Pierce Brosnan's fourth outing as James Bond is his best, despite that, or perhaps because, its plot is cobbled together from past episodes. For fans of the series, there is a bonus: throughout, there are various references to past films in the series and even to other items of Bond trivia, including where Bond got his name. (Ian Fleming noticed the book Birds of the West Indies, by James Bond, sitting on his shelf and thought that name was perfect for his hero.)

The film is more than a "Bond's greatest hits" amalgam; there are things you see here that you've never seen in a Bond movie before, things that subvert the Bond formula even as the film pays tribute to it. The scenes with the home crew -- John Cleese as Q, Judi Dench as M, and Samantha Bond as Moneypenny -- are without exception among the most memorable in the series. Cleese, in particular, makes the Q character his own, adding his own style to a flawless recreation of the captiousness that made Desmond Llewelyn's Q such a scene stealer.