GoldenEye: A pitch-perfect Bond debut
Review Overview
Brosnan
8Bean
8Action
8David Farnor | On 23, Sep 2021
In the aftermath of Timothy Dalton’s superb double-bill in the 1980s, the Bond franchise found itself having to reckon anew with its place in wider pop culture – and one of its smartest decisions was to immediately acknowledge 007 as an old-fashioned relic in 1995’s GoldenEye, described as a dinosaur by Judi Dench’s new, steely M.
But GoldenEye is more nuanced in its positioning of Bond than that simple quip, and key to finding the right approach for this incarnation of the secret agent is Pierce Brosnan. He’s essentially a mix of all the previous Bonds to go before him, able to be cold and ruthless like Dalton but also throw in a sprinkling of Roger Moore wit and a dash of Connery suave. There’s even some Lazenby-esque vulnerability in there, which allows the scenes between him and sidekick Natalya (Izabella Scorupco) to have some actual emotional weight.
The script, meanwhile, takes its cue from Dalton’s James Bond-goes-rogue tradition, and grounds its story in the Anglo-Soviet aftermath of the Cold War. At the same time, it manages to balance silliness with the seriousness. Giant EMP-firing satellite in the sky? Silly. Russian villain who squeezes men to death with her thighs? Ridiculous. Unlike Moore or Die Another Day, though, the silly is never too distracting. The use of gadgets, for example, is kept to a minimum, with the usual button-filled car upstaged by a sequence involving a tank.
Right from the opening jump off the Byelomorye Dam, which plays out in tense silence, the use of location is excellent, whether it’s fisticuffs on a satellite array or a claustrophobic trains set to self-destruct – it’s no wonder production designer Peter Lamont (who worked with Ken Adam on The Spy Who Loved Me) designed 007 locations from For Your Eyes Only right up to Casino Royale. Even the N64 video game based on the film won the hearts of fans by featuring the toilets from the pre-titles sequence. (Unfortunately, the success of the video game also highlights the underwhelming film score from composer Eric Serra – EON had to bring in John Altman to write some symphonic music for the St Petersburg tank chase.)
A huge part of why all this clicks together, though, is not just Brosnan, but also who is cast to play opposite him as the bad guy: Sean Bean. One of the few other 00 agents we actually get to know, Alec Trevelyan is one of the best Bond villains in the whole canon. He’s menacing, he has a good line in pop psychology and he gives Brosnan a chance to define his twinkly-eyed 007 by wreaking some personal revenge – earning the film its 12 certificate, the final punch-up between Bean and Bond has all the brutal impact of the train brawl in From Russia with Love.
A three-dimensional bad guy, a rounded 007, a spot-on storyline, a cracking Bond theme song by Tina Turner and some superb action? GoldenEye is just the entry the franchise needed after several years of confused waiting. No wonder director Martin Campbell would be brought back for Daniel Craig’s debut outing – praise doesn’t get higher than that.