A lot was riding on GoldenEye, the 17th official Bond movie, when it was released back in 1995. The Roger Moore era of the series had just sort of limply petered out, and two subsequent installments starring Timothy Dalton failed to move the needle much with general audiences or hardcore fans. Some sort of energized reboot was in order, so Team Bond locked down Pierce Brosnan as 007 (something they had tried to do at least once before) and took six years to build a movie that would re-invigorate the franchise.
Long story short: they pulled it off … and then some. GoldenEye didn't just re-start a box-office juggernaut that's done nothing but gain steam ever since, it's also one of the series' best and defining films. Everyone has their own ideas on what the ratio should be between camp and seriousness when crafting a Bond film, but I'd argue that GoldenEye finds the perfect balance. It's fun and cheeky but also a rousing and successful action picture. Brosnan's Bond is smarmy and always ready with a corny one-liner, but he's also cunning and intelligent. Not so much the "blunt instrument" as Daniel Craig plays him, but more a precision tool. Everyone wanted Brosnan to play Bond, and it turns out, everyone was right to do so.
Past him, everything else is wonderful too. Start where the movie does, with the infiltration of a Soviet chemical-weapons facility that's still my favorite Bond opening sequence to this day. Director Martin Campbell perfectly nails every shot, beginning with Bond bungee-jumping off a dam and ending with him driving a motorcycle off a cliff before leaping from it to free-fall toward a pilotless plane. It's great stuff, and Campbell has a blast orchestrating it. (Consider the way he slowly introduces us to Brosnan as Bond, purposefully not showing us his face until the best possible moment.) The sequence also introduces Sean Bean as Alec Trevelyn, aka 006. He's shot and killed early on, and if the film came out today we'd all be waiting for him to pop back up later in the movie because you don't cast Sean Bean and kill him in the first reel. (You kill him later on, of course!) But back in '95, it was a nifty surprise when Trevelyn turns out to be very much not dead and, in fact, the movie's big villain … although not its best.
That honor goes Famke Janssen, playing BOND GIRL FOR THE AGES Xenia Onatopp. It is impossible to oversell how fantastic Janssen is in GoldenEye. A Russian agent serving at Trevelyn's side, Onatopp spends the whole movie orgasmically aroused by all the violence and mayhem going on around her, regardless of whether she's causing it or just bearing witness. To her, sex and murder are interchangeable, and Janssen, looking radiant and crazed, holds nothing back playing the part. There's a scene where Onatopp and Trevelyn are on board a train that Bond is about fire a tank cannon into head-on. "He's going to derail us," Jannsen coos, possibly seconds from death but still unable to control how damn turned on she is by the whole predicament. If there's a better line reading in a Bond film, I'd like to see it. I actually feel bad for poor Izabella Scorupco, tasked with playing the boring, "good" Bond girl in the same movie where Jannsen is absolutely torching the place to the ground.
To be fair, not everything holds up as well as Jannsen's performance. GoldenEye was released right around the time the Internet was starting to become a thing, and the movie has a number of embarrasing and antiquated bits based around such mind-blowing concepts as password protection and email! (Swear to god, there's a scene where Alan Cumming's obnoxious hacker is informed by this massive signal alert that he has an incoming electronic message.) There's also some typical dumb action-movie shit, like the fact that Trevelyn has a million opportunities to just shoot Bond in the head but instead keeps coming up with elaborate and easily escapable kill traps, such as putting him in a helicopter and then programming the helicopter to fire missiles upon itself. Additionally, there's the matter of Brosnan's helmet hair. Though this is his best Bond movie by a mile, it might be his worst Bond haircut.
Still, let's not gloss over the fact that GoldenEye is a film that manages a compelling and supremely suspenseful sequence based entirely on the clicking of a pen. We also get a brand new M in Judi Dench, who's constantly calling Bond on his bullshit. ("I think you're a sexist, misogynist dinosaur," she barks at him to the delight of the audience. There's a reason she owned the role for the next 17 years, even when the series partially rebooted again.) At times, this is a very smart Bond film. Campbell would later come back to the series to direct Casino Royale, another one of my favorite Bond flicks, and I don't know if there's ever been anyone who better understands what makes these pictures work. (You might argue for Sam Mendes. I would respectfully disagree.) Everyone always talks about that moment in Skyfall where Craig's Bond adjusts his cuff links, and I'm always quick to point out that Brosnan pulled a similar move first, when he oh-so-casually straightens his tie while he's in the middle of tearing apart St. Petersburg with a tank.
Now that's a Bond who's cool under pressure.
Also, not that it really has anything to do with the ultimate quality of the actual movie, but, you know, THIS …
