GoldenEye (1995)

Official trailer

The Dam

GoldenEye opens with a man running along the top of an enormous concrete dam in the Soviet Union and jumping off it. The camera follows him down, seven hundred feet or so, on a bungee cord, and he fires a grappling gun into the concrete at the bottom. It was a real jump, done by a stuntman at the Verzasca Dam in Switzerland, and when audiences saw it in 1995, the series was back.

It needed to be. There hadn’t been a Bond film since Licence to Kill in 1989. Legal fights had frozen the franchise, Timothy Dalton had walked away, the Soviet Union had collapsed and plenty of critics were writing Bond’s obituary. Who needs a Cold War spy with no Cold War?

GoldenEye took that question and made it the plot. Martin Campbell directed, and he’d come back eleven years later to reboot the series again with Casino Royale. He’s the best director the franchise ever had for a new Bond’s first film.

I think GoldenEye is the best rescue job in the history of the franchise. Everybody had Bond buried, and this film digs him up, dusts off the dinner jacket and makes Bond fun again without pretending the world hadn’t changed. It’s a 9 for me, and the only things holding it back are a clanking score and a slow patch in the middle.

Brosnan Fits the Suit

Pierce Brosnan had nearly got the role in 1986 before his television contract pulled him back, and by 1995 he was ready. He’s handsome, witty and effortlessly confident, with enough of Connery’s menace and enough of Moore’s charm to please everybody, and he looks like he was born in a dinner jacket.

He also gives real weight to the quieter scenes. Brosnan’s Bond has regrets. He’s lost friends, he knows the job has cost him, and the film lets him show it on a beach with Natalya, admitting what the job has done to him. The later Brosnan films buried that under gadgets. Here it’s front and center, and he’s excellent.

Sexist, Misogynist Dinosaur

The best scene in the film is a conversation in M’s office. The new M is a woman, played by Judi Dench, and she doesn’t like Bond one bit. She tells him flatly that she thinks he’s a sexist, misogynist dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War. She adds that she won’t hesitate to send him to his death.

It’s the franchise talking to itself. The filmmakers knew exactly what critics were saying about Bond, and they put it in the mouth of his own boss, then spent two hours proving he was still useful. Dench is magnificent. She stayed in the role for seventeen years and seven films, and she owned it from the first scene.

That office scene is my favorite thing in the film. Dench says “dinosaur” like a diagnosis, and Brosnan has the sense to stand there and take it. I’d put that exchange up against anything in the whole series. That kind of self-awareness could have turned the film into a joke. It doesn’t. The film takes the question seriously and answers it with action, character and a villain who’s Bond’s own reflection.

Alec Trevelyan

Sean Bean plays Alec Trevelyan, agent 006 and Bond’s best friend, who appears to die in the opening sequence. Nine years later he turns up alive, scarred and running a criminal syndicate called Janus. His family were Lienz Cossacks, handed back to Stalin by the British after the war and slaughtered, and he’s spent his life planning revenge on the country that betrayed them.

That makes him the best villain of the Brosnan era by a mile. He’s Bond’s equal in every way, he knows all his tricks and he has a real grievance.

The two men’s conversations crackle, because they’re old friends who know exactly how to hurt each other. When Trevelyan asks whether all the vodka martinis ever silence the screams of the men Bond has killed, it hits hard.

Their final fight, on a giant satellite dish in Cuba, is brutal, personal and long, two professionals trying to kill each other with everything they’ve got. That fight is the one I rate highest in the whole series, because Campbell lets it stay ugly and personal. Sean Bean makes you believe 006 has every reason for that grudge, and I wish the later Brosnan films had given Bond an opponent with even half that history.

Xenia Onatopp

Famke Janssen plays Xenia Onatopp, Trevelyan’s henchwoman, an ex-Soviet fighter pilot who kills men by crushing them between her thighs and moans with pleasure while doing it. It’s ridiculous, it’s outrageous, and Janssen plays it with such relish that she walks away with every scene she’s in.

Izabella Scorupco plays Natalya Simonova, a computer programmer who survives a massacre and becomes Bond’s partner. She’s smart, stubborn and not remotely impressed by him, and she does more to save the day than he does. Alan Cumming plays Boris, a smug hacker whose catchphrase is I’m invincible. He isn’t.

The Tank

Somewhere in the middle of the film, Bond steals a Russian army tank and drives it through the streets of St. Petersburg, chasing Ourumov’s car through buildings, over parked cars and through a truck full of Perrier. He straightens his tie on the way. It’s absurd and gleeful and beautifully shot, and nobody watches it without grinning.

It’s also the moment the film announces that Bond can have fun again after the grim Dalton era. The action throughout is excellent: the dam jump, the motorbike off a cliff after a falling plane, the helicopter theft, the tank and the fight on the satellite dish. Campbell stages all of it with real stunts and a clear sense of geography, so you always know who’s where.

That tie adjustment gets the biggest grin out of me. It’s a two-second gag in the middle of a tank rampage, and it tells you more about this Bond than any line of dialogue could.

The Rest

Tina Turner sings the theme, written by Bono and The Edge, and it’s a proper old-fashioned Bond song, big and brassy. Daniel Kleinman designed the title sequence, with women smashing Soviet statues, and he’d do almost every one after it. Éric Serra’s score is the weak link, a clanking, synthesized mess in places, and John Barry fans hated it.

The film also spawned the Nintendo 64 game, and a whole generation played it before they ever saw the movie. That’s a strange legacy for a spy film, and a lucky one, and it kept GoldenEye in people’s heads for decades.

What Holds It Back

The Serra score, the odd dated computer scene and a middle section that slows down in Cuba keep it from a 10. The music is the biggest drag.

The big stunts are crying out for a real Bond cue, Serra keeps handing them tinny synth percussion, and I end up wishing John Barry had come back for one more. Boris gets on your nerves long before he freezes.

GoldenEye took a franchise everybody had written off and made it relevant again, gave Brosnan his best outing and gave the series one of its best villains. The dinosaur walked out of the tar pit just fine.

Craft Note

Is GoldenEye (1995) worth watching?

Yes. It’s a 9, and I’d hand it to anyone who thinks Bond died with the Cold War. Brosnan is at his best, Sean Bean gives the series a villain with a real grievance, Judi Dench owns M from her first scene, and the stunts are real people doing insane things. The point it drops belongs to Éric Serra and that sagging stretch in Cuba. Start with the dam jump and try not to grin.

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