New Labour. New Bond. Almost. Okay, so Goldeneye might have surfaced in the Tory tail-end, but it was the tail-spin tail-end, and toothy Blair-Boy was very much in the wings. And besides, Thatcher would never have promoted a woman as M. No, the Labour Party is back in Downing Street and Bond is back on track.

Plot? Elliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce) is a megalomaniac media baron committed to sparking a full-on Anglo-Chinese war, while he sits in Hamburg or Saigon (the requisite atlas of glossy locations) writing Tomorrow's (sic) headlines. That'll do.

The messy Dalton years resolutely disengaged the long-running series' more fantastical elements for the less caring sharing 80s - and paid the price. These pictures demand a happy medium somewhere between the arid Timmo and the ludicrous steroided nonsense of Moore's dotage. And that was Goldeneye.

Tomorrow Never Dies does nothing unexpected, which would be cause enough to do the decent thing had Bond not always worked to his own rules. The clockwork plot moves one to another and is as inevitably littered with improbables as fancy gadgets. Pierce Brosnan looks well set on his way to stealing Connery's crown, Pryce is perhaps a little too cartoonish, and Hong Kong action star Michelle Yeoh is on hand to spice things along as 007's commie-sidekick. Expect to see her again.

Throw in a rollicking score, one of the best pre-credit sequences yet, and some fabulous titles, and the only real fly left in the ointment is favouring Sheryl Crow's timid title song over the Basseyed-up k.d. lang closer.

Slightly inferior to Goldeneye, but better than any other Bond since On Her Majesty's Secret Service. You know you love it.