Facts & Figures

* Title: GoldenEye
* IMDB rating at time of writing: 7.2
* Year: 1995
* Length: 124 minutes
* Country: United Kingdom
* Director: Martin Campbell
* Producers: Michael G. Wilson & Barbara Broccoli
* Writers: Michael France, Jeffrey Caine, & Bruce Feirstein
* Cinematography: Phil Meheux
* Music: Éric Serra
* Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Sean Bean, Izabella Scorupco, Joe Don Baker, Famke Janssen, Judi Dench, Gottfried John, Robbie Coltrone & Alan Cumming

Plot summary (Spoiler alert!)

It’s 1986, the cold war. British spy James “007″ Bond (Brosnan) and Alec “006″ Trevelyan (Bean) infiltrate a Soviet chemical weapons plant to blow it up. Their mission goes wrong and 006 is captured and killed by colonel Ouromov (John), but Bond manages to escape from the exploding plant by stealing a plane.

Nine years later; The cold war has ended and James Bond is taking a drive in the French countryside, while his performance is being reviewed by Miss Moneypenny (Samantha Bond), when he is suddenly taken over by an expensive Ferrari, driven by a beautiful woman. James starts the pursuit and plays chase with the mysterious woman, untill he is forced to stop. Later that night, Bond arrives at a casino in Monte Carlo, where he again meets the mysterious woman. Having seen the fake plates on her car, and seeing her company (an elderly Canadian Admiral) he follows them and has her identified as Xenia Onatopp (Janssen), a former Soviet pilot with ties to the criminal organisation known as the Janus group. Later, Onatopp is seen murdering the admiral during sex, allowing a mysterious person to steal his identity papers.

The next day, a prototype of a new armored helicopter, capable of withstanding electromagnetic interference, is being demonstrated in the harbor of Monte Carlo. Even though Bond tries to stop them, Onatopp and an associate kill the real pilots and manage to fly off with the prototype, disappearing over the sea.

At a secret bunker in Severnaya, space weapons from the Soviet era are still being maintained and tested. This is the home base of the weapon code-named “Goldeneye”, a sattelite containing a nuclear warhead, that can explode in space over a target area and create an electromagnetic pulse (EMP), which will destroy all electric devices in a 30 mile radius. At the site, Ouromov (now a general) and Onatopp arrive in the stolen helicopter. They massacre the staff, with the exception of programmer Simonova (Scorupco), who is hiding in a cupboard, and programmer Boris Grishenko (Cumming) who is out smoking, and set off one of the Goldeneye weapons, taking the access codes for the second satelite with them. The blast also takes out an air force patrol of three migs, which crash into the facility, causing an explosion that destroys the compound.

Bond and his superior M (Dench), watching via sattelite, see Simonova climbing out of the radar dish, and they figure out that the Goldeneye weapon is a real threat, which has to be stopped, causing Bond to be dispatched to St. Petersberg to face his long-time opponent Ouromov again. Simonova is seen contacting Boris, who betrays her to Janus.

007 meets with the CIA agent in charge in St. Petersberg, Jack Wade (Baker), who helps him contat the Janus competition, Valentin Zukovsky (Coltrane), who arranges a meeting between Bond and Janus. At his hotel, Bond is ambushed by Onatopp, who tries to kill him using her lethal hips, but he manages to subdue her and forces her to drive him to Janus. Arriving at a junkyard, Bond is shocked to discover that Janus is actually Alec Trevalyan, who faked his own death so he can take revenge on the British government, who betrayed his parents to their death at the communists. Bond is taken out and tied up with Simonova in the stolen helicopter, which is programmed to self destruct, but the pair manages to escape using the ejection system. Before they can run off, however, the police arrives and the two are arrested.

In a military building in St. Petersberg, Bond and Simonova are being interrogated by the Russian defence minister Mishkin, who quickly finds out that Ouromov is responsible for the stolen weapon and the destruction of the Severnaya facility. Ouromov bursts into the room, killing the minister and trying to frame Bond for the murder. In a massive firefight in the archives of the building, Bond manages to escape but Simonova is dragged off and taken into a car. 007, being his usual woman-saving self, follows in a stolen tank, driving through downtown St. Petersberg, creating havoc by destroying several buildings and disrupting traffic. Just missing the armoured train that Janus uses as a headquarters, he blocks the tracks with the tank, managing to derail it and killing Ouromov in the progress. Alec and Onatopp manage to escape, locking our good guy and girl in the train with a self-destruct sequence counting down. Bond cuts through the floor with a laser hidden in his wristwatch, while Simonova uses a computer to hack into Boris’ system to locate the Janus sattelite dish in Cuba. The two manage to escape just as the train explodes.

Arriving in Cuba, Bond trades his car with Wade’s aircraft, which they use to fly over the jungle to locate the sattelite dish’s exact location. While flying over a lake, they are shot down and lose consciousness. Bond wakes up to see Onatopp rapelling down from a helicopter, and a brief fight ensues, which ends with Bond taking down the chopper and killing Onatopp. Knowing they are now near the hidden base, Bond and Simonova watch the lake being drained of water, uncovering a giant sattelite dish. They infiltrate the facility, where Bond starts sabotaging a tank filled with fuel, but are captured before any explosives could be set.

As all evil geniuses before him, Alec, believing he has won, reveals his plan to steal all money from the Bank of England, before using the remaining Goldeneye over London, which would destroy all financial records, concealing the theft. Simonova managed to reprogram the sattelite, though, causing it to start reentry where it would be destroyed due to friction. While Boris is frantically trying to break through Simonova’s codes, Bond uses the tension to throw a grenade (disguised as a ballpoint) in the lake of fuel, flowing from the sabotaged tanks, creating an explosion and managing to escape in the chaos. They enter the antenna dish, where 007 sabotages the antenna and throws Trevelyan off the transmitter, paralyising him. Simonova has commandeered a helicopter, and flies off to save Bond. Boris survives the initial explosion of the site, but is frozen by some exploding vats of liquid nitrogen. Marines arrive with Wade, who save Bond and Simonova and take them off to Guantanamo Bay.

Review

This Bond is the first one starring Pierce Brosnan as our hero. He takes on a less serious character, with the occasional joke and (bad) pun. The bond-girls are played by Famke Janssen as the fiesty one and Izabella Scorupco as the innocent one, while the main antagonist is played by Sean Bean. M, the person in charge of MI6, is now being portreyed by Judi Dench as the first woman. The actors all do a decent job; some over the top while others play it calm, but all manage to portray their personalities without too much fuss, which is what you want and expect in a Bond movie. Bond himself is as we know him: an alcoholic killer with a soft spot for women and gamling, who likes his toys.

GoldenEye is the first Bond movie which is set after the fall of the Soviet Union, which created new difficulties but also new options for the writers. They manage to keep these events in the storyline, maybe even letting the story be caused by the fall, but don’t dwell on it too much. The script itself is simple, just as we want for a Bond: a basic storyline, two girls (one good, one bad), a generic bad guy and some other Characters with a capital C. The main problem in the script lies with the premesis of the story: a sattelite thingie which causes electromamatic whatsit so some nazi-english-russian-soviet-cossack guy who is dead can steal a lot of money and hide it…? Please, next time keep it simpler: some criminal organisation stealing either a lot of money to buy weapons, or stealing weapons to get a lot of money. Throw in a girl or two, some fancy gizmo’s, a casino with booze and you have your basic Bond.

This is the first Bond which made use of CGI-effects, next to models and sets. This is absolutely visible, but not always in a bad way. Yes, you can see that the effects are effects, but it doesn’t get in the way of a fun viewing experience. The lighting and cinematography of the film ranges from plain good to sometimes amazing, the sound is okay and the score, be it a departure from the regular Bond theme, doesn’t distract either and is sometimes even catchy. Technically, this is a good movie; not a great one, but just good. Nothing stops you from having a lot of fun watching, and a lot helps you.

Because this is a Bond movie, we expect two things: hot women and fancy gizmo’s. Unfortunately, this movie lacks in both departments. The girls, as happens more often, are twofold: first there is the sexy black-haired woman, who uses her hips to kill men during sex and tries to kill Bond, but not before having some fun with it. Second, the innocent and weak foreign girl, who manages to kick out some action in the end after all. Janssen’s performance is ok, she looks like the kind of girl who wants to tie you down and have her way with you, but Scorupco just doesn’t convince at all; she really comes over as some foreign woman with a badly practiced accent from another foreign country, reading her lines and looking cute.
The second part we want are fancy toys and deadly weapons disguised as everyday objects, unfortunately, this also disappoints. The only true gizmo that is seen in action is the grenade-ballpoint, which creates some tension but then explodes (as it should, because it is a grenade). The bondcar, a (baby blue) BMW z3 convertible, is only seen in one second unit shot and doesn’t show any of the gadgets Q lovingly installed in it. Even Bond’s personal car, the silver DB-5 used in Goldfinger and Thunderball, gets more screentime and more action, racing against Onatopp’s Ferrari F355.

Conclusions

Even though it has many flaws, this Bond is one of my favorites; it brings back the fun which had disappeared in Moore’s movies and was completely gone when Dalton took the role. The action is fun, original and plenty, the characters are over the top and Bond is Bond: sophisticated but ruthless, with a bit of cynism in every sentence. Brosnan still played the part fresh in this and Tomorrow Never Dies, before losing his spirit in the boring The World is Not Enough and the horrible Die Another Day.