In his dealings with the women, Christmas Jones (Denise Richards) and Elektra King (Sophie Marceau), James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) eschews some of the political correctness he was saddled with in "Tomorrow Never Dies." Instead, he takes on a new physical vulnerability, a dislocated collar bone that he acquires in a 30-foot fall--happily not one that influences his chief preoccupation, in which he indulges with the physician giving him a clean bill of health, Dr. Molly Warmflash (Serena Scott Thomas). Indeed the very opening scene, the longest such introduction in the Bond series, is the best largely because writers Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Bruce Feirstein give 007 some clever double-entendres and puns, particularly political ones that the young 'uns may not catch. Especially biting is Bond's flippant parlance with a Swiss banker that recalls the recent brouhaha over that country's noncompliance with debts owed to Holocaust survivors and their families. "If you can't trust a Swiss banker, who can you trust?" he counsels. (The opening sequence, in Bilbao, Spain, makes use of the new Guggenheim Museum there, and Bond has gone to the area to pick up some money recovered from a murdered agent.)

From a tense boat race on the Thames that could rival any car-chase scene in John Frankenheimer's "Ronin," Bond travels imperceptibly (without luggage and with an apparently hidden array of $2,000 suits) to the Caspian Sea, taking in the tawdry scenery of the Azerbaijan oil fields and the beauty of the St. Sophia Mosque spotted through the mist from the waters of Istanbul. His principal enemy is an anarchist known as Renard (Robert Carlyle), who is soon to die from a bullet lodged in his brain that is traveling through the medula oblongata. (The doctor who failed in his attempt to remove it was executed.) Since Renard feels no pain, he becomes one of Bond's strongest opponents, and therein lies one of the cleverest concepts of this latest entry. Renard is determined for reasons made almost clear in the story line to blow up the city of Istanbul with a nuclear device, while the lovely Elektra--who may or may not be his accomplice--keeps the good guys guessing and provides a formidable match for the British agent.

Except for the dialogue in the opening scene, most of the colloquy is mere filler between episodes of frantic activity--on speedboats, in submarines, in a balloon, and on the ski trail. Michael Apted does not treat any of this agitated movement in a particularly elegant style, leaving us to enjoy principally the game of guessing Elektra's true motivations, the loyalty of caviar-loving businessman Valentin Zukovsky (Robbie Coltraine), the unusual plight of M (Judi Dench) who becomes quite directly involved in the scheme, and the comic support of John Cleese in a cameo role. Denise Richards is overwhelmingly outmatched by Sophie Marceau, the former's bearing as stiff as an oil pipeline, while Ms. Marceau, though notably sexier in William Nicholson's sudsy "Firelight," steals the scenes she's in.

The title of the movie comes from James Bond's family motto , orbis non sufficit, which surfaced in his 1969 film "On Her Majesty's Secret Service." In this case, the slogan becomes apropos as Bond is advised that he could have received the world if only he sold out and joined the conspirators. As for Pierce Brosnan himself, one of the world's handsomest men has settled in nicely to the role and this time shows that he can really act. Given the reality that we can't expect a great deal of originality in the action sequences, what we need is a lot more sparkling dialogue: More double entendres, and especially, more contemporary send-ups of the absurdities of the current world's politics, as shown so adeptly in this film's opening sequence.