FAQ

An MI6 agent stole a report from the Russian Atomic Energy Department and he was later killed for it (more than likely by Renard). The report ended up on the black market and Sir Robert King bought it because he thought it might identify terrorists who were attacking his oil pipeline. It turns out it didn't and therefore King wanted his money back. However Renard turned the money into a bomb and used the Swiss Banker to give it to Bond who would deliver it to King.

When British oil tycoon Sir Robert King (David Calder) is murdered with a fertilizer bomb, M (Judi Dench) sends 007 agent James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) to Baku, Russia to protect King's daughter/heiress Elektra (Sophie Marceau), who is attempting to build an 800 mile pipeline through Turkey and whom M believes might be the next target of international terrorist Victor "Renard" Zokas (Robert Carlyle), who kidnapped Elektra five years ago. Helped by nuclear research scientist Dr Christmas Jones (Denise Richards) and by ex-KGB agent Valentin Zukovsky (Robbie Coltrane), they discover that there is more threat to the situation than just some pipeline sabotage.

The movie is based on a story and script co-written by screenwriters Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Bruce Feirstein. The title is taken from "Orbis non sufficit ", the English translation of the Latin phrase seen on the Bond family's coat-of-arms in the movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969). The screenplay was subsequently novelized by American author Raymond Benson. The World is Not Enough is the 19th Bond film in the EON series, and the third to star Pierce Brosnan as James Bond.

"The World Is Not Enough" is performed by the Madison, Wisconsin-based rock group Garbage.

In the precredits scenario, Bond is in a Swiss bank in Bilbao, Spain where he is attempting to recover money stolen from Sir Robert King. Even moreso, he is looking for the name of the assassin who killed the MI6 agent who discovered that Sir Robert was buying stolen reports, the latest one from the Russian Atomic Energy Department purportedly identifying the terrorists who attacked a new oil pipeline that King is building. After making a daring escape but without the name of the assassin, Bond returns the money to MI6 headquarters in London only to see King, the money, and the MI6 bankvault blown up. After attending King's funeral in Scotland, Bond is sent to Baku, Azerbaijan to shadow Elektra and to locate Renard.. When he finds the dead body of Russian scientist Mikail Arkon in the car trunk of Elektra's chief of security, Bond kills the security chief and takes Arkon's place on a flight to a Russian ICBM base in Kazakhstan. There, he meets Christmas Jones, and the two of them barely escape with their lives when Renard succeeds in stealing a bomb and blowing up the entire ICBM base. Bond and Christmas return to Azerbaijan, but Bond now suspects that Elektra may be working with Renard. When Elektra and Renard rendez-vous in Istanbul, Turkey, Bond and Christmas follow them there in order to stop them from using the bomb to blow up Istanbul.

A fertilizer bomb is an explosive made out of common fertilizer. In this case, the money was dipped in urea, a source of nitrogen in fertilizers. In one of the notes, the anti-counterfeiting strip was replaced with magnesium which acted as a detonator. King's lapel pin was switched for a copy which contained a radio transmitter to trigger the blast. Bond was alerted to the fertilizer bomb when he picked up some ice cubes for his drink after touching the money. The water on his hands started a chemical reaction with the urea, which Bond recognized as telltale of a fertilizer bomb. M is convinced that only someone close to King could have switched his lapel pin for the rigged copy. Note that an attempt to make a bomb as this movie describes could produce a fire with toxic fumes, but not an explosion—any fertilizer bomb involving urea has it mixed with other substances which are never mentioned in the film.

Including The World is Not Enough, Brosnan made four movies in which he played James Bond: GoldenEye (1995), Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), The World is Not Enough (1999), and Die Another Day (2002).