After glancing over the master list of Bond films the other day, it occurred to me that at this point in the countdown we're going to discuss a couple of films that I probably should have more respect for than I do. The current subject of discussion, for instance, was a kind of make or break film for the franchise. Goldeneye was released to theaters after six hard years of legal wrangling had darn near buried the franchise for good. If this film had tanked at the box office there is probably little doubt that the franchise would have come to a definite end. The fantastic box office success of this film compared to the sadly under performing Dalton films rejuvenated the series and is the reason that the series continues to this day. Despite my personal feelings about the film, I am compelled as a Bond fan to give it some grudging admiration on this score alone. And yet looking back, I have to wonder if that six year hiatus may have served to cut Bond loose from his on-screen history and whether that is going to alienate long term fans in ways that have yet to play out. The primary gripe that I have about Goldeneye is the sense that everything we knew and liked about Bond from prior years has been abandoned for this film. The film just felt wrong to me at the time it was released and still does all these years later.
I have already discussed the fact that when Pierce Brosnan took over as Bond the filmmakers stopped drawing on incidents from Fleming's fiction. Rather baroquely, this film is inspired not by anything in the novels but by a place in the real world. Goldeneye is actually the name that Fleming gave to his Jamaican home to which he retired every winter to write his latest Bond novel. I'll give points to the screenwriters for bringing up the fact that Bond was orphaned when his parents died in a climbing accident, but all they really needed to do to learn that was read his obituary from You Only Live Twice. The film starts feeling wrong right from the outset with the pre-credits teaser. Bond is shown breaking into a chemical weapons facility in Russia for purposes of sabotage. After entering the lab, Bond meets up with Alec Trevelyan whom we learn to be 006. Now this might seem like a nitpick, but bear with me. It makes no sense to have Bond work together with another double-oh on a mission. There are only a handful of double-ohs in the entire department. They wouldn't be paired or trioed on missions because one bad break could end up literally decimating the staff of the double-oh section. Furthermore, one could be caught on a mission and used as leverage to draw the other out of hiding. And sure enough this is exactly what happens during the teaser. The general in charge of the facility, Ourumov, captures Trevelyan and Bond ends up coming out of hiding with his hands up. It's only after Ourumov apparently assassinates 006 that Bond makes (it goes without saying!) a successful escape attempt. If this unlikely start were passed over by the ensuing action, I would let it pass. It turns out as the film progresses, however, that this beginning serves to set up what will prove to be a lot of ill advised and quite un-Fleming-like dramatic conflict.
After the credits we are informed that eight years have passed since the teaser. Bond is apparently living it up on something of a vacation in France and he becomes suspicious of a woman at the casino. In one of the more half-assed suggestive names in the series, she is named Xenia Onatopp and possessed of the first of what will be a long parade of annoying pseudo-Russian accents. Bond wires back to headquarters and finds that she is associated with a Russian crime syndicate by the name of Janus. Janus has apparently turned up SPECTRE's old Thunderball playbook because Onatopp is first seen assassinating an admiral and then she and the admiral's exact double steal an experimental helicopter. Making this extremely suspect upon reflection is the fact that the helicopter is a French design and the admiral killed certainly seems American. Since when can we expect the French to give the least bit of courtesy to any American - much less an American military officer?
It turns out that the helicopter is a special design that has been built so that its electronic systems are immune to the electro-magnetic pulse caused by a nuclear weapon. Actually I don't know why the Russkies have to steal that. I would have thought that they had gotten the anti-electro-magnetic-pulse stuff from Zorin back in A View To A Kill. In any event, the helicopter is needed because those dirty, rotten Commies built satellite weapons called goldeneyes that detonate in space and produce an electro-magnetic pulse capable of destroying electric devices on the ground. Janus wants to steal the control to these satellites and cover its tracks by detonating one of the devices over the goldeneye command post. After the goldeneye blast they make their escape in the helicopter. At this point in the proceedings the creepy-looking General Ourumov re-enters the picture as being in on the theft of the goldeneye controls.
British intelligence learns from satellite photos that the stolen helicopter was used to escape from the destruction of the command post. Bond knows that Onatopp is involved in the helicopter theft, and concludes that Janus is as well. "M" thus sends him off to what is for the purposes of this picture the former Soviet Union to track down the head of Janus and get a lead on the stolen satellite. This actually doesn't feel right either upon a moment's reflection. After all the goldeneye was stolen from the Russians. Since when is it Bond's job to hop all over the globe solving the Russians problems for them? Of course it turns out in the end that the goldeneye endangers London, but they sure couldn't know that now. Personally I'd just get Vladimir Putin on the blower and tell him what I know so that he can call on the services of the entire Russian intelligence apparatus in tracking the thing down rather than sending one guy halfway around the world to a country that uses a language he apparently can't speak or understand. But then again I'm not Dame Judi Dench so what do I know?
After contacting a series of fitfully amusing yet ultimately unnecessary secondary characters, Bond arranges a meeting with the head of Janus. The head of Janus turns out to be - surprise! - none other than Alec Trevelyan, 006 himself. Even though we thought him whacked by Ourumov, it turns out that Trevelyan and the general were in cahoots the whole time in staging 006's defection. Now it is an unusual feature of this film that even though it all seems to hang together while being watched, the least bit of contemplation afterwards will uncover a bevy of plot holes. My problem at this point in the film is Trevelyan's immediate desire to have Bond killed when he shows up at the arranged meeting. At this point all Bond has is a hunch that Janus is involved via Onatopp's involvement in the helicopter theft. Even though Bond now knows that Trevelyan is a traitorous weasel, he doesn't have any solid reason to believe that Trevelyan stole the goldeneye. Even if Janus did filch the helicopter, who's to say they didn't sell it to someone else to use in lifting the goldeneye controls? Why doesn't Trevelyan just shine Bond on here and claim that either he doesn't know anything about it or that he stole the 'copter but sold it to a third party? He could give Bond some phony name and by the time Bond ran the lead down and proved it false, Trevelyan's scheme would have reached fruition. After all, Bond and 006 were colleagues at one time, if not friends, so you'd think that there would be some residual goodwill that might tempt Bond to believe in Trevelyan's innocence in this case. Personally, I would have taken a shot at leading Bond astray but of course I'm not a former agent of the British Secret Service that betrayed his country and became the head of a crime syndicate, so what do I know?
At this point, far into the film, Bond finally meets the female lead Natalya Simonova. Simonova is the only survivor from the goldeneye control center and Trevelyan attempts to kill both her and Bond by tying them both up in the cabin of the stolen helicopter and blowing it up. When they escape the blast, they are taken prisoner by the Russians under suspicion of being involved in stealing the goldeneye. Another one of my favorite unintentional laughs comes when Bond recognizes that Simonova was at the control center when the goldeneye was stolen while she and he are in custody. He starts interrogating her about what happened and she blurts out "But I don't know anything!". Bond's reply: "Then let's start with what you do know!". Uh, James what part of I don't know anything didn't you understand? Bond is set up by Ourumov at whatever quasi-governmental place he's being held, so at least Bond's desire to escape Russian custody makes sense where his oft reckless fleeing from American law enforcement doesn't. I certainly wouldn't put much faith in ex-KGB people to sort things out either.
To cut a long story short, Bond and Simonova learn that Trevelyan is based in Cuba for no other reason than the meta- one of justifying a Puerto Rico junket on the part of the film crew. Bond infiltrates Trevelyan's lair bent on destruction and ably succeeds at causing same. It seems that the ex-006's plan was to hack into London banks, transfer a lot of money into his private accounts, and set off the goldeneye over London to cover his tracks. Actually that's so crazy it just might work, and I'll give the villain the benefit of the doubt. Although wait until you take a gander at the size of the satellite dish that Trevelyan was apparently able to not only have built in Cuba, but also have built on some sort of motorized platform that raises it out of a lake in which it is concealed. If Trevelyan has that kind of money to throw around then frankly the stealing the goldeneye thing just seems to be more trouble than it's worth. Another part of the plan not nearly as well thought out involved filling his control room with hundreds of gallons of both combustible fluids and liquid nitrogen! A convenient grenade manages to detonate same and foil Trevelyan's plan. A variety of gun battles and a brutal hand-to-hand fight end with Bond and Trevelyan on top of a massive satellite dish and Trevelyan's subsequent gazillion foot drop to the concrete below.
While I can't fault Sean Bean too much for his acting here as 006/Trevelyan, the character itself is poorly conceived in the extreme. The fact is that the screenwriters have been too clever by far more than half in the scripting of the piece's main villain. When all is said and done, Trevelyan is just a typical Bond baddie in the Goldfinger tradition. He's a megalomaniacal, wealthy man engaged in a scheme to become even richer. As one of the best films in the franchise demonstrates there's nothing at all wrong with such a character driving the plot. Trevelyan here however is loaded up with such a bewildering array of motivations that nearly every scene that he's in becomes an excuse for exposition or getting in touch with feelings. First of all the impact his history with the Secret Service has on the plot is nil. I've already mentioned the shaky start the film gets off to because of it, but in a larger sense it only raises a lot of unnecessary questions about Trevelyan's life. How in the world does a man go from traitorous double-oh to a wealthy Russian mafia boss? A further pointless complication arises when it is learned that Trevelyan is the son of a Lienz Cossack. These Cossacks were killed by the British at the end of World War II when they refused to be repatriated to what they thought certain death in Stalin's Russia. The movie infers that Trevelyan is planning to bomb London because this incident resulted in his parents’ suicide. What is the point of bringing up Trevelyan's past? Are we supposed to feel sorry for Trevelyan because of his parent's death? I also find it uncomfortable that Lienz Cossack is used as an implied insult throughout the film. Even Bond himself attempts to sway Ourumov temporarily by bringing it up. Are they really trying to imply the people killed at the end of World War II are some traitorous race? You would think not, but making Trevelyan quite unnecessarily both a Cossack and traitor only seems to imply it all the more. And just to add more bewilderment, it’s also strongly implied that Trevelyan and Bond shared a relation just a tad too intimate for comfort for manly spy types. At their reunion Bond lets all his hurt feelings show because he trusted Trevelyan darn it! Trevelyan gets all teary eyed because Bond's loyalty is always to the mission not friends like him. Frankly, I don't want to bring up all that Diamonds Are Forever subtext here, but you have to wonder. On the other hand maybe you'd be closer to the mark if you were thinking two teenage girls fighting over the same guy. When Ourumov brings the captive Simonova to Trevelyan, the former 006 feels compelled to try and get fresh because he and Bond used to share everything. When Bond shows up Trevelyan makes it a point to tell Bond that he's already gotten to one of the bases with her if you know what I mean. I love the serious expression he gets on his face when he tells Bond this. All that's missing is the "nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyaaah!".
Nothing makes the motivational confusion so clear as the first meeting of Bond and Trevelyan in Russia. First Trevelyan starts going on about how he and Bond risked their lives on all those assignments and all they got was a memorial plaque or a pat on the back. OK, I believe it perfectly reasonable that Trevelyan defected just because he felt underpaid and under appreciated. Next, however, Trevelyan starts going on about how the British betrayed his family. What's the point of that? If he hates the British so much because of this then why was he p*@#ing and moaning about not being appreciated? Next it transpires that he blames Bond for the burn he got when the chemical weapons lab blew up before the credits. In retrospect of course Trevelyan only has himself to blame. After all he was going to defect, so all he really had to do was to drill Bond at the first opportunity in the teaser. Still, I'll allow that he's an egomaniac incapable of accepting personal responsibility and consequently expects Bond "to die for me". In the very next sentence, however, Trevelyan says that he wanted to ask Bond to join his scheme. Join his scheme?? What scheme is he talking about? The scheme to defect to Commie Russia for a place at the front of the moldy potato line? Why in the world would Bond have the slightest desire to do that? As this brief incident shows, it is through a welter of motivations and poor excuses for dramatic conflict that Sean Bean has to try to project a menacing adversary. In the last analysis he just wasn't up to the job. Frankly I don't they could have gotten even Gert Frobe to do it either, so I can't be too hard on Bean.
Izabella Scorupco plays computer programmer Natalya Simonova here and the acting on her part is actually fairly competent. In contrast to the baroquely over-motivated drama queen Trevelyan, however, the character of Simonova is merely buffeted about by the exigencies of the plot without ever being given any distinctive personality whatsoever. There is precious little motivation at all for any of her actions after she meets with Bond. In addition while I must stress that Ms. Scorupco is quite attractive, the character she plays is somehow simultaneously mundane and implausible. Not to knock the members of a noble profession, but when I think glamorous and exotic I don't think computer programmer. The costuming department isn't helping on the glamour front either any here. Ms Scorupco goes through the first half of the movie wearing a precious little pink cardigan and short pleated skirt that reminds one of something Veronica and Betty would wear down at the malt shop. Now just so you don't misunderstand another problem I have with Simonova, I want to make it clear that the Russians are brilliant people. As a mathematical person by profession, I can easily name scores of Russian mathematical and scientific geniuses. Still when one thinks of cutting edge computer technology, Russia is just not the first country that comes to mind. I'll grant that much has probably changed for the better since the Commies fell apart, but when relics of the Cold War like myself think of Russia we can't help but think of people standing in line for hours for a head of rotting cabbage rather than say Java script and parallel processing. Somehow the character of Russian computer expert just strikes me as strangely unlikely - somehow akin to Cuban automotive engineer or for that matter North Korean grocer. And to add to the vague dissatisfaction I have with the nature of Simonova as a character, it is totally disappointing that there is little or no romance in her relationship with Bond. Chronologically from the start of the movie we see all of Simonova's co-workers slaughtered during the theft of the goldeneye, we see her crawling injured through snow storms escaping the carnage, we see her captured by Janus, we see her escape death with Bond only to be recaptured by Russian military types, we see her re-captured by Janus (!), and then finally saved from them by Bond's arrival on the scene. What's the first thing she starts doing at this point? She starts playing kissy-face with Bond! I just can't help but think that after all that she'd probably just be thinking about a shower and a good night's sleep rather than making out with some guy she barely knows. Now of course I know that some of this directness is to be expected in the Bond oeuvre, but it's just truly crazy here given the fact that Bond has just gotten done telling Trevelyan that he doesn't care whether Trevelyan kills her because she means nothing to him!
Ms. Scorupco does get a very good scene near the end that clearly shows she could have handled a much larger role in the proceedings. Having traced Trevelyan to Cuba, Bond and Simonova head off in pursuit. When it becomes clear to her that Bond is preparing to find Trevelyan and kill him, Simonova wonders at his coldness in risking his life without regard as to how his death would affect others. Bond responds that his coldness keeps him alive, and she rightly notes that it will keep him alone. It's actually a fairly smart exchange and in a lot of other Bond movies would work to great effect. Here, however, Simonova has followed Bond to Cuba apparently so that she can accompany him on his mission. If she is so opposed to Bond risking his life to foil Trevelyan's plan, then why in the world is she tagging along on the same mission? Is it OK for Bond to risk his life as long as they're together when he does it? If Bond were heading off alone to ice Trevelyan this scene would make sense, but the fact that Simonova gives the speech and still desires to actively participate tends to make her look clingy and desperate in retrospect. And I must point out that I'm always distressed at the insult and injury given Ms. Scorupco by the lecherous cameraman in this scene. When this exchange starts, the scene is framed so that Ms. Scorupco's crotch is right in the middle of the screen. I frankly found it a tastelessly rude embellishment to what should be a thoughtful moment.
I only wish that this were the only tasteless moment in the film. In fact this film features some of the most vile and repellent moments in the series. Famke Janssen plays the black widow character, Xenia Onatopp, for this film. I've already explained in some detail about how I dislike the addition of this character to a movie. The character in this film however is the worst instance of the black window I've yet to see. I always desire to be fair and in Ms. Janssen's defense I must admit to liking her in every other film in which I've seen her appear. I really don't understand, however, how she couldn't have known better here. Her initial appearances are OK but as soon as we get to the theft of the goldeneye, we see her machine-gunning the unarmed staff in cold blood. This is bad enough as is, but on top of this it is clearly implied that she is (ahem) reaching sexual climax while doing the killing. I cannot even begin to imagine what the filmmakers were thinking by adding this. Is there anyone so twisted as to view a sexual psychopath as an object of romantic fantasy? And as if becoming aroused while murdering isn't a vile enough character trait, it's also strongly implied that Onatopp gets sexual kicks from being physically abused. One scene in the movie sees her squealing with delight as Bond is smacking her around and slamming her into walls! There's a sociological thesis to be done here explaining not only how a bizarre mannish stone killer figured as male romantic fantasy in the 60's, but also how that character morphed into the even more twisted form of sexual deviant into thrill killing in the 90's.
It's hard to imagine things getting worse, but another unpleasant scene features Onatopp in bed grunting and groaning on top of the American admiral previously mentioned. This is far too graphic for the PG-13 rating this film got and would be obnoxious even if Onatopp had been played more like her forbear Volpe. I'm not a big fan of soft-core stuff in films anyway, but even if it is used effectively elsewhere it has no place in a Bond film. Part of the appeal of Bond over the years has been its ability to appeal to the younger as well as the more mature male. You wouldn't be embarrassed pulling out Goldfinger, for instance, if your friends were visiting with their kids and both adults and children could enjoy it on different levels. Given some of the smutty R-type stuff on display here however, I would hesitate with this film. And don't give me that sex-is-a-beautiful-thing stuff either, because I'm telling you that here it isn't. I will grant that Ms. Janssen, while cadaverously pale here, is beautiful, but that guy she's on top of is not only pale but he's large and hairy-bodied and bald. I sincerely hope that he was ashamed of himself after he saw the film. And of course as unerotic as the scene would be in any case, it's made infinitely worse when Onatopp kills the guy while orgasming. This material is just so vile that I can honestly not watch this movie without fast forwarding through every scene that Janssen is in. After I forced myself to watch some of it for this review I couldn't do without an immediate shower, and even then I couldn't stand to watch the scene that features Brosnan smacking Janssen around.
While normally I don't discuss secondary characters too much in these reviews, I think I'll drop in a brief paragraph on the subject here before we move on. Given the break between this film and its predecessor, it was probably a necessity for the filmmakers to recast secondary characters at the Secret Service. While I can't fault the actresses chosen to take over for "M" and Ms. Moneypenny on grounds of talent possessed, these characters have nonetheless proven distracting and intrusive to various degrees in each Brosnan film. While I have no argument with that fact "M" has been cast as a female in the form of Dame Judy Dench, I do have a big problem with the fact that far too much running time in the new films is taken up with discussing this. In every film she's appeared in we get endless prattle about how she can do the job as well as a man, about how she's just as tough as a man, blah, blah, blah. Frankly, I just don't care one way or the other. "M" is a secondary character that helps put the main plot in motion, not an excuse to discuss sexual politics in the workplace ad nauseum. I come to a Bond movie to suspend disbelief so even were I a "misogynist dinosaur", as "M" refers to Bond here, I could still pretend that a woman could lead the Secret Service for the duration of the film. "M" is particularly annoying here as she spends most of her screen time being overtly hostile towards Bond for no really discernable reason. The attitude she cops doesn't even match with what we know of Bond. After all, how is Bond a "misogynist dinosaur"? Debate dinosaur if you want, but who would argue that Bond hates woman? After years of Roger Moore and the two outings of Timothy Dalton, misogyny is the last thing I'd accuse Bond of. And how is Bond a "relic of the Cold War"? Is there no need for intelligence operatives anymore because women are in charge and everything's peace and light? Even Ms. Moneypenny is uncomfortably hostile toward Bond in this film - even suggesting that he's sexually harassing her. Again I stress these people are in the film simply to decorate the Secret Service set so to speak, not to engender soul searching discussions about glass ceilings. While these characters have proven less bothersome in other Brosnan Bond films, here it is just disorienting to see Bond walk into headquarters and be treated with such contempt.
Given the lack of engaging characters to be found here the film is, unusually for a Brosnan pic, saved by its action set pieces. None of the Brosnan films has been action packed in the same way the Moore films of the 80's were, but Goldeneye is the only one of Brosnan's films to aspire to that level of stunt work. The teaser is actually quite good if one can get past the extraneous double-oh that appears. Bond breaks into the Russian chemical weapons facility by first running onto the top of an enormous dam, attaching a bungee cord to his foot, and leaping off the dam to the facility below. It's a shame if you have missed seeing this in a theater because the shot of the valley below taken from behind Bond on top of the dam is wonderfully vertiginous when viewed on a big screen. It's only in retrospect that the stunt gives pause due to the fact that Bond almost immediately meets 006 inside the weapons lab. If Bond had to leap a jillion feet from the top of a dam, how in the heck did 006 just stroll in? As already outlined 006 is apparently captured and killed and Bond must try to escape the facility. Bond flees the room in which he placed his charges by hiding behind a cart of what I assume are tanks filled with poisonous gas. Outside the building, he commandeers a motorcycle and takes off after a prop plane that's taxiing for a take-off. Bond leaps aboard the plane but soon finds himself thrown back to the ground after a struggle with the pilot. Unwilling to give up on the plane, Bond hops back aboard the motorcycle and speeds off after the still taxiing plane. The plane rolls off the edge of a cliff at the end of the runway and Bond on bike follows it over. Bond freefalls to the plane, climbs aboard and manages to regain control of the plane. He soars over the lab just as it explodes for a segue into a quite decent title sequence. It's too bad that they don't have any madmen left over from the 80's that could have clung to that plane while falling because the rear projection while Brosnan climbs aboard is a bit less than convincing. Still I would have to be pretty curmudgeonly to find too much fault in this sequence because it's quite imaginative on the whole.
A bit of teaser goodwill is squandered by a childish sequence that immediately follows the credits. Bond is racing down some winding roads in what I take to be France when Onatopp pulls up beside and engages him in a road race. I'm not too fond of this bit for a couple of reasons. One, watching Bond and Onatopp race around on winding roads is not really all that exciting. What excitement there is ends up being dissipated anyway by the goofy double takes and subsequent pratfall on the part of a roadside group of bikers. I also don't really see the point of Onatopp and Bond risking their lives anyway. Onatopp narrowly avoids death when a big construction vehicle of some kind looms up ahead of her. There are some scenes of Bond racing around after women in earlier films, but in those instances there was some motivation for him doing so. Here's he just risking his own life and the life of the bit-part conquest that happens to be in the car with him. Call me an old fuddy-duddy if you wish, but I just find the bravado immature. Onatopp and Bond are supposed to be sophisticated jet setters not a couple of teenage boys revving their engines at a stoplight.
I've pretty much given up on expecting much more than vehicle chases or gun battles from the Brosnan films at this point. At least here, however, the vehicle chase is one of the more interesting in the series. After Bond and Simonova are captured by the Russian army, Ourumov enters the room in which Bond is being interrogated and shoots a Russian official with Bond's gun in an effort to frame him. Simonova is subsequently captured by Ourumov during her's and Bond's escape from the interrogation room, and Ourumov sets off to deliver her to Trevelyan. Bond sees Ourumov drive off with Simonova and hops in the nearest available vehicle to follow. The vehicle in this case is a tank, and Bond proceeds to demolish most of St. Petersburg while he's pursuing Ourumov. I can't really say that this chase is suspenseful. Since Bond is driving around in a tank, he's certainly not in any personal danger. The set design during this whole sequence is fantastic, however. When I saw it in the theaters, I truly wondered whether or not they did demolish parts of some East European city in order to film it. It turns out that they built a mockup of St. Petersburg for the chase, but it is so well done that one is easily fooled. As I've said, the chase doesn't really get the adrenalin pumping because Bond isn't risking life and limb. Still, the devastation unleashed is so convincing that one can't help but be mesmerized by it as it unfolds on screen.
I'm skirting a bunch of explosions during this set piece synopsis because quite frankly they're used as what would be called a running joke if anything about them were funny. The supposed joke is that every vehicle Bond gets in ends up destroyed. Thus he and Simonova escape from the stolen helicopter before it’s destroyed by missiles. Bond destroys the tank by using it to derail Trevelyan's train. Trevelyan imprisons Bond and Simonova in the train and sets it to explode. Finally, the plane that Bond and Simonova are using to look for Trevelyan's base is brought down by a missile. Rather than saying Brosnan's films are action packed, I would argue that given this catalog of destruction they would be better termed busy. There's a lot of running around, a lot of gunfire, a lot of explosions and a lot of motion in general but not much in the way of memorable stunt work. Still at least for this film, the stunt men save the day by capping things off with one of the series best fistfights. After a small grenade disguised as a ballpoint pen initiates a sequence of destruction that culminates in the defeat of Trevelyan's plan, he and Bond come to grips in what looks to be a maintenance room for Trevelyan's satellite dish. This fight is the only good word that can be put in for the decision to make Trevelyan an ex-double-oh as it explains his proficiency at hand-to-hand combat. I'll go on record as loving every second of this struggle. The blocked punches, blows to the kidney, and savage head butts thud across the screen to fantastically visceral effect. It's incredibly well edited too. Even though we can see every blow landed the cuts from the stuntmen stand-ins to the actors themselves is completely seamless. It is perhaps the single best set piece in the Brosnan catalog and really harkens back to the series glory days. The icy coda that sees Bond coldly throwing Trevelyan to his death is just the cherry on the sundae.
When I began this review, I mentioned that Goldeneye has always been a movie that felt wrong in some way to me. It was only after sitting down to write down my thoughts on the film that I was able to clearly put my finger on the source of this feeling. The fact of the matter is that when all is said and done, Goldeneye is a film that should have been made during Roger Moore's tenure. Plot-wise there is nothing inherently more serious or plausible about this film than, for example, A View To A Kill. You can even note the similarities in the form of a megalomaniac with plans of destroying a city, a female assassin/henchman, and a weakly developed female lead. Yet while the outline of the film hews closely to one from Moore's era all the standard moments are given an unfortunate spin. Where Moore would have sauntered into Secret Service headquarters to trade collegial banter with co-workers, Brosnan timidly sneaks in to bitter recriminations. Where Moore would find some lovely inexplicably snogging away with him and give us an archly raised eyebrow to let us know it was all in fun, Brosnan is forced to suffer accusations of hard-heartedness and coldness. Where Moore would taunt his egomaniacal adversary and give the villain a chance to project menace, Brosnan's confrontations end with the villain engaging in weepy discussions of trust and friendship. The unfortunate thing about Goldeneye is that the Moore formula just can't justify the serious and dour digressions on display here. The whole thing simply plays like a Moore film without the fun and laughs. In a way, Goldeneye is analogous to our earlier entry, Never Say Never Again, in the way it brings an unfamiliar take to the usual elements of a Bond film. But Never Say Never Again was a renegade production so its easy to accept the glaring differences and enjoy it for what it is. Since Goldeneye is part of the franchise that's just not possible here. At the end credits scroll, Goldeneye leaves the viewer befuddled and disappointed as if he'd just seen a remake of The Sound Of Music without any singing.
