GoldenEye

reviewed by Dave

GoldenEye is not the first Bond movie I saw at a theater, but it is the first good Bond movie I saw at a theater.

I grew up watching the old Roger Moore films on TV, but my first big screen experience with Bond was the terrible License to Kill flick with Timothy Dalton. Who thought Timothy Dalton belonged in this franchise? I was just old enough to get to see this movie with the adults while my sister and cousins went to see Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. I'm not really sure who saw the better movie that day.

Anyway, after a six-year hiatus, a new Bond film was finally coming out, and I was excited to see it. After the bad Timothy Dalton movies, the franchise had a lot riding on Pierce Brosnan and GoldenEye. Fortunately, the film delivered.

Looking back on the movie now, it's become almost inseparable in my mind from the hit Nintendo 64 game. Some of my best videogame memories are playing that game with Jaime, Michelle and Jason, and while watching GoldenEye recently, I was surprised by how well the game mimics even the layout of some of the buildings.

So I do have an admitted fondness for GoldenEye, and maybe that's helped a little by the game, but I really think the movie holds up quite well on its own, largely because it so successfully follows yet updates the classic Bond formula.

With the possible exception of Die Another Day, Brosnan's Bond hasn't had very good villains since GoldenEye. Media magnate Elliot Carver from Tomorrow Never Dies was dorky and played way too over-the-top. And that Renard guy from The World is Not Enough looked way too much like Moby to be viewed as a real threat.

But in GoldenEye, Bond faces the perfect bad guy. While it certainly helps that a decent actor was cast to play the villain (Sean Bean, also seen in Lord of the Rings), his background is what is wonderfully intriguing. What would happen if one of Bond's fellow agents went bad?

The Bond women in GoldenEye are quite good, and I really like that these were (and arguably still are) more or less unknown actresses. Maybe that's why they don't seem to just walk through their scenes like Denise Richards and Halle Berry do.

But what really makes GoldenEye work is Brosnan himself. This is the role he was born to play, and while he may have his detractors, I personally think he outdoes even Sean Connery as Bond. Brosnan exudes a cool classiness with flashes of a hard edge, and though you can see echoes of the other Bonds in his interpretation of the role, he ultimately makes it his own.

A final thumbs up needs to be directed to Director Martin Campbell. He really handled the franchise well, and I wish he had been at the helm of more than one of Brosnan's outings. Campbell, by the way, went on to direct The Mask of Zorro, one of the best action movies ever made.

Is GoldenEye perfect? Not quite. As always, character development takes a back seat in these movies. I would have liked to see a little more of 006. I would have liked to see much less of Boris Grishenko (Alan Cumming of Spy Kids). He really doesn't serve much purpose in the movie, other than to annoy me. The comic relief his character is supposed to provide just doesn't work with me. Also, I think the title song is okay, but Tina Turner shouldn't have been singing it.

But other than a few small flaws, GoldenEye really is about the best a Bond movie can be. If you're a fan of the series, no doubt you've already seen this one. If you haven't, you owe it to yourself to check out GoldenEye. Though almost eight years old, it holds up very well, and I think it's one of the Bond films most likely to make new fans of the franchise.