Plot

MI6 sends James Bond (Pierce Brosnan), agent 007, into the field to reconnoiter a terrorist arms bazaar on the Russian border. Despite M's insistence on letting 007 finish his reconnaissance, Royal Navy Admiral Roebuck (Geoffrey Palmer) orders the frigate HMS Chester to fire a Harpoon missile at the bazaar. Bond then discovers two nuclear torpedoes mounted on an L-39 Albatros, and is forced to pilot the L-39 away seconds before the bazaar is destroyed by the missile because the missile is out of range to be aborted.

Media baron Elliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce) starts his plans to use an encoder obtained at the bazaar by his henchman, Cyber-terrorist Henry Gupta (Ricky Jay), to provoke war between China and the UK. Meaconing the GPS signal using the encoder, Gupta sends the frigate HMS Devonshire off-course into Chinese-occupied waters in the South China Sea, where Carver's stealth ship, commanded by Mr. Stamper (Götz Otto), ambushes it - sinking it in the process - and steals one of its missiles, while shooting down a Chinese J-11 fighter jet investigating the scene and killing off the Devonshire's survivors with weaponry loaded with Chinese ammunition. The British Minister of Defence (Julian Fellowes) orders Roebuck to deploy the fleet to investigate the sinking of the frigate, and demands retaliation, leaving M only 48 hours to investigate its sinking and avert a war. Q (Desmond Llewelyn), MI6's gadget-master. Miss Moneypenny (Samantha Bond), M's personal secretary.

M (Judi Dench) sends Bond to investigate Carver because MI6 became suspicious of him after he releases news articles about the crisis hours before the Vietnamese government had learned of it. Also British station in Singapore picked a signal on the GPS frequencies coming from one of Carver's satellites. Bond travels to Hamburg to seduce Carver's wife, Paris (Teri Hatcher), who is also an ex-girlfriend of Bond's from many years before, to get information that would help him enter Carver's newspaper headquarters. He defeats three of Stamper's men (After Carver orders his men to take Bond away and make him "uncomfortable") and cuts Carver off the air during the inaugural broadcast of his satellite network. Meanwhile, at Bond's hotel room, he and Paris reconcile (Carver had Paris followed. Later Henry tells Carver that Bond is a Gov't agent). The next day, she provides him with the information he needs to infiltrate Carver's newspaper factory to recover the GPS encoder. Carver then discovers the truth about Paris and Bond (Henry shows him a clip of both talking about old times at Carver's party) and orders both of them killed. Bond goes to the newspaper factory and steals the encoder. While he is gone, Carver's assassin Dr. Kaufman (Vincent Schiavelli) kills Paris. After Bond returns to find Paris' body, Kaufman attempts to shoot him. Bond is able to kill Kaufman and escape (in his remote-controlled BMW), protecting the encoder.

At a U.S. Air Force base in Okinawa (where he meets Jack Wade (Joe Don Baker), CIA liaison), Bond learns that the encoder had been tampered with (which sent the Devonshire off course into Chinese waters, without knowing it), and goes to the South China Sea to investigate the wreck (which was actually in Vietnamese waters). He and Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh), a Chinese Ministry of State Security agent on the same case, explore the sunken ship and discover one of its cruise missiles missing, but after reaching the surface they are captured by Stamper and taken to the CMGN tower in Saigon. They soon escape (They were handcuffed together. They slide down a Carver poster that ran across the height of the building and then steal a motorcycle and ride it in tandem to get away from Carver's goons) and decide to collaborate on the investigation. The two contact the Royal Navy and the People's Liberation Army Air Force to explain Carver's scheme; Carver plans to destroy the Chinese government with the stolen missile, allowing a Chinese general (on Carver's payroll) to step in and stop the war between Britain and China, both of which have waged a naval war. Once the conflict is over, Carver will be given exclusive broadcasting rights in China for the next century. Finding Carver's stealth ship (They figure the stealth ship was built by the Chinese general, working for Carver and so must be hidden in a port controlled by him), they board it to prevent him from firing the missile at Beijing (as it sails to position itself between the navies of China and Britain).

During the attempt, Wai Lin is captured (while planting bombs on Carver's ship), forcing Bond to devise a second plan. Bond captures Gupta to use as his own hostage, but Carver kills Gupta claiming he has "outlived his contract." Bond detonates an explosive that damages the ship, rendering it visible to the Chinese and British navies' radars, and vulnerable to a subsequent Royal Navy attack. While Wai Lin disables the engines, she is recaptured by Stamper. Bond kills Carver with his own sea drill and attempts to destroy the warhead with detonators, but Stamper attacks him, and sends a chained Wai Lin into the water. Bond traps Stamper in the missile firing mechanism and saves Wai Lin as the missile explodes, destroying the ship and killing Stamper. Bond and Wai Lin share a romantic moment in the middle of the wreckage as HMS Bedford searches for them.