Bond-arama: No. 0012 Goldeneye (1995)

From hereon out, the films are all pretty good and the competition gets stiffer, and that makes this the perfect place to put Goldeneye. Goldeneye is the best of the Pierce Brosnan James Bond films. It’s a complete film with an engaging plot, a decent villain made better by the actor, some nice cinematography, and some good action. It does have some problems, but it’s worthy of being ranked No. 0012 of 0023.

Plot Quality: As a film, this one is pretty decent. The film begins with Bond and Agent 006 Alec Trevelyan (Sean Bean) breaking into a Soviet chemical weapons plant to blow it up. Alec is caught and a gun is held to his head by Colonel Arkady Ourumov in an attempt to get Bond to surrender. Of course, it doesn’t happen that way. Ourumov shoots Alec, Bond shoots his way out and blows up the plant, and Bond escapes in an impossible to believe airplane stunt.

Nine years later, Bond is following Xenia Onatopp, a Russian woman suspected of being part of a crime syndicate. She murders a Canadian admiral and steals a prototype Eurocopter which can withstand an electromagnetic pulse. Xenia takes the chopper to Severnaya, where the Russians put the control center of a satellite weapon called GoldenEye, which just happens to fire an electromagnetic pulse. This facility is under the command of now-Gen. Ourumov, who is commander of Russia’s Space Division. In reality, however, Ourumov works for the crime syndicate. Thus, when Onatopp arrives, she, Ourumov and a traitor computer programmer named Boris Grishenko massacre the staff and fire the weapon at the facility. This causes everyone to think the ability to control the satellite has been lost. They then escape in the chopper, which isn’t damaged by the EMP blast.

Bond, of course, quickly realizes that this was a setup and they identify a survivor, Natalya Simonova. He is sent to St. Petersburg to investigate. There he fights with Onatopp and discovers that Alec faked his death because he had some Rube Goldberg plan to get revenge against Britain for the death of his parents during World War II. Bond escapes and ends up racing a Russian T-55 tank through the streets. Bond then learns that there is a second satellite facility in Cuba. He and Simonova go to Cuba where they fight Alec and Boris to the death and save the day.

All told, the film is nicely shot. The travelogue feel is back. There are some good moments of humor. The fight scenes are excellent and the finale is up to the level one expects from a Bond movie. Joe Don Baker plays a surprisingly likable CIA character, Jack Wade. And the tank chase through St. Petersburg is really top notch.

Bond Quality: This is Brosnan’s first outing as Bond and he’s not horrible. He’s not great either. What keeps him from really being a great Bond is that the writers injected a morose element into the character; this is not a Bond who ever enjoys himself and that makes this film feel darker than it should. Another part of the problem is that Brosnan doesn’t project as a cold-blooded killer, particularly as his character is bereft of joy, and his cold-blooded lines don’t work. Brosnan would improve with each film as Bond, though sadly his scripts tended to get worse at the same rate. Still, he was an improvement of dour Timmy Dalton and the aging Dame Roger Moore.

The Bond Girl: The Bond girl was Izabella Scorupco as Natalya Simonova, a computer programmer and the only survivor of the attack on the GoldenEye facility. She knows the system hasn’t really been destroyed and she saw the villains behind the attack. As Bond girls go, she’s cute, but bland. She fits the Bond-as-depressed-monogamist theme that the producers were trumpeting at the time as their response to the AIDS epidemic. She also shows some feminism, which was something else the producers tried to inject into the film. Unfortunately, most of the scenes involving her amount to padding.

The other Bond girl, who is more of a henchman, is Famke Janssen as Xenia Onatopp. She’s an over-the-top sex fiend and killer. Janssen is a quality actress and she adds some life to the film. She particularly manages to liven up Brosnan during a scene in a steam bath, so she definitely adds value to the film. She is a bit “too much,” especially for such an otherwise staid film, but she works.

Villain Quality: There are technically two villains here. The first is Gen. Ourumov, who is the commander of Russia’s Space Division. He is also secretly an agent of the crime syndicate Janus, who run a huge mutual fund. There isn’t much to him because aside from betraying the Russian government, he’s basically just a henchman for the syndicate, which is run by Alec. There are problems with his character, like how he ever got involved in this in the first place and what his motives are: he kind of implies a nationalist motive when confronted by the Minister of Defense (Tchéky Karyo), but his real motive is probably more like money. But since he isn’t really the focus, you can overlook that and just go with it.

The real villain is Alec. Alec begins the film as 006 and a friend of James Bond. But then Bond learns that Alec lived through the mission on which he appeared to die. In fact, he faked his death. Why? Well, Alec’s motive at first appears to be revenge against the British. But upon closer inspection, Bond learns that Alec’s real goal is to steal money from the Bank of England before erasing all their financial records by blasting Britain with an EMP blast. This will cover up the theft and ruin Britain’s economy in the process.

If you don’t use your brain, then this is a decent motive and plan. Alec seems cold-blooded enough to really do the damage he’s threatening. His plan is well above the level of a common theft, so it is worthy of James Bond, and there is a strange revenge element, which gives the story a bit more heart. Add to this that Sean Bean does an excellent job in terms of displaying menace and hatred of Bond and Britain, and the whole character does manage to come alive as a real threat. That makes him a decent villain and the film enjoyable.

Unfortunately, there is some silliness here. By tying Alec, the crime syndicate, the GoldenEye device and Alec faking his death together, you end up with a plan that feels like Alec set it up before he would even have known the GoldenEye existed or that his Colonel buddy would have been promoted to become the head of Russia’s Space Division. It also makes you wonder how MI-6 didn’t realize that their own 006 was running this massive crime syndicate which apparently had tentacles deep into the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. They would have been better off leaving out the opening scene. Still, you can overlook this because it just muddies things, it doesn’t actually make the film nonsense.

What really lifts Alec above the writing, however, was Sean Bean who is an excellent actor. He has a way of coming across as likable, interesting, and yet menacing all at once, and it feels like his rage at Bond is real in this film. That helps you buy into the character in ways that many Bond villain actors simply aren’t able to achieve. Indeed, too often, Bond villain actors feel like they are phoning in their roles, but Bean is the first to make you feel like he really got his hands dirty and really, really means it. It helped that he and Brosnan had excellent chemistry too as friends turned against each other.

In the end, this is a solid enjoyable movie that is definitely better than its screenplay because of solid acting by a few talented actors, a couple of great images like the EMP pulse blasting the Severnaya facility and the tank chase, and solid cinematography which brought places like St. Petersburg to life. All of this makes for a high rating. Unfortunately, these positives are also weighed down by Brosnan not feeling like Bond yet, particularly as the writers made him morose, and the overall scheme never feeling like much of a threat because it wasn’t fully developed how this would hurt people in the audience... some bank records vanish, big whoop -- they should have really talked about electric grids, food distribution, loss of data, etc., but they didn’t. Hence, while this one is good, it’s not good enough to beat the competition. Ergo, we rank this one No. 0012 of 0023.