9 / 10
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 the studio audience 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.
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 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.
For Writers
M calls Bond a sexist, misogynist dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War. The filmmakers put the audience’s doubts about their hero into the mouth of his boss, then spent the film answering them.
If you know readers will doubt your premise or your hero, say it on the page. Give the objection to a character, preferably a sharp one, and let them say it out loud. Readers relax when they see you know what they’re thinking. Then prove the objection wrong through what your hero does, never through what they say. Arguing back in dialogue sounds defensive. Action settles it.
This works for memoir too. If you know readers will think you were foolish at some point in your life, say so before they do. You’ll earn their trust, and they’ll follow you anywhere after that.
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 genuine 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 lands.
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.
For Writers
Trevelyan is Bond’s best friend, trained the same way, with a real grievance. The villain is what Bond might have become.
The best antagonists mirror the protagonist. Give your villain the same skills, the same history, maybe the same wound, and let one choice separate them. Every confrontation then becomes an argument about that choice, and the reader keeps wondering whether the hero could have ended up on the other side. That doubt is worth more than any number of henchmen, and it gives your final confrontation a meaning beyond who wins the fight.
Write your villain’s backstory as carefully as your hero’s. If you can’t explain why they turned, the reader won’t believe they did. I’ve gone into this further in my piece on why villain motivations fall apart.
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.
For Writers
The tank chase is funny, absurd and exciting at once, and Bond straightens his tie on the way through. One gesture tells you everything about his confidence.
Go through your action scenes and find the one moment where your hero would do something only they would do. If there isn’t one, write it.
Action scenes need character, or they’re just noise. Find one small gesture that shows who your hero is in the middle of the chaos: a joke, a habit, a moment of kindness or vanity. Readers remember the gesture long after they’ve forgotten the choreography. It also gives your action scene a rhythm, a beat of calm inside the storm, and that beat makes the chaos around it feel faster. Action Writers’ Phrase Book goes into this in detail.
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, synthesised 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 perfect score. 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
Craft Note
GoldenEye faced the question every long-running series eventually faces: why does this hero still matter? It answered by building the question into the story, from M’s speech to a villain who embodies Bond’s own past.
When a series or a character is in danger of feeling outdated, don’t hide from it. Make it the conflict. The doubt becomes drama, and answering it gives the story its purpose.
Write down the strongest argument that your hero or your premise is out of date. Give it to a character, and build your plot around proving it wrong.
Back From the Tar Pit
Yes. It’s a 9: the film that saved Bond, with Pierce Brosnan at his best, Sean Bean’s excellent 006, Judi Dench’s first M and a string of real, jaw-dropping stunts. Start with the dam jump and try not to grin.
Frequently Asked Questions
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