GoldenEye is my favourite Brosnan Bond movie- mind you, that is not saying much, since I was bored to death by the last three.
GoldenEye is a movie that wants to be liked, perhaps desperately, and it was released at a time when people where ready to really like another Bond movie. The producers definitely struck a chord with their nostalgic audience, rehashing elements from movies like
Goldfinger and giving those an ironic, self-reflexive slant (the haystack tumble with Pussy becomes a kinky sauna brawl with Xenia, the reckless Aston Martin chasing of Tilly is rethought as a chase in which Bond's reckless behavior is analyzed by a female psychologist). Yes, the movie was a little desperate in reaching out to its audience, and got overcooked in the process: I was never really fond of Cumming's Boris Grishenko, he's a patsy that only serves for broad putdowns, like the Sheriff Pepper character from
LALD and
TMWTGG; the killing-by-thighs of lucky old Admiral Farrell was too much of a nod to 1990s erotic thriller kinkiness, and it never really worked, no matter how many times they reshot it; Bond wrecking half of St. Petersburg with a tank was simply too much (and it set the standard for the 'property destruction' with which the action scenes in the Brosnan era have strangely become synonimous); the Q scene owed more to
The Naked Gun than to Bond, with Brosnan even likening it to 'a John Cleese farce' in
The Making of GoldenEye- a self-fullfilling prophecy? And then there's those little things that make me cringe everytime, like Jack Wade's 'okay, showtime'.
But from a technical point of view,
GoldenEye delivered. Martin Campbell is strictly style-over-substance, but he displayed a raw instinct for the material. The shots, and therefore the film, really 'moved', thanks to the efforts of editor Terry Rawlings, and despite the reliance on close-ups that scale down the proceedings somewhat. The lighting by DoP Phil Meheux was warm and atmospheric, even lending some exotism to otherwise mundane locations (much of Russia was shot in England, and I also believe the Cuban jungle scenes were studio work). Monte Carlo and its casino were gloriously used, avenging the rather dreary appearance of the city and its main attraction in rival production
NSNA. I adored the entire Monte Carlo sequence, right up to the theft of the Tiger helicopter and Bond arriving too late at the scene of the crime. Some of my other favourite sequences were the questioning scene with Minister Mishkin, and the tense confrontations between Bond and 006- first in Statue Park, then on the missile train.
Simon Crane did great stunt duties on
GoldenEye: in my opinion, Brosnan never fought better as he did in the final punch-up with 006. Because of Crane's tight cooperation with Campbell, Meheux and Rawlings, even the smaller action sequences looked dangerous and impressive. The BMW was a letdown of course, especially since none of its much-vaunted tricks were used, but it didn't really matter to me, since I personally don't consider the gadgets to be the essence of Bond, as some do.
Brosnan himself was, well, mostly all right. His popping up in a Soviet loo was fitting for a Roger Moorish don't-take-me-seriously attitude to the Bond character, but it wasn't really followed through, despite Brosnan's smooth handling of some less than witty one-liners. From the start, Brosnan was supposed to be 'The Hybrid', the man who had it all- but offered nothing new. Being hailed as a small-screen Cary Grant in the early 1980s, he had suffered from an almost unreasonable amount of identification with the Bond role since 1986. As I said in an earlier post,
GoldenEye tricked me into mistaking Brosnan's lack of expression for admirable minimalism, and therefore into believing Brosnan could grow into a plausible movie Bond. What struck me most about him in
GoldenEye was the absurdity, or perhaps the abstraction of his Bond- a lean, overdressed traditionalist, like a quill in the age of Microsoft, quite the 'stiff-
Brit' that Jack Wade describes -but also the fact that he was more an object of desire than his Bond girls. Brosnan even had a gratuitous semi-nude scene in the sauna, which was probably staged as a special gesture towards the female viewer, another example of the makers inverting Bond movie laws. Here, the producers immediately and smartly exploited Brosnan's one (and perhaps only) real item of star quality: he is a terrific, unblinking poster boy.
Sean Bean was, in my opinion, the best villain of the Brosnan era, playing Iago to Bond's... Othello? As 006, Bean was physically imposing, arrogant and sarcastic, with a hint of hurt pride; a believable man, and yet an evil bastard beyond redemption. Far better than the pathetic Woody Allen / Jimmy Bond type character that Jonathan Pryce got stuck with in
TND ('Not to me! Not to me!'), the wasted opportunity of Renard and his potential for terror and violence in
TWINE, or the less than sure ham job of evil frat boy Toby Stephens in
DAD. And of course there was Famke Janssen as Xenia, who lit up the screen and managed to be really feisty and violent. As in
TLD, the 'main girl' was an Eastern-European wallflower, but Izabella Scorupco milked the part for all its worth. M and Miss Moneypenny were splendidly recast. And while I value the John Barry scores from the early years of Bond above all (to me, they make up 50 % of those movies), I thought Eric Serra's 'industrial' score lent the proceedings a welcome dark edge, especially during the pre-titles sequence.
So, all in all,
GoldenEye is a very mixed bag to me, much like
Octopussy was in 1983. If one says it belongs in the top 5 of Bond movies, one probably overrates it; the top ten, well, perhaps. My viewing experience will always be coloured by the thrilling 'Bond is Back Vibe' I got when I first saw it in the cinema. In a way,
GoldenEye's success could never be really repeated, since its greatest achievement was in the way it walked the fine line between autodeconstruction and hommage- I hope the overhaul of
Casino Royale will really shake up the Bond series and finally secure an interesting and authentic future for our hero.
Edited by Lounge Lizard, 04 November 2005 - 11:39 PM.
