“Staff Picks” is a deeper look into movies that we love here at Video CULTure. Each edition of this column will focus on a single film that we think you should check out, either for the first time or for a long-overdue revisit.
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By Patrick Bartlett (Twitter: @alleywaykrew)
I remember seeing Quentin Tarantino on a talk show in the early 2000s positing an idea for a James Bond reboot. He said he’d start from scratch and adapt “Casino Royale”. He’d keep Pierce Brosnan though. He reasoned that to the current generation, he IS James Bond. It’s true. I was 11 or 12 when I saw “Goldeneye” in the theater, and it was the first time that franchise had completely clicked for me. I grew up with my dad putting Sean Connery on a pedestal as the premiere James Bond while dismissing Roger Moore’s take on the character. I never cared for either all that much at the time. I even tried to watch “Licence To Kill” with my parents when that came out on VHS and I just wasn’t into it, new Bond or no. However, something was different when “Goldeneye” was on the verge of release. Obviously the actor playing Bond was different but everything about the movie just felt fresh and exciting in a way that the series never had to me before that point and I couldn’t wait to see it.
I suppose you cannot talk about the film without first talking about how it happened. Roger Moore had played the role for a sizable chunk of the ’70s before giving it up in the late ’80s. Pierce Brosnan was offered the part but couldn’t schedule it around his TV commitments, so the role went to Timothy Dalton. Neither Dalton nor the films he carried as James Bond were particularly well regarded. Having rewatched them a few years ago, I can see why. One could argue that some of the Moore films were too goofy, but the Dalton movies were really just no fun at all. Even though he is remembered as a less than stellar Bond, it’s really not Dalton’s fault though. He was set up for failure from the jump. Speaking of, it seems apropos to mention that the first scene in “Goldeneye” ostensibly has Brosnan literally leaping headfirst into the role of James Bond. It’s the role he was born to play and a crystallization of the way I’ll always see Bond as a result.
Minutes after we’re introduced to James Bond’s boss, “M” (played so well by Judi Dench that she turned out to be the one major holdover to the James Bond reboot that eventually came to pass without Tarantino), she describes James as “a sexist, misogynist dinosaur” and “a relic of the Cold War”. In a movie filled with meta references, this stands out to me more than anything else. That description is in no way an unfair description of the character. There was an attempt to steer away from it to some extent in the Dalton era but in “Goldeneye”, it’s leaned into in spectacular fashion. This is 1995. Political correctness is becoming more and more of a thing in society and Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond feels like a middle finger to that entire cultural movement in a fascinating way. The character’s behavior is the same as ever and instead of being stuff you roll your eyes at, you can’t help but be taken with Brosnan’s Bond-like the characters are… other than M obviously. On top of that, this is the first Bond film that is not only not based on anything by his creator, Ian Fleming, it’s also the first in a post-Cold War world. How do you do a Cold War-era spy movie in a world past it? You don’t.
The movie opens during said Cold War with 007 on a typical mission with a newly introduced 006, Alec Trevelyan. I’m confident in saying that most people know who Sean Bean is now but the only thing I knew or cared about at the time was that he was playing 006. That was a solid hook. I wasn’t the biggest Bond fan but even I knew that the introduction of 006 was a big deal. Anyway, the mission goes bad. Trevelyan seems to be murdered by Russian military while James narrowly escapes and blows up the Russian facility. Fast forward to 1995 and it turns out that Alec Trevelyan never really died, he just turned his back on God & Country. On top of that, he wants revenge on his old friend for blowing him up. The entire setup is clearly more of an action picture than a spy movie and it’s all the better for it.
Speaking of action, there’s a magnificent set-piece that gives you the other major characters and the titular Goldeneye (the “McGuffin” of the film) before you’re completely out of the first act. Basically, the Russians have developed Goldeneye, which is their answer to Reagan’s Star Wars program. In the simplest terms, a space laser. At the facility where the laser system is housed, you have Alan Cumming’s delightful hacker character of “Boris” and your de rigueur “Bond girl” of Izabella Scorupco’s “Natalya”. They are the only survivors of the taking of Goldeneye by Gottfried John’s Russian general “Ourumov” and Famke Janssen’s “Xenia Onatopp”, the characters who are set up to be the villains of the film before Alec Trevelyan is reintroduced. I feel I should mention that Xenia crushes people to death between her thighs. That bears mentioning. Everyone at the laser facility is seemingly murdered (not by thighs in this particular sequence though) and Goldeneye is stolen. Natalya manages to escape the slaughter and make her way to Bond to help him get Goldeneye back. All of this may seem pretty convoluted but if you watch ’90s action films, it’s par for the course. ’90s action movie villains just loved overcomplicating thievery and murder.
Like any good Bond villain, Trevelyan repeatedly tries to kill Bond in a series of glorious set pieces before enacting his master plan of space laser-related world domination. He repeatedly comes up short which leads to an excellent climax set in Cuba where bad guys are killed in spectacular fashion while James Bond and Natalya look ravishing. As expected, the world is saved before the credits roll. It’s all pretty standard fare to be sure but the way that director Martin Campbell executes it can’t go unmentioned. He does a phenomenal job with the material. This is cinema that’s as much a ’90s action picture as it is an old school spy film. The fact that it manages to almost completely reinvent everything the series was up to that point in a breathlessly exciting way is something that can’t go unrewarded and is likely why Campbell was brought back for the full reboot of “Casino Royale” roughly a decade later.
Everyone has their James Bond. As much as I love Daniel Craig’s take and as iconic as Sean Connery’s is, due to “Goldeneye” and the movies that followed, Pierce Brosnan is James Bond to me. It doesn’t matter that none of the other films he played the character in are nearly as enjoyable. Pierce Brosnan managed to inhabit that character and take him to a level that no one ever had before. It was a mix of the best of Connery’s era of feeling like a legit threat that just happened to be wearing a tuxedo with Roger Moore’s affable charming wit. He’s the best of both iconic worlds. It doesn’t hurt the movie’s legacy that the Nintendo 64 video game adaptation happens to be one of the best of all-time (that’s a whole different topic though) but in the end, the movie would be a landmark achievement regardless. “Goldeneye” is a film that should not work and yet it does wonderfully. It proves that there is always going to be a place in film for James Bond and there always should be.
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