Brief Synopsis: - When 007 is assigned to protect a beautiful Billionaire oil heiress, Elektra King, he is catapulted into a passionate, adrenaline-charged, non-stop adventure that pits him against one of his most deadly and dangerous adversaries: Renard, a ruthless anarchist whose total imperviousness to pain makes him a virtually unstoppable enemy who wants total control of the Caucasian oil supply.
Release Date: Plot: - The nuclear destruction of Istanbul for an oil monopoly
Box Office Results:
Running Time: Issue Sidearm: Gadgets: Director: Screenplay:
- Neal Purvis
- Robert Wade
- Bruce Feirstein
Title Song: Title Song Artist: Starring:Villain:
Henchmen: - John Seru as Gabor
- Maria Grazia Cucinotta as The Cigar Girl
- Goldie as Mr. Bullion
- Ulrich Thomsen as Sasha Davidov
- Jeff Nuttall as Dr. Mikhail Arkov
Bond Girls:Supporting Cast:Filming Locations: - Bilbao, Spain; London, UK; Scotland, UK; Baku, Azerbaijan; Istanbul, Turkey.
Best Quote: - Bond: "The World Is Not Enough."
Elektra: "Foolish Sentiment."
Bond: "Family Motto."
"Bond... James Bond": When he arrives in Baku and 1st meets Elektra King.
Best Mistake:
- When Elektra removes her earring to show Bond her mutilated lobe, it magically replaces itself in the next shot.
Distinguishing Feature: (According to mi6.co.uk)
- 007 shooting a "Bond Girl" for the first time
Vital Statistics: (According to mi6.co.uk)
- Conquests: 3
- Martinis: 1
- Kills: 19
- "Bond, James Bond": 2
Trivia: - The movie's title is the English language translation of Bond's family motto "Orbis non Sufficit". The motto was heard first in On Her Majesty's Secret Service while Bond is at the College of Arms and an archivist shows him his family's coat-of-arms.
Detailed Synopsis:
The movie begins in Bilbao, Spain, where Bond is meeting with a Swiss banker, trying to find information on who killed another Double-0 agent. The banker is in possession of the money that the murdered agent had recovered from some unnamed source.When the banker is about to tell Bond who killed the agent, the banker’s secretary kills the banker with a knife to the back of the neck. While Bond is being held at gunpoint by one of the banker’s men, a mysterious sniper kills Bond’s captor. As the police arrive, Bond escapes with the money out of the window using one of the banker’s men as a counterweight.
Bond returns to MI6 headquarters with the money. Sir Robert King is there, the owner of the money and one of
M’s old Oxford law friends. King is an oil tycoon who is trying to build a pipeline along the southern end of the Caspian Sea. Such a pipeline would rival the large Russian lines to the north. King used the money to buy a Russian Atomic Energy department report that he thought would identify the terrorists who have been attacking his pipeline. After thanking Bond for recovering his money, King leaves to go collect the money.
M offers Bond a drink, and he notices that it has a strange smell and is bubbling. Bond realizes that the money has some kind of liquefied substance on it and deduces that it might be dangerous to King. Before Bond can reach King, the money explodes, killing King. As Bond examines a hole that’s blown in the side of the headquarters, a sniper attempts to shoot him from aboard a boat in the harbor. Bond recognizes the sniper as the banker's secretary who offered him a cigar at the banker’s office. Bond pursues
Cigar Girl in a
boat that
Q was working on at the time. Bond finally catches up with
Cigar Girl as she boards a hot air balloon. Hanging from one of the tethers, Bond asks her to tell him who her employer is. She refuses, and shoots the helium tanks, causing them to explode and killing herself. Bond falls onto London's Millennium Dome, but survives.
Back at MI6’s Scotland branch, Bond and M find out that someone close to King switched his lapel pin and coated the money with an explosive liquid. When King got near the money, the pin detonated the explosive. Bond injured his arm, so M takes him off the active duty list. He goes to
the doctor, seduces her, and of course, gets a clean bill of health. After doing some research, Bond finds out that King’s daughter,
Elektra, was kidnapped and held for ransom by a terrorist group. After converting the price for her ransom into pounds, he discovers that the money King supposedly paid for the Russian report is the same amount that his daughter’s captors were demanding. After talking to M, Bond figures out that Elektra was being held by an international terrorist, Victor Zokas, also known as
Renard. This is the man that M sent the other Double-O agent to kill. She did this as a favor to King. The agent managed to shoot
Renard in the head, but it didn’t kill him. However, the bullet is moving through his brain and killing off his senses. Eventually, the bullet will kill him, but until then,
Renard won’t be able to feel any pain. Elektra managed to escape, but now that she’s the heir to her father’s pipeline, M is afraid that
Renard will try to kidnap Elektra again. She sends Bond to Azerbaijan to look after Elektra.
Bond travels to Azerbaijan and meets Elektra at one of the construction sites for her pipeline. They go to the top of the mountain to check the pipeline survey lines, but are ambushed by some of
Renard’s men on
parahawks, a kind of paraglider/snowmobile hybrid vehicle. Bond leads the parahawks into the forest and they all end up crashing. However, the crashes cause an avalanche and Bond and Elektra are buried in the snow. They are unharmed because of a
special coat Q made for Bond that surrounds him in a protective bubble. Bond and Elektra escape the avalanche and return to Elektra’s house in Baku. She asks him to stay but he goes to a casino to see
Valentin Zukovsky, an ex-KGB agent who still has connections in the underworld. Zukovsky tells him
Renard used to work for the KGB, and that any number of groups could have supplied him with the parahawks, i.e. the King pipeline isn't very well received by the oil barons in that part of the world. Elektra arrives at the casino and casually bets a million dollars on a single game of High-Low. She loses the money to Valentin and she and Bond return to her mansion where he spends the night.
Renard secretly meets with Davidov, Elektra’s security chief, and a man named Dr. Arkov, who arranged for the parahawks.
Renard kills Arkov because Bond and Elektra were allowed to escape and tells Davidov to impersonate Arkov and to arrive for Arkov’s flight at the airport on the following day.
In the middle of the night, Bond sneaks out of Elektra’s bed and breaks into Davidov’s office. Davidov enters the office while Bond is there, but Bond sneaks out and hides in Davidov’s car. Once Davidov arrives at the airport, Bond shoots him, impersonates him, and boards the plane, originally intended to transport Arkov. The plane is bound for a nuclear clean-up site in Kazakhstan where Arkov is a Russian nuclear scientist tasked with observing the clean-up.
There, Bond meets
Dr. Christmas Jones, a physicist tasked with cleaning up the waste. Bond goes into the mine where they’re extracting the old nuclear missiles and finds
Renard. Bond is about to kill him when Christmas arrives with some guards and exposes Bond as an impostor. During this first encounter with
Renard, Bond realizes that he and Elektra are working together because
Renard uses Elektra’s motto (“There’s no point in living if you can’t feel alive”) and knows about Bond's injured shoulder.
Renard and his men kill the guards, steal one of the nuclear missiles, and seal Bond and Christmas in the mine. Bond pursues
Renard and the stolen nuke, but
Renard escapes on the plane that brought Bond to the mine.
Elektra calls M and asks her to come to Baku because Bond is missing and Davidov has been killed. M agrees. Bond arrives at Elektra’s mansion and confronts her about what he learned from
Renard at the mine. Elektra accuses Bond of using her as bait for
Renard and tells him that M will be arriving soon. Bond gives M a locator card that he retrieves from the bomb that
Renard stole. He and M figure out that
Renard has placed the bomb inside one of the pipelines. Bond and Christmas go and attempt to intercept the bomb and diffuse it. They discover that half of the plutonium is missing and Bond tells Christmas to let the Bomb explode so that they can work without interference from Elektra.
After the bomb explodes and Elektra thinks that Bond is dead, she gives M her father’s pin, explains that she was responsible for his death, kills M’s men, and takes her hostage. Elektra takes M to Istanbul, Turkey where she meets
Renard.
Renard shows Elektra the other half of the plutonium and reveals that they plan to use it to destroy Istanbul, thus destroying the terminus of the other major pipelines in the region.
Bond and Christmas arrive at Valentin’s caviar factory off of the Caspian Sea.
Mr. Bullion, Valentin’s bodyguard, sees Bond’s car and notifies Elektra that Bond is still alive, revealing that he is secretly in league with her. While Bond is interrogating Valentine,
a helicopter, armed with a number of buzzsaws designed for cutting trees attacks Bond in Valentin’s warehouse. Bond uses the missile launcher mounted to the side of
his car to destroy the helicopter, but another one arrives. Bond uses a flare gun to make one of the gas pipes connected to the warehouse explode, destroying the second helicopter. Valentin falls into a large vat of his caviar and Bond forces him to reveal his association with Elektra. Valentin tells Bond that the million dollar High-Low game at the casino was to pay Valentin for helping her smuggle some machinery out of Istanbul. Valentin arranged for his nephew, the commander of a Russian nuclear submarine, to help Elektra smuggle the machinery.
When Bond tells Valentin about Elektra’s plans, he agrees to help. Bond, Christmas, and Valentin go to the Soviet Federal Security Bureau office in Istanbul and discover that
Renard plans to use the submarine as a nuclear bomb by placing the weapons-grade plutonium into the sub’s reactor. It will appear that explosion was caused by an accident on the sub, which will remove Elektra from suspicion. The end result would be the loss of eight million lives, but more importantly, the destruction of the terminus of all of the pipelines that run around the northern end of the Caspian Sea, forcing all the oil bound for Europe to pass through the South, where the King pipelines are located.
The sub arrives at
Renard’s base of operations called
Maiden’s Tower. The crew, including Valentin’s nephew, are welcomed with poisoned food and brandy. Once the crew has been killed, they are thrown into the sea.
Renard prepares the reactor to accept the plutonium. Elektra visits M one last time to gloat about her impending death. She arrogantly places a clock in M’s cell so that M can watch her death approach. Once Elektra leaves, M disassembles the clock and links it to the locator card that Bond gave her earlier. The card begins to function and Bond now knows where M, and
Renard are located. As Bond discovers this, Bullion plants a bomb in the security bureau office and it explodes, nearly killing Bond, Christmas, and Valentin. Bond chases after Bullion, but Elektra’s men are waiting for him and he and Christmas are captured.
Back at the
Maiden’s Tower, Elektra straps Bond to an archaic torture chair and Christmas is sent aboard the submarine with
Renard. As Elektra is torturing Bond, Valentin and his men arrive, he kills Bullion, and then is shot by Elektra. Before he dies, Valentin shoots at Bond, freeing one of his leg restraints. Bond escapes and chases Elektra to the top of the tower and shoots her as she tries to alert
Renard of Bond’s escape.
Bond boards the submarine and finds Christmas. They work their way to the control room where they find
Renard. Bond destroys the submarine’s controls and fights
Renard’s men as the ship begins to sink.
Renard locks himself in the reactor room so Bond has to go outside the sub and back inside through the reactor room escape hatch. Now inside the reactor room, Bond and
Renard continue to fight.
Renard is killed when the plutonium rod he is inserting in the reactor is ejected into his chest. Bond and Christmas torpedo themselves off of the sub before it explodes. They end the movie in each others arms.
Desmond llewelyn saldy died 1 week after the film was released