The thing I like most about Goldeneye is, it’s not lace, nor leather. It’ll do what I please, and has no time for sweetness. It also has really, really bizarre lyrics to its title song, in the grand old James Bond tradition.

The first Bond film in ages when it was released in 1995, Goldeneye made quite a splash. I don’t recall much of it, but I do remember the Nintendo 64 game. Which isn’t strictly relevant to this review. Interestingly, the three subsequent Pierce Brosnan Bond films are quite different to this one — the rest have the same writers and composer, and Goldeneye is notably different on both counts.

Goldeneye opens with a flashback[ftn] that introduces a villain with a more emotional connection to Bond than normal — a good start, with some excellent stunts thrown in. There are good chases, good fights, women with sexy Russian accents[ftn] and funny lines. I’m tempted to call it the perfect Bond film. While it keeps an emotional side to the story, it doesn’t usually get in the way of the plot, and at no point does it drop all its integrity and just go completely stupid, unlike a certain Bond film that will remain nameless. Director Martin Campbell is known for his magnificent British mini-series, Edge of Darkness, and brings some of that grittiness to this film. Sensibly for a Bond film, he leaves a lot of it behind.

The dialogue in Goldeneye is for the most part far superior to later Brosnan Bond films. Here, Bond is after the women, certainly, but makes very few sleazy jokes, and more than a few good silly ones — teasing the Russian Defense Minister about the lost art of interrogation, and thanking assassin Xenia Onatopp for “a lovely time”. The romance is a shade more convincing than most Bond films, though as per usual for an action film, there’s a moment where for no apparent reason two people who’ve been dodging bullets and getting hit for half an hour suddenly snog. And for all I know, that really does happen when you do all that. I’m not about to try it out though. At one point, the villain does put Bond in an easily escapable situation, but it turns out to be part of a plan to frame him and so can’t be boiled down to villain incompetence / bad writing.

The music is interesting. I’ve read harsh criticism of it from people who believe Bond films should only ever have big brassy music, and weren’t so big on Eric Serra’s[ftn] more peculiar scoring. As far as Bond films go, I like the music to play a big part, and hate it when it falls into the background for large stretches of time — something that’s obviously desirable in other genres of film. That doesn’t happen here, and Serra’s echoing, percussive score gives a lot of tension to the movie.

Brosnan himself would’ve been a breath of fresh air after the extreme seriousness of Dalton, and extreme campness of Moore. An actor who can do both? Amazing. Brosnan’s bond is cheeky and likeable in this outing, yet brutal and focussed when he has to be. He’s very convincing at getting beaten up, too, I was wincing a bit in the final throw-down. It’s a shame that later films wouldn’t give him quite as much silliness to play with, although they did keep the emotional pain coming regularly. Natalya and Onatopp are both excellent Bond girls. Natalya is genuinely convincing as a self-motivated sidekick to Bond, even if she is far far too gorgeous to have ever learned anything about computers. Onatopp is over the top, and yet she fits into the film perfectly. If I die prematurely, I want it to happen between Famke Janssen’s thighs. It beats having my neck sliced open by a metal-rimmed bowler hat in any case.

The other characters are pretty good too — Ourumov is a fantastic highly strung Russian general, and Sean Bean as always acquits himself well. Playing 006 must be pretty cool — all the fun with none of the typecasting. Although, probably not as much money. The Q scene is fantastic — “That’s my lunch!” — and the action is continually entertaining. Though someone should tell them that you can’t have it both ways — if you want a vehicle to get crushed by a tank, you can’t then show everyone getting out unhurt a moment later. If you want people to get out unscathed, then, well, don’t scathe them.

The film even manages to flesh out Bond’s character a shade, and make it nearly convincing. “He was your friend. And now he’s your enemy and you will kill him,” sums up Natalya, indignant at being caught in the black and white world of the action movie. Bond is forced to agree, but at least he looks a bit sad about it too. Later comments by 006 concerning the men Bond has killed and the women he failed to protect aren’t handled quite as well.

Amazingly, Goldeneye keeps a near-consistent tone throughout, despite featuring women who murder men by suffocating them between their legs, a comedy Russian crime boss played perfectly by Robbie Coltrane, a crazy tank chase, and a man who can fall from a great height into a plane and pull it out of a dive. Because he’s Bond. James Bond. And this is him at his best. Now, if someone could just make a cinema show it,[ftn] I’d really like to see that tank business on the big screen.

DVD Review

This DVD, like all the Bond ones I’ve bought, for some reason requires you to press ‘enter’ at the very start in order to get to the menu. I can’t understand it. It’s not like you’ve got an option. II like to turn on the DVD player, get food, and come back with everything ready for me. This stupid menu was seemingly made specifically to make me unhappy.

On slightly less petty matters, there’s a commentary by Martin Campbell and producer Michael G. Wilson, which isn’t quite as boring as most Bond commentaries, since there’s a bit to talk about regarding the introduction of a new actor, as well as the large gap between Bond films. Tina Turner’s Goldeneye music video is there, too — only to view if you want to see just how daggy music videos used to be.

The best feature is probably the Goldeneye Video Diary. Starting off with the caption “Day One,” it looks like it’s going to be amazingly exhaustive for a moment, but doesn’t actually do every day individually. It gives excellent insight into the stunts however, and makes me really concerned that no one will bother doing any in ten years time or so. There’s an extra thrill to watching the dam bungee jump or motorcycle dive at the beginning of the film when you know someone really did it.

Your proper DVD reviews will mention the audio and visual transfer, aspect ratios, sound quality and colours. You’ll find them on proper sites.

Footnotes

1. As regular Grapefruit readers know, flashbacks are cool.
2. Thus allowing me to show a gorgeous woman who’s actually relevant to the review. There’s a challenge for you, Andy.
3. Serra did the awesome score to The Fifth Element, too.
4. I’ve been checking The Astor’s listings for years in this hope. But nooooo, they keep trotting out boring Roger Moore films. Pah.

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This entry was posted by the illustrious Tom Charman on Friday, September 17th, 2004. It concerns such pressing issues as . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.