GoldenEye

GoldenEye is still the best Bond movie by far (ok, I haven’t seen all of them but I feel very confident in that statement).  It relies less on gadgetry, the plot is fairly simple once you know what’s going on, Pierce Brosnan (Nomads) steps into the 007 role effortlessly and the action sequences are staged and shot better than normal for this series.

For example the car chase that takes place right after the credits is really exciting.  Initially it’s pretty fuckin’ weird because there’s no context to it.  This is where the number two villain is introduced (Famke Janssen (Deep Rising)) but we don’t know why her and Bond are racing each other on a highly dangerous curvy European mountain road.  James is cruising along and she simply pulls up out of the blue.  But the near misses, spin outs and obstacles thrown in their paths are all fun as hell so it wins you over quickly.  Plus it’s got a ridiculous but amazing fucking tune throughout the sequence.  Check this shit out.

You can tell the filmmakers were chomping at the bit to do some off the wall action and they definitely delivered.  There’s another car chase later in the movie but this time Bond uses a tank (!) to pursue the bad guy causing an unbelievable amount of destruction.  And there’s also the nuts opener where James drives a motorcycle off a cliff to catch up to a nose diving plane so he can get inside and fly away in it.  This might be the most impossible stunt to accept but it’s so outrageous I can’t blame these guys for including it.

The shift in tone from the previous Timothy Dalton installments is an appreciated change as well.  Those tried so hard to be so goddamn serious that they sucked all the amusement out.  That version of James Bond is bitter as fuck and angry as hell.  Sounds kinda cool on paper but it just doesn’t work making those films a bit of a slog to sit through.  GoldenEye lightens the characters up the perfect amount to where you actually enjoy spending time with them.  I even laughed out loud at two comic relief moments.

Despite the above, and I’ve said this before, I’m not a huge fan of the series.  Most of the films are too silly for me to get behind with a desperate dependence on gadgets as a tremendous crutch.  Plus I have a lot of issues with James himself.  He’s a smug misogynist womanizer who’s not all that good at his job.  Everyone knows who he is eliminating any meaningful subversion and he always resorts to brute force to solve his problems instead of you know, being a sneaky covert spy.  In short he’s an obnoxious asshole.  And not an entertaining asshole who you love to hate either.  Fuck this character.

But if you’re gonna see one James Bond pic this is it.

The last thing I’ll mention is there was a mini trend during the 90’s of using satellites as weapons.  Under Siege 2: Dark Territory had a satellite that fired a straight up laser beam to destroy shit but Escape from L.A. may have stolen the plot from GoldenEye.  Both use a satellite to deactivate all electronic equipment causing a different sort of destruction and each reference how implementing the weapon will turn back the clock to the stone age.  Coincidence?  Maybe.