Better Bond with Brilliant Bean and Brosnan
James Bond (Brosnan) investigates the mysterious dealings of Goldeneye, a satellite which was kidnapped by a group of Russians.

Pierce Brosnan's (Mamma Mia!) first role as the famous British spy is probably his finest to date with specific and exciting acting, not to mention he is the cheekiest and smartest Bond since Connery.

Six years Bond fanatics had to wait after `Licence to Kill' was released in 1989 and weren't we treated? Goldeneye has everything a Bond fan could ever wish for, high action, attractive female leads and a fantastic trio of villains to make the ultimate knockout action thriller.

Brosnan's performance is excellent and really helps gain that edge of your seat excitement but also an ultimate relaxed feeling to. Bond's first line "Forgot to knock" will have fans smiling to.

Brosnan delivers the best acting out of a terrific cast which also includes a memorable performance by Sean Bean (Sharpe series) who never disappoints with a sweet evilness and malice to his character.

Izabella Scorupco is one of the least interesting Bond girls of all time. However Famke Janssen as Onatopp is one, if not the, best female Bond villain of the series to date with a fantastic viciousness and cutting edge to her personality.

The writing works well with great dramatic tension surrounding the characters. From the cool and sophisticated agent to the troubled and sad Russian researcher, writer Michael France has created one of the finest Bonds to date. Goldeneye isn't based on an Ian Fleming novel, which is evident with the amount of action encoded, which isn't a bad thing at all.

Goldeneye is all about the memorable action sequences. The film opens with a terrific and remarkable bungee jump of a damn. A true heart stopping and terrific piece of film making, which makes one of the finest Bond openings to date. The film is constantly hitting new heights with a dramatic plane flying sequence, a tank cutting traffic and plenty of high flying helicopters to match.

There are questions of realism but regardless Goldeneye treats viewers with its high octane vibe and a fantastic ensemble of performances, particularly by Brosnan and Bean.

8.5/10

Remastered??? A great film spoiled.
Picture quality in some scenes from the first half of the movie appear very grainy. It's saying something when the Goldfinger print is better than a more recent Bond. Do they bother checking their products before they release them? Also, the film has been cropped at the sides, so that the computer screen readouts of the Goldeneye tracking system don't fit on the screen. The previous edition had none of these problems, so what went wrong?

Interesting, in that the villain is ex-MI6
Goldeneye introduced us to Pierce Brosnan as James Bond. After a 6 year hiatus it was good to see 007 back in action. Brosnan is okay, but some would maybe argue that he's a bit too smooth (a la Remington Steele) and lacks the hard edge of Connery or even Daniel Craig.

Goldeneye (named after Ian Fleming's house in Jamaica where he wrote the 14 original Bond books) has its moments, such as: the dam jump in the pre-credit sequence, the tank chase through St. Petersburg, Onatopp (a celebrated baddie in the Pantheon of Bond girls) and the final duel with Sean Bean somewhere in darkest Cuba.

I never liked the music to the four Brosnan Bonds. It's far too industrial and techie sounding (lacking the lush, suave orchestration of the earlier films). In terms of continuity, Q is still here with plenty of gadgets (although he is far grumpier) and in keeping with true events at MI6, M is a female.

Goldeneye, overall, is ok. If you like Bond then it's a must for your collection, but I would rank it somewhere in the bottom half of the 21 Bond films to date (better than e.g. Licence To Kill or For Your Eyes Only, but not in the same league as e.g. Goldfinger or The Spy Who Loved Me. Just an opinion.

"I think you're a sexist, misogynist dinosaur - a relic of the Cold War."
Goldeneye is the seventeenth Bond movie in the series, and the first of four with Pierce Brosnan in the lead role. Indeed, it is the best of his four. Following a Scot, an Australian, an Englishman and a Welshman, Bond was now played by an Irishman. In my view, Brosnan was a good Bond, but the lack of control over his part that Dalton insisted upon meant that this and the other three of his movies led to Bond becoming a parody of his true self. Like the final movies of Roger Moore in the role, Brosnan's script emphasised to an absurd degree the superhuman strengths and luck of the part, as well as the equally absurd humour. Humour is good in Bond but it must be a dark and brutal humour to be credible: playing Bond for laughs shows a lack of self-respect for the man. 'Goldeneye' was the one Brosnan movie in which these aspects were most under control.

`Goldeneye' followed a little hiatus of six years since the previous movie, `Licence to Kill'. During that time, the Soviet Union finally came crashing down, and the Bond team had to face the fact that the Cold War was over. There was also a great technical revolution during that time as Bond finally moved into the digital age. As well as a new Bond, there is a new M in Judie Dench, it being a conscious decision to make the female parts tougher. (The title at the head of this review is her description of Bond.) It's over an hour before Bond gets his first kiss.

There were a number of new faces in the Bond production team too, most notably of course the director, Martin Campbell, who contended that, "If we don't get this right, the series is dead." As the extras on the double-DVD show, Campbell is a man with a lot of energy (to put it diplomatically). Other new faces include Daniel Kleinman (for the late Maurice Binder), and Eric Serra doing the soundtrack.

There are the usual amazing stunts (jumping off a dam) and the usual ludicrously unbelievable stunts (freefall to catch up with and steer to safety a plane, tank chase through Saint Petersburg). Bond still escapes a million bullets without a hair falling out of place (but see the note about the censors, below). Thankfully the undercranking of the camera was kept to a minimum, and was not enough to make it obvious.

Despite being only one commentary, there is a generous helping of extras on the double-disc version. In the commentary we learn that the amazing opening dam jump was done for real, was a world record, and was done on the first take: it was the only take! We also learn that Sean Bean himself had once been a contender for the Bond role. I was interested also to learn that the censors do not like to see blood, or to see bullets hitting their mark, but they do not mind high body counts! So my previous gripes about Bond movies should be mostly laid at the censors' door rather than the producers'. (But it would be interesting to see a woman direct a Bond movie.)

There are the usual deleted scenes, anatomies of scenes, location-scouting, model-making featurettes. One of the best is a thirty-minute `Secret File', where you learn the production secret that comprises cat-litter and self-raising flour? There is also a good forty-minute TV special, `The World of 007', introduced by Liz Hurley. It's over-the-top and camp, but features some interesting interviews with the likes of John Barry, Roger Moore, and a variety of actors and production team staff.


Boys with Toys
This was Bond back as fun, not serious - and a successful transition it turned out to be. It is hardly the reimagining it seemed back then, more of a return to the tongue in cheek of Roger Moore - except this time with an actor who could pull it off.
There's lots to like - Famke Jensen is one of the most deliciously over the top hench(wo)man in decades, Sean Bean plays 006 with great style, and there are surprising cameos - Robbie Coltrane, Minnie Driver, for example. Eric Serra's synth-rich score works pretty well, with enough of the classic themes coming through at moments you want them to - like the start of the glorious tank chase. And let's not forget two of Goldeneye's key successes - Judi Dench as M was certainly surprising casting, but it turned out to add a hugely successful character foil to Bond's `misogynist dinosaur'. Aside from Judi Dench bringing the role of women in Bond movies into the modern world, Isabella Scorupco plays a fine traditional Bond girl, with added sassiness. And then there is that whole self aware aspect - Bond is recognised for being a `relic of the cold war', and there is even a few half heartedly psychological moments where Gasp! We are encouraged to understand the character a little better.
Locations are the best in some time for a Bond movie, with St Petersburg appearing in person... surely the ultimate sign the cold war has ended, when a Russian city appears in a Bond movie without Prague or some other Eastern European city standing in for it...
Negative points if you want to quibble... there's something about Bond with a machine gun that's just not right. Bond is supposed to be pinpoint and precise, and it's a shame the Brosnan movies got away from that to have him spraying bullets all over the place. And a few of the characters are just a bit too cartoonish, drawing one out from an otherwise well paced and well plotted movie.
All in all though, there's no doubt that Pierce Brosnan's first stab at the Bond role made it his own for a decade. Goldeneye is one of those perennially entertaining and rewatchable movies that made the Bond franchise so durable.

As usual, the ultimate edition has every extra imaginable, significantly more than the previous Special Edition. Sadly however, we do not have the making of documentary that accompanied all of the previous movies. It's a shame that for this ultimate edition they could not have put together some sort of retrospective documentary with interviews as they had for the previous movies, and merely put together all the pre-existing material they could find.
Picture and sound are immaculate.

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