It’s mind-blowing to think that after the longest gap between movies in franchise history, GoldenEye‘s total reinvention of the James Bond mythos only lasted for seven years before the legendary spy saga was given a complete and total overhaul, with The World Is Not Enough signaling the beginning of the end.
Pierce Brosnan’s debut as 007 still ranks as one of the finest installments there’s ever been, and while Tomorrow Never Dies was eerily prescient and boasts some standout action sequences, it was a huge step down by comparison. Immediately after that, Michael Apted’s stab at cinema’s most famous secret agent was shaky to say the least, as well as being tonally conflicted.
While there’s no denying Brosnan was the right man at the right time to inherit the tux, his third and penultimate outing tries to cram too much into the character, from Connery-era charm to Moore-age whimsy, as well as some underrated Timothy Dalton-esque brutality.
As a result, Tomorrow Never Dies was the leading man’s worst-reviewed globetrotting escapade yet, and the reception to Die Another Day three years later led to the entire mythos being torn down and rebuilt from the ground up in the darker, grittier, and harder-hitting form of Daniel Craig’s Casino Royale.
The film still has its moments, though, something Prime Video subscribers are either discovering for the first time or revisiting all over again after FlixPatrol named the underwhelming epic as one of the platform’s top-viewed movies this week. It isn’t Bond or Brosnan’s best by any means, but there’s some fun to be had regardless.