For the first hour or so, this 18th Bond movie is up there with the best of them: it has terrific pace, Pierce Brosnan has romantic and rough-house appeal, Teri Hatcher is a match for him, and the post-Cold War story has grip and even plausibility. Sadly, the second half doesn't quite sustain the momentum: the story moves from Europe to Asia (back to the locations of The Man with the Golden Gun) and Jonathan Pryce's media mogul makes a pathetically unthreatening villain whose motto is "There's no news like bad news". Flaws aside, this was at the time the best Bond movie since the heyday of Mr Connery.

A deranged media mogul is staging international incidents to pit the world's superpowers against each other. Now James Bond must take on this evil mastermind in an adrenaline-charged battle to end his reign of terror and prevent global pandemonium.