’s not helped by the ‘two villain’ set-up. I always lean towards Renard as the main villain and yet he’s subservient to Elektra in a manner of speaking.

And onto the caviar factory. For my sins a favourite Brosnan scene. Down to Zhukovsky I think (“Can’t you just say hello like a normal person?”/”The insurance company is never going to believe this”/”Absolutely not!” as he struggles to stay afloat). The action is well handled, that opening with Bond caught in the light blazing away and then of course the now traditional Brosnan-arms-pump. Like an idiot though he dwells in the glory of shooting the helicopter just prior to the saw cutting into the Beemer. (Bit of a continuity cock-up. Shot from behind of Bond crouched gun extended, cut to Bond saying Q will be ticked hands down, back to Bond crouched gun extended). Then it dissolves, running around, leaping etc and to me bit of a Carry On set of moments –Bond popping up out of the hatch, in time to knock someone down it and then the two gunmen popping up and down behind the tank as Bond tries to shoot them. Never twigged before how much Brosnan’s stunt man/double is visible in the scene, even running to turn the pump.
(Do like that moment after Bond lands on the planks and cries out, his expression as if to say: “You have to be kidding, the shoulder again?”)

Goldie is a flaming pain in the arse though.

Do like Bond’s attire in Turkey. Shades of Lazenby at the hotel in OHMSS. On the torture chair, Bond has an expression at times befitting what mine must have been like watching this the first time round. The mention of his motto still conjures the moment in the cinema when Bond says it. The groans in the cinema were so loud that the “family motto” line was virtually drowned out.
More is the pity M doesn’t get to see Bond on the chair, I bet there would have been some choice lines after.
Zhukovsky’s last moment is a good one, the looks he and Bond exchange. Brosnan does enough with little and that’s it, alles kapputt. (I like to think, somehow, Zhukovsky makes it. Stranger things have happened in Bond).
Do like that Bond is so determined to get Elektra, he seems to find freeing M a little bit of a nuisance.
But M’s face after Elektra’s death. I guess you could understand it but she’s head of SIS and such things must be part and parcel. This is what the Craig films make tiresome –all of what Bond/M go through with the angst, “I never miss”, etc was done in the latter Brosnan’s.

Of course he goes to cock-up the sub. (“So we’re going up then?/”Slight miscalculation”). Got to like Bond’s “so’s she” to Renard. The fight is not bad, full of Brosnan expressions we know and love. The ending sometimes feels tacked on but I’m indifferent. Some films feel like they go a bit too long like LALD and some don’t.
Something about his “she’s waiting for you” and the looks either exchange before Renard falls. Bond’s nodding head as if to say “she *is* waiting for you” and Renard as if to say “it’s been a good fight”. I dunno.

Film ends. The lines delivered are as good as it gets. I was told I was too young to understand them in 1999 but I grew up with Carry On films so it’s part and parcel. The moment with Tanner and ‘R’ as they realise what is going on leads you to wish that they returned as such in DAD. It does make you miss old Q and that there’s something much more in his final moment that is not helped by knowing Llewellyn died of course.

I was strangely indifferent to the film. It’s good but it’s lacking in parts. After the lengthy and action-packed PTS it seems to lose its way in parts but it’s not wholly bad and I’d lump it in line with DAD oddly enough.

I'll get round to my favourite frames before next week.

Great stuff Hilly! M seeing Bond in the chair is an interesting idea, certainly! Maybe for pacing reasons it couldn't happen.

I wouldn't say you're 'strongly reaching' about the cigar gag being a reference to the Clinton shenanigans, Hilly ... I've no doubt it was, in the same way that the press release about Carver's demise that M dictates to Moneypenny in TND is a Robert Maxwell reference.

Thank you fellas. Perhaps it wasn't so much a reach as you say Blunty.

Otherwise Fields, I felt quite fatigued watching TWINE so was wary the review reflected that. I might revisit it later but for now it'll do.

You reviewed TWINE and you said "it's good" at the bottom. I'm a happy man.

Well, I guess we try. Wait until OHMSS50. I might well destroy the forum under the weight of my threads.

TWINE certainly 'feels' special to me personally. It was released not long after I first started getting into Bond and as a result there's always been a clear delineation in my mind between the pre-TWINE and post-TWINE films. There was, after all, a three year window where TWINE was the newest of the series. As a result I've somehow always felt it was the last of the "classic" or "traditional" Bond era which had begun in '62; DAD felt too AmericaniZed and xXx-ish and the Cregg films are a mixed bag with identity issues.

As far as send-offs for the last millennium go, it could've been worse!

20 years bloody hell....I still remember seeing this opening week with my dad at the late show at the newly opened chain cinema location which thankfully had Dolby EX which was the sound sytsem I had loved experiencing earlier that year on Phantom Menace. (Yes, I was interested in movie tech even as a kid)

Here comes the first part of a lot of analysis:
I used to say this was my favorite of the four Brozzer films and I watched it religiously on VHS obviously as soon as the tape was released. I played the game adaptations, enjoy the score, rewatch the film every year, read and reread the Benson novelization and admire the more adult tonality and interest in deepening character by bringing in Michael Apted.

So why is it that over time I find myself liking the overall film less and less? And don't get me wrong I ADORE TWINE.
I think in a lot of way that this is where we start to go off the rails a bit and have never come back. Apted was a complete outsider choice and never before has the divide between main and second unit action been so blatantly obvious. For all of the great character moments and nice photography there is an element of lackluster or downright underwhelming moments throughout the film. Lamont's production design even has moments where it just feels plain such as the opening in the banker's office-despite overall having a realistic richness in most surroundings.

I still don't know how to resolve the opening. I get why they moved the song and I like it coming up with a broken Bond clinging on the roof of the Dome. The office opener was too low key for an opener though Pierce is on fire in terms of forceful anger in ways that Craig cannot begin to dream of. Then comes the iconic window jump which is spot on in terms of escapist perfection-but even that doesn't feel quite right as it is again very low key as if it was done simply because they had to have a capper to the sequence.
The office scene is good and shows Bond actually being an intelligence man, his own reasoning agent in discussing why King got involved-and using his brain in detecting the evidence that a bomb has been planted.
One highlight of the film's staging is the Q-boat leap from the blown HQ building with Arnold's triumphant cue-but then the boat chase goes on WAY WAY WAY too long in a near unending sequence that should have been drastically reduced to the few good bits we all remember and little else. (I still hate the foley effect of Cigar girl's boat crashing into the boathouse thing which is way too loud in the mix)
The main title is very nice with the oil theme being worked onto the nude models but for some reason I never get as involved with it. I now think it's the weakest of the four title sequences simply because its a more sedate and less involving sequence. The title song is fantastic and a classic-but again there is the quality of it seeming to not having the staying power of GE. It doesn't get mentioned as much as other songs these days. I do think the film mix isn't as good as the single mix as with TND the film mix is very open and the song gets a bit buried.
Reopening with the funeral is again a more adult tone but keeps the pace very slow and at times almost procedural like as we have the case set before us with the cats of characters being re-indoctrinated and put forth in little winking ways. This is the series really starting to go in full self referential mode and over many rewatches you really wish they had just gotten on with it a bit faster.
Desmond's farewell is handled remarkably well and that scene is just so damn moving.
"Pay Attention 007. There are always two things I've tried to teach you. First never let them see you bleed." --"And the second?" "Always have an escape plan."
That quote is the perfect Bond trailer. Period end of story.
I hate how they made R a total buffoon as Cleese does so well in DAD as a more serious character that you wish he hadn't been axed. Even in the end scene R is perfectly fine.
Bond's search in Records is very reminiscent of the novels and one of the best scenes in the film combined with Arnold's cue. I've always loved the way Bond reaches out and actually touches Elektra's face on the monitor screen as a precursor to his interest in her. Then Bond figures out Renard's involvement on his own and angrily seeks out M despite her being in a conference-WHICH IS WHAT BOND WOULD DO!
Bond to Azerbaijan may just be my favorite atmospheric moment of Brozzer's tenure. Everything from the Z8 to Arnold's cue to the oil fields to the gray suit to the drive through Black Park.
Bond and Elektra meet cute and some sparks fly but in a believable way. I like how her human causes are both genuine and phenomenal cover to her destroyed psyche.
The setup for the ski scene is great and Arnold goes into epic mode here very well. But then the parahawk scene comes up and the action gets a bit too generic despite the interesting visuals.
The avalanche bit is key because it shows Elektra in a real panic and Bond's interest suddenly become realized as he is compelled to protect this bird with a wing down-despite our passion for mocking LOOK INTO MY EYES this whole scene is beautifully realized right down to Bond breaking through the snow as a small figure to perhaps tip the hat to OHMSS.
The next scene in Elektra's bedroom with Bond trying to maintain his distance despite the growing connection-brilliant. Great moment of uncertainty for everyone.
Zukovsky's return is great and welcome but I dislike how they softened his character so much and that he's in the film so darn little. Such a shameful waste of the best supporting character in the series since Patrick Macnee in AVTAK.
Elektra's being flagrantly dangerous is a great bit. This is even more damning if you think back to it when her true nature is revealed. The final card game is good but like Bond we can tell there is something odd going on-but then the film just drops it.
"A game I can't afford to play" yet he still shags her finally. I love the more adult and sensual nature of this scene where they speak as real people and Elektra reveals more of her story while probing at Bond who comes in and out of his armor. Again this is another moment that would need to be referenced to make her evilness more damning.
Renard's appearance is good and a bit SPECTREish with the sudden shooting of Arkov.
I love Bond finally slipping away in the night to do spy work and stumbling on Davidov's duplicity. He stumbles onto the plan, cold bloodedly kills Davidov strangely enough then bluffs his way through which is PERFECT!!!!!
Meeting with Xmas is great with some energy and sparkle to the conversation that most overlook and I've always loved the faux Russian accent Bond put on. I quote it frequently.
The entire mine sequence is great save for Bond taking so bloody long to actually do his job. The staging is somehow off because instead of mimicking the Pushkin confrontation in TLD where Bond had no intention of actually fulfilling his orders unless the wrong things were revealed here Bond acts as if he's just hesitating every second.
The action takes over and is largely very good but there is a bit too much back and forth cutting in the pit. Renard's escape the the finger pointing to the bomb are wonderful and the iconic flame tunnel is perhaps the last time we had something that iconic in the series.
The "Bond...James" needed to be ADRd and sticks out like a sore thumb.
I love that the scene ends in total failure and they can only watch the plane soar away.
The Stockholm syndrome confrontation is good but it feels weird for Bond to say "hi villain" and be rebuked and then everything just goes on the back burner.
The bomb in the pipeline is again good plotting and cover for our villain. I do hate the shot of M just showing up and hate the fact that she seems so willing to be played for a sucker.
The pipeline sequence is great despite the dodgy CG, Arnold does some career best work and again Bond uses his brain and let's the convention bomb blow to mess with Elektra and see where her plan goes.
M is captured-oh boy gee wonder why?
I love Elektra reacting to Renard with glee and love every fleeting second of their time because that relationship is a film to itself we don't get to see. Each are exquisitely performed and I could watch that film happily.
The caviar factory is great except that it goes on for too long and gets a bit unmanageable like the boat chase. My favorite bit of error is Bond going from P99 to mp5k to P99 back and forth.
Judi Dench v Clock action! The confrontations are better than the method to get word out.
The ex KGB HQ is a way to get M's signal found but the capture is super easy. The games at least made you chase Bullion.
The chair scene is the payoff to the whole Elektra story. Easily by and large the best scene in the film and a showcase for Apted and the two actors. Christmas disappears in two seconds and is forgotten. I even love the working in of the title as delivered
"I could have given you the world..." "The World is not enough"
could have done without the chipper "family motto" but Brozzer's delivery of the title is with as much conviction, anger, rage, frustration as Shakespeare.
Then the strangulation. My word this scene is fantastic. Every last bit. Even down to the way Elektra sits straddling on Bond's lap as she slowly and willingly kills him while going in and out of her mad delusions. A complete 180 of the usual villain torture while revealing plan.

More to come at a later date because I'm writing at work...

Why does this feel like the one film that literally cried out for Maibaum's typewriter...good lord I had to just stop and think what if...of the whole series this is the one that needed to be fleshed out.

Sound review, Boots. Agree with the bit about 'R'. It's a shame there was not more of Cleese's Q. I think he could've slotted into the Craig era reasonably well. Especially Skyfall.

Interesting commentary HGTB. Not often you hear/read support of the Access Denied scene but I always thought of it as a visual to Bond's weakness for a 'bird with a wing down', and I'm so glad you worked in that phrase later on in another scene that I always really enjoy - Elektra freaking out in the snow.

I'd wager that if you're liking the film less and less despite still thinking, umm the world of it, maybe you've burnt it out? Skip it next year and revisit it in 2021 and it should rise again in your estimations.

CJB wrote:

TWINE certainly 'feels' special to me personally. It was released not long after I first started getting into Bond and as a result there's always been a clear delineation in my mind between the pre-TWINE and post-TWINE films. There was, after all, a three year window where TWINE was the newest of the series. As a result I've somehow always felt it was the last of the "classic" or "traditional" Bond era which had begun in '62; DAD felt too AmericaniZed and xXx-ish and the Cregg films are a mixed bag with identity issues.

As far as send-offs for the last millennium go, it could've been worse!

I see what your saying with DAD but I'd still consider it the last hurrah of classic Bond (though SF does return to this).

Good to read more love of TWINE, regardless.

Might be good to get some more favourite frames up!

https://bondandbeyond.forumotion.com/t3607-favourite-frames-the-world-is-not-enough

Watched TWINE in honour of the 20th anniversary. In that context it's kinda funny how what was once slick and contemporary now feels dated and very much 'of its time.' Even little things like the front-on shot of the parahawk pilot spraying his gun directly at the camera looks like something out of a goofy old movie... which I guess is what TWINE is now.

So things that I like:

- Brosnan's performance, despite some questionable writing
- Elektra
- Q and R dynamic
- Title sequence is quite unique (but again, 'of its time' not that that's inherenty bad)
- Elektra straddling Bond's boner on the torture chair
- The PTS boat chase, which I consider to be one of the best action sequences of the series; sadly this more or less where the movie peaked for me!

Now some of the bad stuff. The writing and acting was hokey as hell in some places. "There's no point in LIVING if you cant feel ALIVE!" is probably some of the worst crap Broz-Bond ever utters right up until "Knew about my shoulder, just where to hurt me!" And of course, as mentioned, there's the weird situation where Bond sort of lets her go on with her evildoing even after accusing her of being the villain.

Renard is... OK. I mean the concept with the bullet was unique. It was interesting what you said, Hilly, with Bond sort of acknowledging subtly that he understood why Renard had the hots for Elektra (right after he impaled him with a plutonium rod he was gonna murder 8 million people with). Dunno if that was intended, but it certainly is a fresh take on it.

The ski chase was an alright sequence, but as alluded to, so many things that look goofy 20 years on. That first hand grenade lobbed at Bond having the blast radius of an entire minefield. The parahawks exploding as soon as they bump into anything. *grin* "CYA back at the lodge" *parachute activates* "Ruh-roh." No CGI, though, so I'll pay that.

The tree-lopping chopper sequence was, frankly, a bit crap. I mean I suppose you can accept the ridiculousness of such an elaborate and inefficient way of trying to murder someone given it's a Bond film.

The Xmas Jones character was basically superfluous, Bond just needed to fuck someone at the end of the film.

Would've liked to see more Tanner, probably because I recently watched his season of the UK House of Cards where he plays the King in a dystopian future where Queen Elizabeth II is succeeded by an insufferable, virtue-signalling heir.

Unintentional LOLs: Muslim villagers being concerned with saving an Orthodox church. Bond keeping his tie and jacket on even when he has to zip through an oil pipeline to disarm a nuclear bomb. Literally all the Bond-Renard dialogue in their first meeting.

So overall, it's an entertaining flick with classic Bondian tropes alongside the 'twist' of having a female main villain. The writing was dodgy in places, undoubtedly, but at the end of the day it's 007 and not Shakespeare. As far as seeing out the 20th century, I think it did alright.

Another unintentional LOLs: The GBP/USD exchange rate remaining completely static for, presumably, several weeks.

CJB wrote:

The tree-lopping chopper sequence was, frankly, a bit crap. I mean I suppose you can accept the ridiculousness of such an elaborate and inefficient way of trying to murder someone given it's a Bond film.

The Xmas Jones character was basically superfluous, Bond just needed to fuck someone at the end of the film.

People need to remember that TND was heavily criticized for being almost nothing but wall-to-wall action with a plot that was basically too easy to solve and had a connect-the-dot sort of feel to it. I think those criticisms are valid, but the film also didn't have a script ready when they began filming and as a result the movie's story isn't its strongest point. Armed with that knowledge, fans (such as me) did want something with a bit more meat on the bone. Hence TWINE...

If a Bond film could be given a "Bondie" (or Oscar, which I guess it could) for Best Performances, I think TWINE would have at least three nominees: Dench, Carlyle and Marceau.They were very well written and considerably well-acted. So much so that this is almost their film with Bond being relegated to supporting character in his own movie. Also SKYFALL stole immensely from this film so it must've done something right.

The locations didn't interest me, but the interplay between Dench and Marceau drew me in. Imaginative action sequences and great characters make up for some of the stuff I cared less about: the title song, title sequence, Christmas Jones.

If film could've kept Christmas looking like she did when Bond first meets her she might've carried more weight. But writers never could establish Christmas in the storyline very well, and Apted putting her in a denim jacket and purple miniskirt made her look like a high schooler and all too young and too-wrong for Bond. There's a hint here and there of what might've been a better character, and maybe if Cate Blanchett were playing her you'd have an actress who could make more out of less, but we got who we got and for a brief moment when Bond and Christmas meet you think there might be some chemistry between the two, but by the time the explosions start it dissipates. One glaring example of how Christmas is misused is the terminal sequence. She comes in at the very end of the scene with only one word of dialogue IIRC ("Me") and throughout the beginning of the scene she's in the background holding a clipboard.

The best stuff is between Dench and Marceau and Dench and Carlyle. Maybe working beside Dench brought out the best in everyone, but whatever it was, they were on top of their a-game.

The ending sex scene (like most of the Brosnan endings) was a bit lame and undercut by Richard's flat delivery. Tried too hard with jokes that were too obvious and you could see coming from a mile away.

Glad you're still enjoying it CJB.

Doesn't Bond only let Elektra go when the pipeline gets "attacked". So he goes there with her knowing M has also been summoned, but he still suspects her and fakes his death. Perhaps there should have been a moment where Bond briefs the other agents there to stay on guard and protect M in case he's right, but everything happens quickly-- Bond and M can't even finish their conversation IIRC because they're interrupted by something in the main room. Guess it ups the stakes and it's justifiable.

Indeed GS-- Skyfall did still from TWINE. And GE, too. But you're right that TWINE certainly does have winning elements to revisit it to try make Craig's era more Bondian. Elektra is by far one of the most fascinating, alluring characters of the series, if not the most, and Marceau's performance is probably the film's greatest strengths. It certainly helps when the character is so well drawn, but it's saying something when she still stands above so many other standout out moments, i.e. Judi Dench's expanded role, the boat chase, Zukovsky saving Bond, Desmond's final scene, the banker scene, etc.

Also, I think it's a strength in TND that it's story is simple though retaining a great deal of subtext and social/geopolitical commentary.

Zukovsky's attack was fine but it would have been nice to get a bit more of it instead of him merely acting as Bond's way out. The sequence could have had a bit of FYEO to it and been reminiscent of the warehouse raid. It was darn stupid to sacrifice such a character though. his exit is performed well and the final nod is a beautiful touch.

The chair exit is a tad rushed and the chase up the stairs has always struck me as a bit funny with the spiral and indistinct line "you can't kill me-not in cold blood!" then followed by M bellowing "Booooond" followed by the look for a second she has when Bond's aim is too high.

The finale in the bedroom is of course great and is actually in ways most of the climax of the film. I love how the staging and performance go to a point because of how they downplay the gunshot right down to mixing it nearly out of the soundtrack and then we get the sappy cut M's reaction shot which cuts out a lot of the cold blooded detached Bond reaction in Brozzer's perfectly timed "I never miss."
The scene is performed well but it isn't powerful enough. This should be an emotional upheaval that inverts the classic Dent confrontation to that of a great lover in Bond's life-the ultimate betrayal.

The prep and then dive to the sub are well doenwith great Arnold cues. And then it slwoly just unfolds and is an extremely underwhelming climax to a film that has already climaxed in ways emotionally with the death of Elektra. I like what they do character wise here but the physical confrontation with the man built up as feeling no pain is really REALLY under baked and doesn't hold up. But emotionally it fits so that's how it gets by I think. I will always love the lines "So is she" and especially "she's waiting for you".

I like Xmas being a bit more plucky in the sub and the "slight miscalculation" gag. Denise Richards went through a lot in shooting the flooded set scenes and doesn't deserve all of the fan hate.

The ending is fine and I like the millennium bug bit with Arnold's beautiful music but it doesn't fit the tone they were shooting for. This is furthered by the dropping of "Only Myself to Blame" which seems suited for the film this originally wanted to be.

DigitalBits does these round table type interviews with Bondphiles for a lot of anniversaries and TWINE was no exception for its 20th. Wasn’t sure whether to post it here or create a thread, so I’ll just put it here. If anything, it makes me want to put the movie on so I can have fresher (and certainly more positive) take on it. Might not be until a little while, as I wanna give it a proper watch and not just yap about it from memories of last seeing it during the build up to SKYFALL.

https://thedigitalbits.com/columns/history-legacy-showmanship/twine-20th-anniv

Thanks for sharing! Nice to see some positive reappraisal for TWINE. I think with people mellowing toward Richards' Christmas Jones, people are finally discovering what a good film it is.

Watch it after NTTD. You can then see what a good Bond film actually is.

Be sure and run it loud in a home theater. That helps a lot even though it has the weakest sound mix of the Brosnan films.

I'll have to read the bits piece. They usually have John Cork and others who are actual Bond experts instead of the usual talking heads.

hegottheboot wrote:

Be sure and run it loud in a home theater. That helps a lot even though it has the weakest sound mix of the Brosnan films.

I'll have to read the bits piece. They usually have John Cork and others who are actual Bond experts instead of the usual talking heads.

You think it has the weakest sound mix of the Brosnan films? I'd say Goldeneye does, to be honest.

Oh lord no. GE has a wonderful mix. TND beats it barely for pure sonic assault and surround usage. The only criticism people give GE sonically is the usage of a few British stock library sounds which I find an endearing nod to the past. The original Dolby mix has the heavy LFE which gives it almost a euro club feel at times because it's so overly bass heavy.

DAD is an all out let's blow it up awesome mix that also has the center rear surround info matrixed in via the EX system. TWINE uses this too but never directs much specifically to it. TWINE just as a multichannel mix does it's job but never excels like the other three films do.

I'm curious what setup you use. I didn't really notice TWINE's mix being a few notches lower until I built my first home theater setup and started watching a lot of other surround films properly. It's still a good mix and sounded great theatrically as most everything did back then but I just don't think it holds up as well as the other three which are pretty much top tier action mixes.

As far as my knowledge goes in this area, I have 5.1 surround sound!

Regarding my GE comments, it sounds excellent to my ear except for some explosions (most notably the facility in the PTS) that seem muffled and not as clean as others.