Goldeneye

A lot in the world changed in the years between Licence to Kill and Goldeneye, the most significant event being the fall of the Berlin Wall. Combine this with the seemingly immortal legal fights surrounding the Bond series, and Timothy Dalton unwilling to come back to the role if it meant signing up for several more films, and the series yet again found itself at a crossroads to make an impact and strive for relevance. 

With Dalton out, the search was on yet again for a new Bond, and some familiar names were touted again, including Mel Gibson, as well as new names including Hugh Grant (I can almost see it - although I also learnt this week that he was the studios choice for Hannibal in the tv series!) and Liam Neeson. However, it was second time lucky for Pierce Brosnan, who having fallen afoul of his previous TV contract managed to seize the role. 

Brosnan tenure as Bond is often difficult to describe, as unlike his predecessor and successor, it is hard to identify a unique element in his portrayal. By this, I simply mean that if you mention Roger Moore you immediately go to comedic, or Daniel Craig you think brutish. For Brosnan, there is no easy moniker to attach to his style, other than perhaps effortless. This is because his run at the super-spy never aims to reinvent the wheel, and instead simply updates the genre to the 90s. And Brosnan does so with easy grace and charm. Again, unlike his predecessors, there isn't a single area that he is weak in (although conversely you can argue he also neither knocks it out of the park either). He's charming, throws himself into the action, and can handle the one liners with a winning grin. 

The plot of Goldeneye also ticks all the prerequisites of a Bond film, but smartly updates it for a more modern audience. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent geopolitical landscape forms the background to the conflict, and also allows the film to keep one foot in the past. Goldeneye is still a globetrotting epic, but by having Russia loom large over the plot, we get Bond in locales that wouldn't be out of place in classic Bond - St Petersburg, and Cuba, giving you urban espionage and tropical island mystery. 

Perhaps the most modern innovations of the series are in how its female characters are treated. Most successful of the trio of females in the film is the new M, icily played by Judi Dench (the gender switch likely inspired by the real life appointment of Stella Rimmington as the first female director of MI5 in 1992). The switch from the male M to female is probably the most inspired choice in the film, maybe even the series, and Judi Dench became a staple of the series, bowing out at her high point in Skyfall. With this new M, the series starts to give a more serious look at critiquing the character of Bond, and James is never so successfully skewered as he is by M's withering put down by calling him a "sexist, misogynist dinosaur." The new Moneypenny, played by the appropriately named Samantha Bond, even gets to call out Bond's come ons as workplace harassment. 

Bond is also kept in check by the principal female lead of Natalya Simonova, played by Izabella Scorupco. Continuing the gradual trend of female leads in the series, Natalya is highly competent in her field, namely high level computer programming, and it is this skill that Bond lacks which makes her invaluable to the mission. However, what is unusual for this role in the series is that we spend an unusual amount of time with her at the start of the film, particularly so around her survival of the attack on the Severnaya outpost. This gives significant weight to a character that in previous films we would simply be told about her backstory, rather than experiencing it. She also shows significant grit and attitude in the face of not only the villains but Bond, chiding him for macho nonsense during an interrogation, and questioning his very narrow view of morality. Perhaps it is her lack of classic Bond absurdities which makes her a forgotten gem in the series, but she is a proper character, who you would believe would simply outgrow the need for Bond and his antics. 

Opposite Natalya is a female lead that very much appears as a turbo powered throwback to classic villainy - Famke Janssen's Xenia Onatopp which just about errr crushes all opposition in her way. Xenia easily managed to sit in the upper echelon of Bond villains, with a winningly sadistic streak and gimmick - she is a sexual sadist, taking great pleasure in gunning down innocents or simply by her chosen method of execution: crushing her victims with her thighs during sex. Famke lights up the screen whenever she struts into a scene, and it is a shame that her presence slightly diminishes from the halfway point but she nevertheless leaves her mark. 

Perhaps it is inevitable that Onatopp has to fade into the background when the true villain of the piece reveals his face - 006, Alec Trevelyan turned traitor, played by Sean Bean. In a first for the series, we actually get a good look at Bond working alongside a fellow 00 agent in the fantastic pre-credit scene. Of course, because 006 is played by Sean Bean, he gets to have a quick fake death at the start before resurfacing as primary villain at the midpoint. He reveals himself, cloaked in shadow, in a graveyard of abandoned Soviet propaganda, and gives a first class villain speech to a emotionally wounded Bond. We also get the rare occasion where Bond and the primary villain actually engage in armed combat, as most masterminds in the series will do everything they can to avoid getting into a punch up with the superspy. Their beat down at the dish "cradle" (N64 Goldeney fans known the name) is a series highlight, properly brutal and thrilling, it wouldn't be out of place in one of Craig's films. Bean also gets a wonderfully over the top death - being dropped from the cradle, surviving the fall, only to have the structure fall down on him. 

It is kind of hard to find faults in Goldeneye, other than perhaps under-utilising Xenia in the second half, and a personal angle to Trevelyan's plot that doesn't really add much. There is also Boris Grishenko, as a computer programmer working for the villains, and his comedic stylings may grate (although his death scene is a stone cold classic). 

There is simply so much to love about Goldeneye, so much that I would struggle to fit them all into this review (Robbie Coltrane as Valentin Zukovsky, a rogueish figure from Bond's past who would appear again in The World is Not Enough, some top tier banter in Q labs between Bond and Q "DON'T TOUCH THAT! That's my lunch!") The action scenes are winners all around, including another series highlight, being the extended tank chase in Moscow. And at the centre of this storm, is Pierce Brosnan, somehow ticking every single box needed to be a classic Bond - and in his first outing as well. A gem in the series, that deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Goldfinger.