Directed By: Martin Campbell
Starring: Pierce Brosnan, Sean Bean, Izabella Scorupco
Tag line: "You know the name. You know the number"
Trivia: The Rolling Stones were offered the chance to sing the title song, but declined
With 1995’s Goldeneye, Pierce Brosnan joined the ranks of the actors who portrayed the finest spy in her majesty’s service, James Bond 007. And as debuts go, this one’s a doozy!
Following a flashback to nine years earlier when he teamed up with agent 006 (Sean Bean) to infiltrate a Soviet base (a mission that ended in disaster), James Bond (Brosnan) finds himself going head-to-head with Janus, a criminal organization operating in Russia. After swiping a military helicopter, Janus operative Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen) and her associate, General Ouromov (Gottfried John), fly it to an underground control center in Severnaya, Siberia, where the Russians have been monitoring a pair of satellites equipped with an electromagnetic pulse so strong that it can cause a blackout in a major city in a matter of seconds (remnants of the Cold War, the satellites are part of a program known as “Operation Goldeneye”). With the help of programmer Boris Grishenko (Alan Cumming), a double agent who works at the facility, Janus raids the Severnaya bunker and steals the disk that controls the satellites. After a successful test of Goldeneye, which reduces the Severnaya bunker to rubble, Bond makes his way to St. Petersburg, where he teams up with Natalya Simonova (Izabella Scorupco), the lone survivor of the attack at Severnaya. Together, the two try to figure out who’s behind all this (for years, the head honcho of Janus has managed to remain in hiding). When Bond finally does come face-to-face with the head of Janus, he receives the shock of a lifetime, and is further distressed to learn that the group’s next target is London! With time running out, Bond puts all of his skills to the test, doing what he can to save Queen and Country one more time.
Goldeneye begins, like most Bond pictures do, with a pre-title sequence that takes us back to the mid-‘80s mission where 007 and 006 tried to sabotage a Soviet chemical weapons plant. From the first few moments, which feature an amazing stunt (using a bungee, Bond leaps from the top of a tall dam, plummeting hundreds of feet before making his way to ground level) to the finale, an even greater stunt involving a plane that’s just driven off the edge of a cliff, this sequence gets the audience’s pulse pounding in a big way (the firefight that takes place inside the weapons plant is pretty thrilling as well).
Despite it being his first appearance in the role, Brosnan seems very comfortable as Bond, showing a penchant for comedy and a way with the ladies, both of which harken back to Roger Moore, while at the same time maintaining the character’s tougher side, a trait he shares with his immediate predecessor, Timothy Dalton (in a scene set in a bathhouse, Brosnan’s Bond shows he has no problem whatsoever roughing up a female enemy agent). In addition to Brosnan’s debut, Goldeneye marked the first appearance of Dame Judy Dench in the role of “M”, a part she’d make her own in several subsequent films. During her initial one-on-one with Bond, M lays it all out, telling 007 she considers him “a sexist, misogynist dinosaur” and “a relic of the Cold War”, setting the stage for the occasionally turbulent relationship that would be explored further as the series goes on. The rest of the supporting cast is also good, with Desmond Llewellyn getting a few laughs as “Q” (demonstrating his latest gadgets in his lab) and an even younger Moneypenny (Samantha Bod) putting 007 in his place (as the character has done many times in the past). I can’t reveal too much about the villain in this film, mostly because doing so would spoil one of its best twists, but rest assured he’s every bit as maniacal as Blofeld, Goldfinger, and A View to a Kill’s Max Zorin. Also keep an eye out for Joe Don Baker as Jack Wade, Bond’s CIA liaison; and Robbie Coltrane as Valentin Dmitrovich Zukovsky, leader of a Russian criminal organization.
Then, of course, we have the Bond girls, and man, are they amazing! As played by Izabella Scorupco, Natalya is more than a (very) pretty face (she can hack into any computer, a skill that comes in handy more than once), but the real standout in Goldeneye is Famke Janssen’s Xenia Onatopp, an incredibly sexy adversary who doesn’t bother controlling her burning passions. On a few occasions, Ms. Onatopp even uses sex as a weapon (her first victim, an Admiral in the Royal Canadian Navy played by Billy J. Mitchell, dies with a smile on his face). These two beauties, combined with some cool gadgets (Bond gets a new car, a BMW equipped with all the bells and whistles of his old Aston Martin) and kick-ass action scenes (the craziest of which has Bond jumping into a Soviet-era tank and chasing an adversary through the bust streets of St. Petersburg), help make Goldeneye a memorable Bond outing.
Thus far in the series, the debut films for all of the previous actors who played James Bond (Connery in Dr. No, Lazenby’s one and only appearance in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Moore in Live and Let Die, and Dalton in The Living Daylights) have been solid, and Goldeneye in no exception. Admittedly, some of his later movies weren’t of the highest quality (one was downright awful), but with Goldeneye, Pierce Brosnan proved he was up to the challenge of playing Ian Fleming’s super spy, and in so doing ushered 007 into a new, exciting era.