robyn millarReview of GoldenEye
December 7th 2006 03:01
GoldenEye (1995)
Directed: Martin Campbell
Based on the Characters by: Ian Fleming
Written by: Michael France, Jeffrey Caine, Bruce Feirstein
Pierce Brosnan, Sean Bean, Izabella Scorupco, Famke Janssen, Judi Dench, Robbie Coltrane, Alan Cumming, Desmond Llewelyn
Non-Blond James Bond
The highly anticipated new Bond movie Casino Royale comes out this week in my part of the world, and I for one am hanging out to see it. And so I decided, in a salute to the incoming Bond Daniel Craig, that I would check in with how his immediate predecessor wore the famous black suit and tie.
GoldenEye was the first in Pierce Brosnan’s attempt at the role and the first of what can be called the modern era Bond films, it spawned three others (Tomorrow Never Dies, The World is Not Enough and Die Another Day), before Brosnan finally decided to pass on the mantle.
There's an argument to say that if you’ve seen one Bond film, then you’ve seen them all, and certainly GoldenEye contains nothing that hasn’t been seen before. Here are all the old clichés - the girls, the fast cars, the gadgets, the impossible stunts and, not least, the corny innuendoes – it’s all there and all wonderfully unchanged from the incredibly sexist Sean Connery films of the sixties, but then, as M says in the film, Bond is something of a dinosaur.
Admittedly 007 is not everybody’s cup of tea. Feminists and physicists will be equally dismayed by the unlikely scenarios, apparently irresistible sexual magnetism and frankly ridiculous plot but in some ways that’s not the point. No one, least of all the producers has ever said that you’re meant to take it seriously. Bond is what he has always been, a male fantasy brought to life, and watching the films is not so much a willing suspension of disbelieve as a joyful flight into the realm of a particularly adventurous imagination.
If therefore, it is measured as an ordinary film, it is necessarily a complete failure, the plot is foolish in the extreme, the characters unbelievable and the situations impossible, judged as a Bond film however, it actually isn’t too bad. Brosnan is a capable Bond (indeed it’s the only type of character he has ever been able to play with conviction), the lessor characters are well cast (Judi Dench as M is a stroke of genius, and Desmond Llewelyn a legend in his own right), the Bond girls are as laughably bad as always (Famke Janssen’s hysterically hyperbolic Russian accent very nearly steals the show), and the bad guys (principally Bean, Coltrane, and Cummings) all know what they are doing, acting as both comic relief and cannon fodder.
Mindless, middling, and somewhat moronic, but not a bad way to spend an hour and a half.
7/10
Directed: Martin Campbell
Based on the Characters by: Ian Fleming
Written by: Michael France, Jeffrey Caine, Bruce Feirstein
Pierce Brosnan, Sean Bean, Izabella Scorupco, Famke Janssen, Judi Dench, Robbie Coltrane, Alan Cumming, Desmond Llewelyn
Non-Blond James Bond
The highly anticipated new Bond movie Casino Royale comes out this week in my part of the world, and I for one am hanging out to see it. And so I decided, in a salute to the incoming Bond Daniel Craig, that I would check in with how his immediate predecessor wore the famous black suit and tie.
GoldenEye was the first in Pierce Brosnan’s attempt at the role and the first of what can be called the modern era Bond films, it spawned three others (Tomorrow Never Dies, The World is Not Enough and Die Another Day), before Brosnan finally decided to pass on the mantle.
There's an argument to say that if you’ve seen one Bond film, then you’ve seen them all, and certainly GoldenEye contains nothing that hasn’t been seen before. Here are all the old clichés - the girls, the fast cars, the gadgets, the impossible stunts and, not least, the corny innuendoes – it’s all there and all wonderfully unchanged from the incredibly sexist Sean Connery films of the sixties, but then, as M says in the film, Bond is something of a dinosaur.
Admittedly 007 is not everybody’s cup of tea. Feminists and physicists will be equally dismayed by the unlikely scenarios, apparently irresistible sexual magnetism and frankly ridiculous plot but in some ways that’s not the point. No one, least of all the producers has ever said that you’re meant to take it seriously. Bond is what he has always been, a male fantasy brought to life, and watching the films is not so much a willing suspension of disbelieve as a joyful flight into the realm of a particularly adventurous imagination.
If therefore, it is measured as an ordinary film, it is necessarily a complete failure, the plot is foolish in the extreme, the characters unbelievable and the situations impossible, judged as a Bond film however, it actually isn’t too bad. Brosnan is a capable Bond (indeed it’s the only type of character he has ever been able to play with conviction), the lessor characters are well cast (Judi Dench as M is a stroke of genius, and Desmond Llewelyn a legend in his own right), the Bond girls are as laughably bad as always (Famke Janssen’s hysterically hyperbolic Russian accent very nearly steals the show), and the bad guys (principally Bean, Coltrane, and Cummings) all know what they are doing, acting as both comic relief and cannon fodder.
Mindless, middling, and somewhat moronic, but not a bad way to spend an hour and a half.
7/10
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