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.
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