Relax.

Take a deep breath.

Now let it out.

TWINE is soooo good!

All those things that you've been worried about? They're all okay. Nonstop explosions and machine guns? It's okay. The action sequences are there, but they're spaced out with a lot of fine performances and a story that doesn't insult your intelligence. How about non-stop product placement? It's okay. Aside from the usual BMW ad, I thought it was a lot better than most of the films I've seen lately (although the Visa check card returns in an inexplicable tribute to A View To A Kill). Garbage doing the theme song? It's okay. With the orchestral arrangements, and paired with more great Kleinman titles, the song sounds great. Denise Richards as a superbabe/nuclear physicist? It's actually okay. They don't go out of her way to make her character combatative with Bond or load her up with emabarassing technobabble. All of those hideous "Christmas" jokes? Well, they're there, but, after all, you knew that they would be and they get them all over with at once.

Probably the thing I like best about the movie is the fact that it runs about two hours and some change including an absolutely king-size teaser sequence. This allows them to take the time to properly tell the story attached to the action sequences. Even at that length, though, the movie doesn't drag. It has a certain, dare I say it, sweep. I don't know what the budget of this one was but I'll tell you that every penny of it went up on the screen. The stunts are definitely up to the Bond standard with far less of the computer tricks and blue screen chicanery that took some of the thrills out of the last two films.

I never heard the kind of rumors of on-set trouble that plagued the last movie and I think that there was probably a huge difference in the way the films were put together. How they managed such a turn-around from Tomorrow Never Dies, I don't know. But whatever EON did, they set themselves up for success. The direction is great. EON ought to put Michael Apted under contract right now. Keep this guy around. The writing is the best since the days of Dick Maibaum. David Arnold's music is great, enhancing the scenes without being intrusive. And the performances are top-notch.

In TWINE, what I've been waiting for for five years happens, Pierce Brosnan really claims the role for his own. He's found a facet of the character that matches his own personality and he plays it to the hilt. Brosnan's Bond is confident self-assured, and very, very cool. He's also finally found his own way of bringing out Bond's tough-guy quality. My fear walking into the movie was that I would end up cringing at one attempt after another to sell Pierce Brosnan as a world-weary assassin. But there are several scenes in the film where I was actually taken aback at Bond's cold-bloodedness. The touches of grey in his temples and the note of May/December in his relationship with Marceau's character also give that perfect touch of worldliness and maturity that no portrayal of Bond can be believable without. He also continues his run as, in my opinion, the best dressed Bond yet. Even if you hated the flashiness of his Italian suits in Brosnan's first two films, in this one the color scheme is much more classic, blending the best of Milanese tailoring and Saville Row tradition.

The rest of the cast is in equally good form. Robert Carlyle's villain is much more than the one-dimensional gimmick that I expected. He actually makes Renard a very interesting and even sympathetic character. Sophie Marceau is absolutely wonderful. She sells the character so much better than Sharon Stone, for example, ever could have. She is deliberately set up to remind the longtime viewer of a young Diana Rigg and she handles the comparison very well. She starts off as the classic Fleming 'bird with a wing down' and slowly reveals new facets of her character over the course of the film. Denise Richards, as noted above, manages a couple of good lines and isn't asked to overextend herself (obviously, an American top model/Peace Corps type disarming nuclear bombs in her skivvies in a Russian army camp somewhere in Central Asia, is stretching credibility, but for heaven's sake, it's a Bond film). She also lets her actions speak for her. Rather than telling Bond ad nauseum that she's his equal in order to pander to the PC crowd, the writers have realized that the PC crowd aren't going to show up for a Bond movie anyway. And you know what? Like the Bond Girls of old, when the characters stop talking and start doing, they become much more Bond's equal than they would have been otherwise. I'm not suggesting that Denise Richards wasn't hired solely for cheesecake purposes. I am saying that when Dr. Jones works on getting herself out of a missle silo, rather than complaining to Bond and then waiting for him to rescue her, I was more impressed by her resourcefulness and guts than I was by some recent Bond Girls who talked a good game and then spent most of the movie getting captured and tied up. Judi Dench is as impressive as ever in a longer than usual role. If you're absolutely determined to hate her M no matter what she does, I'm sure that you'll find a reason. But in this film, she and Bond have gotten used to one another and there's a lot less of the clumsy, classless, sniping that marked their relationship up until now. John Cleese didn't wow me too much, mostly he just showed up and mugged, but I imagine that this will get better in the next one and anyway, I wouldn't have wanted him to steal any of Desmond Llewellyn's thunder in what will probably be his farewell preformance (which was surprisingly low-key). Robbie Coltrane also returns for some comic relief and unexpected heroics as Zukovsky.

In addition to all that, there are a lot of wonderful little ways that the series looks back at it's own history. In addition to the expected reference to the origins of the movies title, early on in the film a lot of parallels are drawn between Elektra King and Tracy Di Vicenzo (note the cut of Elektra's ski suit). During one chase scene, a villain manages to save himself with a trick pulled straight from the Bond playbook. A major plot twist actually even hearkens back to a throwaway scene in the renegade 1983 Sean Connery Bond film, Never Say Never Again. All of these are examples of what's best in the franchise. The ability to find little ways to honor the series' traditions make it clear that they're a labor of love for the people involved. The film isn't without its little clunkers. There's a moment during the very well-done teaser sequence where the Bond fan of good feeling will cringe and have a Roger Moore flashback. I thought that the music during Q's scene might have been a bit more appropriate for a farewell scene (which it might not be, of course, but it's best to be prepared). And during a very nicely conceived Hitchcock-esque moment an extra, unneccesary line of dialogue from Marceau mars the tension of the scene. But that's really about the end of the complaints.

I'm assuming in writing this review, that you're probably already a Bond fan and that you'll appreciate a certain amount of silliness, sexiness, and action for it's own sake. That said, my tastes in Bond films aren't necessarily those of the average, real-world Bond fan. I loved Timothy Dalton's lean, tough portrayal of Bond in the late '80s and I loved the sweeping storyline of 1969's On Her Majesty's Secret Service. But I think this is a film that has plenty for every Bond fan and I suspect that it'll be the series' biggest hit in decades. The formula is firmly in place, of course, but it works again, and there's enough sense of forward momentum to satisfy those of us who like to see a little bit of character development. If you take anything at all away from this review, let it be this: walk into TWINE with an open mind. Don't get hung up with worries, hopes, and concerns, just relax and approach this film with no preconceptions and the same childlike faith you had walking into the newest Bond film back when you were a kid. TWINE delivers the goods. It is NOT the same cookie-cutter action film you were afraid of seeing. This is really a seminal Bond film, a Bond for the new millenium. The bugs are worked out, the goodbyes have been said and with its new team clicking, the franchise is in a great position to look towards the future.

Copyright © 1999 by Tim Curtin