The world is not enough (4½ Stars)

"The world is not enough" is the 19th James Bond film, made in 1999. It's the third film to star Pierce Brosnan as James Bond. Film critics have formed a consensus that this is the worst Bond film ever. I'm so glad that I'm a fan, not a critic. I find the film highly enjoyable, not least because Pierce Brosnan is excellent in the main role, almost up to the standard of Sean Connery.

Of course, if I deny this is the worst Bond film the question will be immediately thrown back at me which one I think is the worst. That's a difficult question to answer because I like them all. If I had to pick my least favourite film it would probably be "Live and let die". I've never really given it any thought.

As far as the Bond girls go, this film treads new ground. The good Bond girl is Dr. Christmas Jones, played by Denise Richards. What separates her from previous Bond girls is that she isn't an air-headed rich girl, she's a highly intelligent nuclear scientist. Of course, her intelligence isn't enough to prevent her falling helplessly into James Bond's arms in the final scene. However, the biggest departure from previous Bond girls is the bad Bond girl, Elektra King, played by Sophie Marceau. All of the Bond films have either two or three Bond girls as well as a power-mad villain. This is the only film in which the villain is the Bond girl herself. Elektra King has inherited an oil company after murdering her father, and she intends to detonate an atomic bomb to ensure that her own pipeline is the sole supply of oil from the Middle East. She might not be the scariest of Bond's adversaries, but she's certainly the most seductive. After all, we never saw Ernst Blofeld writhing on James Bond's lap while strangling him to death.

"Do you know what happens when a man is strangled?"

It's a well known but little understood fact that when a man is being strangled he has an erection and sometimes even an orgasm. There is uncertainty about whether this is caused by the blocking of the air tunnel, the restriction of the flow of blood to the brain or a combination of the two. Whatever may be the case, the effect is to relax the muscles in the groin area and facilitate the flow of blood into the penis. This phenomenon has been most commonly observed in American style hanging. In English style hanging, practised in England until the 1960's, the hanged man falls rapidly and breaks his neck, dying almost immediately. In American style hanging there is no rapid fall, so the hanged man is gradually choked to death over a period of minutes. The erection during his struggles adds to his humiliation during the execution.

Women react to strangling in the same way as men, but the effect is less visible, for obvious reasons.

Some couples use this as a form of sexual play. They take turns in suffocating one another to sexually arouse one another. This is usually done merely by restricting oxygen, not by hindering blood flow, so it's called "erotic asphyxiation". Whether the sexual arousal is caused by the lack of air alone is unclear, because these games are played in a sexual context where the participants are already sexually excited. Apart from this, there is often additional sexual stimulus from one person sitting on the other. We see that when Elektra King sits on James Bond's lap while strangling him.