James Bond 007: GoldenEye (1995)

James Bond 007: GoldenEye: Directed by Martin Campbell. With Pierce Brosnan, Sean Bean, Izabella Scorupco, Famke Janssen. Years after a friend and fellow 00 agent is killed on a joint mission, a secret space based weapons program known as “GoldenEye” is stolen. James Bond sets out to stop a Russian crime syndicate from using the weapon.

“The James Bond franchise, in cinematic terms, began in 1962 with Dr No. There followed a Bond movie every couple of years or so (the longest gap between two 007 films was the three-year-hiatus separating The Man With The Golden Gun – 1974 – and The Spy Who Loved Me – 1977). Then, in 1989, with the release of Licence To Kill the series seemed to die. The box office returns of that film were disappointing; the then-Bond actor Timothy Dalton was axed; the film itself was presented in a grittier, more adult style than fans were accustomed to; and various legal wranglings put the Bond character into limbo. Six long years went by without a Bond movie and many insiders predicted an end for the British super-spy and his outrageous screen adventures. Too much time had gone by, they said, no-one was interested any longer in the character or the stories. But then Goldeneye came along, with Pierce Brosnan as Bond – it went on to become a commercial hit, propelling its star into the A-list and reinvigorating the entire series.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eJames Bond (Pierce Brosnan) and his secret agent colleague Alec Trevelyan (Sean Bean) infiltrate a Russian military installation on a sabotage mission. During the mission, Alec is apparently killed by the enemy forces but Bond manages a miraculous escape. Several years later, a state-of-the-art helicopter is stolen from the West by some Russian spies and used to destroy a Siberian satellite station. When Bond investigates, he discovers to his surprise that the plot involves his old colleague Alec – who is very much alive, having faked his death in the earlier exchange. Trevelyanu0026#39;s plan is to get control of a powerful satellite called the Goldeneye and to use it to destroy a designated target on Earth – in this case, London. It emerges that his parents were Liensk Cossacks, brutally killed by the British when he was a boy, and he has long plotted a way to have his revenge. Bond teams up with a Russian computer programmer, Natalya Semyonova (Isabella Scorupco) and pursues Trevelyan around the globe in an effort to stop his sinister scheme. The trail leads to Cuba, where Trevelyan has a secret lair from which he is on the very brink of unleashing chaos upon the world…. unless 007 can find a way to thwart him.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eGoldeneye begins with a truly outrageous stunt involving Bond freefalling in pursuit of an unpiloted, plummeting airplane. This dumb but enjoyable scene sets the tone for the rest of the film – very much a tongue-in-cheek, improbable, action-orientated romp. Brosnan is OK as Bond, though I still feel Sean Connery and Roger Moore were slightly better suited to the role. Tina Turneru0026#39;s powerful theme song is very good, but the incidental scoring by Eric Serra has a tinny, tacky feel to it that makes one long for John Barry! As the bad guy, Sean Bean is effective enough even if he never quite matches the memorableness of the all-time great Bond villains (eg Dr No, Oddjob, Blofeld, Francisco Scaramanga). The Bond girls are very good in this one – Scorupco plays a pleasingly resourceful character, while Famke Janssen has great fun as a female baddie who crushes victims between her thighs. Goldeneye is by no means the best of the Bond series, but one has to be thankful to it for getting the dormant series up and running once more. And, in its pacy, breakneck way, it is undeniably a lot of fun.”