I re-watched TLD last night. I couple of things struck me:
- Bond is wearing a bomb belt under his clothes when he sneaks into the truck - in Afghanistan! 
- The movie lacks a really evil and scary villan, both Koskov and Whitaker are too goofy. The last fight with Whitaker also needs something extra. Here is how they could have fixed this:
Make Whitaker is someone who killed his wife, then joined the French Foreign Legion to get away from the police. Give him a cool Nom de Guerre and a story about how he was thrown out of the Legion for brutality. Then he became a mercenary who did horrible things (Kongo was mentioned). He now has his own mercenary army in adition to being an arms merchant.
When Pushkin meets up with him it's at Whitaker's private gun range. It's a very colourful gun range with statues of himself as famous military comanders as decortation, much like in the movie. Perhaps some unusal stuff downrange too, perhaps the target figures are NATO soldiers mixed with civilians? Whitaker could shoot both the "soldiers" and "civilians" perhaps. We see everything from the Gatling to the most modern stuff as he demonstrates some of the weapons. He orders a servant or two to stand behind a brick wall in the range "to make it more interesting." The weapon he is trying to sell to the Soviets is a rifle with a thermal sight and armour-piercing ammo. Whitaker just shoots the servants through the brick wall to show the effectivenes of the weapon.
The last fight scene when Bond fights Whitaker could be set in the gun range too, making it more interesting and dangerous. A differnt actor in the role could be good. Perhaps Stellan Skarsgård could have had his international breakthrough in TLD? Skarsgård looks too much like Necros, though. Perhaps Whitaker could have taken over some of Necros' scenes? That way the fight on the cargo net would have been the final showdown for Bond vs Whitaker. I'm not sure Whitaker should have done the abduction of Koskov at the safe house, so Necros would need to be recast too.
