My Favorite Movies - Bondathon: Goldeneye

The great ones often don’t last long.

So, Licence to Kill, as fantastic as it was, was the complete opposite of a box office success. People cited not being used to Dalton’s Bond, others blamed it on the dark tone…saying it was, “too dark.” MGM and UA thought this as a lesson to learn and apply to the next film in the series, but it was put on halt, as more legal issues surrounding the James Bond franchise arose.

Fast-forward to 1994. Five years since LTK’s release. The dust is only just settling from the legal battles, and the future of the Bond franchise is uncertain. Dalton has officially dropped out of the role, saying he lost interest due to the legal fallout and general negative reaction from critics and fans. MGM and UA had no Bond, no director, and most of the people that used to work on the films had gone onto other projects.

But not all was lost, as the shining light of the situation was no more than Pierce Brosnan, the original prodigal son for the Bond of ’87. While it had been almost a decade since then, he was still the fan favorite for the role, and now that he was definitely done with Remington Steele, he would be open to do the role. So, UA grabbed him up, and he was announced to be in the first Bond film of the 90s: Goldeneye. But, people were uncertain if Bond could survive in this post-Cold War world. So, how did the movie fair? Let’s take a look (Spoiler Alert: Fanboyisms ahead).

So, the film starts out with the standard pre-credits scene (brought in by a new and beautifully rendered CGI gunbarrel) with Bond running out to a Russian dam to do a base jump off of the top. As he does, he rappels to the bottom, where a Russian military base is stationed. He breaks in and makes his way to rendezvous with 006, Alec Trevelyan (Sean Bean), who both go on with their mission to detonate explosives on the gas tanks within the base. However they are captured by General Arkady Ourumov (Gottfried John), who holds 006 as gunpoint as a way to coax Bond out. Bond still sets the timer for three minutes (rather than the agreed six) as Ourumov shoots 006, and Bond makes his escape down the runway, commandeering a falling plane as the base explodes.

After the credits, the movie cuts to a scene of Bond driving his DB5 through the mountains above Monte Carlo, with MI6 analyst Caroline in the passenger seat, panicking from Bond’s erratic driving. After a short while, a second driver appears driving a Ferrari, the driver being a beautiful girl. After a short race between Bond and the girl (with Caroline absolutely freaking out), Bond stops, letting the Ferrari go on, to calm Caroline down with a kiss and a glass of champagne.

Later, Bond goes to the casino at night, spotting the same Ferrari from earlier. As he sits down at a baccarat table across from the girl, he remarks that they share three common interests, which sparks a conversation of wits and puns between the two before she ends up defeating him (“I hope the third is where your real talent lies.” “One rises to meet a challenge.”). The girl reveals herself to be Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen), and Bond bids her goodnight by telling her that the license plate on her Ferrari is wrong…even if it’s counterfeit (one of my favorite lines in the movie…there’s a lot of those). Bond later finds out through Moneypenney and MI6 that Onatopp is an ex-Soviet fighter pilot that may have ties to the Janus crime syndicate.

The next morning, Onatopp with aid of an unknown man steals the latest piece of French weaponry, a EMP-hardened Tiger helicopter, from its debut in Monaco. Bond runs to stop the theft from happening, but seeing as Onatopp and the other man are under the guise of the trained helicopter pilots, he is stopped by French police who merely think he’s trying to steal it himself. Bond watches as the Tiger takes off to its next destination: Severnaya, Russia, where the Goldeneye superweapon is controlled. Xenia and our old friend Ourumov arrive there in the cold hours of the morning to kill everyone within the satellite base and retrieve the Goldeneye key, not before they arm the Goldeneye to strike on Severnaya to erase all trace of them being there. However, two people are left alive: hacker Boris Grishenko (Alan Cumming), who is taken by Xenia and Ourumov to help with their plans, and Natalya Simonova, who was left alive by mistake and climbed out of the rubble.

Back at MI6, Bond, M (now played by Dame Judi Dench, the best casting decision this franchise has ever made, probably), and Bill Tanner (Michael Kitchen) are all watching Severnaya via satellite, where they spot the stolen Tiger, when suddenly the whole screen goes white and static. When they get the picture back, they notice the area is smoldering, and barely anything is left. M immediately suspects the Goldeneye and calls Bond into her office for a quick mission briefing. Inside, they sit down for drinks before M cuts to the chase, calling out Bond for his negativity towards her coming to power just because of her gender. She cuts him down immediately, threatening that she would not hesitate sending a man to die, so he should reconsider his thoughts about her. She then sends him out to find out what Ourumov  and Janus is up to and where the Goldeneye has gone, warning him not to turn it into a private vendetta for Trevelyan (a subtle nod to Licence to Kill that’s very welcomed).

Bond travels to St. Petersburg and gets acquainted with Jack Wade (Joe Don Baker), who says that the only man who could set Bond up with Janus is Valentin Zukovsky (Robbie Coltrane), a tough Russian mobster with a limp. But, seeing as Bond gave him the limp, he assures them that it shouldn’t be too much to go through a meeting with him. Wade drives Bond to Zukovsky’s club. As he enters, the two hold each other at gunpoint for a while, going back and forth about their last encounter. As Zukovsky whines to Bond about the pain in his leg from Bond’s bullet, Bond assures him that the intention was not to kill him out of kindness, and that Zukovsky owes him a favor. Bond hatches a plan that involves Zukovsky’s men digging a Janus operative out of a tight spot with the cops after a robbery, leaving Zukovsky and Bond even on favors, and leaving Janus to owe a favor to Zukovsky. Zukovsky agrees, and a meeting is setup.

Later on, as Bond is relaxing within his hotel’s pool and spa, he runs across Xenia Onatopp once again, who was sent to be the one to meet with Bond and take him to the head of Janus. However, things definitely do not go as planned, as the two have a rather rough and actually…kind of sexual encounter within the sauna. But Bond grabs the upper hand, points a gun at her, and spouts, “No, no, no…no more foreplay. Take me to Janus.” Xenia obliges and drives him to the meeting, held within a Soviet statue graveyard.

Bond walks around for a minute, gun drawn, before his opponent walks out, and it is none other than Alec Trevelyan himself, back from the dead, with a huge scar on his face from the explosion nine years earlier. Bond wonders how, and Trevelyan merely states that he wants to get back at the British for betraying his Cossack parents back in World War 2, and with the use of the Goldeneye weapon, he should be unstoppable. Bond takes a second before finally drawing his gun to act, but is then shot with a neutralizing dart. He wakes up later, strapped inside the Tiger helicopter, which is set to launch missiles at itself, with Natalya behind him, screaming for him to do something. Bond acts quickly and beats his head into the ejector seat button, ejecting the two just before the helicopter blows up. The Russian police then arrest the pair.

The next morning, Bond and Natalya are taken to meet with the Russian defence minister. He accuses the two of them for the stealing of the helicopter and the Goldeneye key. While Bond would prefer a classic, more violent form of argument, Natalya calms the two men down, proceeding to convince the minister that Ourumov was behind the theft of both the helicopter and the key. Ourumov then disrupts them as he barges in the room to argue with the Minister and then kills him after a heated argument. He then tosses the gun to Bond, framing them for the Minister’s death.

Bond and Natalya escape through the building’s archives and a shootout occurs, leaving Bond alone as Ourumov captures Natalya. He flees with her within a car, and Bond seems to be out of options…until he steals a GOD DAMN TANK AND STARTS CHASING THEM THROUGH THE STREETS OF ST. PETERSBURG. This scene is so completely absurd, I swear, and I love it. The Bond theme blares as Bond causes destruction and the St. Petersburg police blunder about the town. It even goes so far as to Bond driving the tank into a statue and having the statue ride around on the top of the tank as he chases down Ourumov. It’s silly as hell and I love it…sorry…I got sidetracked…I love this movie so much.

Anyway, Ourumov loads Natalya onto Janus’s train (which doubles as one of their bases of operations), and they set off with Trevelyan and Onatopp. Bond catches up with them and stops the train (by leaving the tank on the tracks) and sneaks on board to face off with Trevelyan again. Bond kills Ourumov and Trevelyan manages to gain the upper hand, leaving Bond and Natalya on the train with bombs set for the, “same six minutes,” that Bond left for Trevelyan back at the base. With three minutes to spare, Bond sets to using his laser watch to cut through the floor of the train car while Natalya sets on a computer to hack into Grishenko’s file back-up to find out where he’s located. With a few seconds to spare, she finds that he is in Cuba, and Bond snatches her, the two escaping the train just before the explosives set off.

Afterwords, Bond and Natalya arrive in Cuba to meetup with Wade, who sets them up with a plane and what he’s found in relation to the supposed satellite dish that’s being used to control the Goldeneye. Wade swears he’s found nothing, but Bond still wants to go through the country and take a look for himself. He and Natalya take the plane out (after a night in a beach house) to explore. After a few rounds around the island, they find themselves at a large lake, and are just about to call it quits when a missile shoots out of the lake, taking down the plane, leaving the two to crash in the jungle and pass out.

They’re awoken some time later by the sound of a helicopter overhead, and the less than pleasing appearance of Onatopp, who is ready to fight Bond for one last time. Bond struggles, being placed under Onatopp’s secret weapon (being crushed between her thighs), with Natalya unable to help (due to Onatopp wishing for her to “wait for her turn”). However, Bond gains the upper hand, shooting the helicopter pilot, and the out of control helicopter then pulls Onatopp into a tree, fatally crushing her (“She always did enjoy a good squeeze”).

Bond and Natalya then make their way to infiltrate the base. Inside, Trevelyan and Grishenko wait around as the Goldeneye locates its next target: London, when guards point out Bond and Natalya walking around the edge of the lake. He sends a few guards out to get them just as the lake begins to drain, revealing the satellite dish they were so desperate to find. While fighting with the guards, Bond and Natalya trip and start sliding down the bowl of the satellite, reaching the bottom drain hole and finding a ladder inside. They enter the base and Bond sends Natalya to find a computer to see about stopping the Goldeneye, while Bond sets some explosives to take out the dish. Bond, however is captured before he has a chance to detonate, and Natalya is found right after she manages to change the launch codes.

Trevelyan disarms the bombs that Bond set due to his knowledge of Q’s gadgetry and goes on to lecture Bond about his plan. Using the Goldeneye, he plans to make a major transaction from the bank of London, then the blast will erase all trace of him being there. Bond tries to talk him out of it, saying it’ll only make him a petty thief, but is disrupted as a computer says that the Goldeneye satellite is about to enter the atmosphere, doomed to burn up somewhere over the ocean. Grishenko rushes to the computer to fix the problem, but is stopped by Natalya’s new launch codes. He frantically attempts to break them while clicking a pen in his hand (which happens to be a pen Q gave to Bond which explodes after three clicks).

This next scene is some brilliant filmography. The intensity of Bond staring at Grishenko’s clicking of the pen as he waits for three consecutive clicks, piled with the music and various shots of the leaking explosives all culminate in this dramatic scene…drowning the audience in and…sorry, sorry, I got mixed up in how fantastic this movie is sometimes. Anyway, Grishenko clicks it three times before standing up and demanding Natalya to give him the new codes. Bond acts quickly and slaps the pen out of his hand, making it land near his explosives, which cause massive destruction to the base and the satellite.

Trevelyan, now angered beyond belief, chases after Bond, while Natalya goes off to find a way out of the dish. Bond and Trevelyan fight between each other throughout the dish, leading out onto the spire and the platform, until it becomes a fight to see who can hold on the longest before falling to their death. Trevelyan lunges towards Bond, but loses his grip, leading to Bond holding onto Trevelyan, keeping him from falling. What happens next is the best delivery between two characters within the entire film:

“For England, James?”

“No…for me.”

Bond then lets Trevelyan go, where he falls, breaking his leg and preventing him from getting up. Natalya arrives in a helicopter and Bond jumps to it just before the dish has a final explosion, causing the spire to fall and crush Trevelyan, finally killing him. Grishenko survives however, chanting, “I AM INVINCIBLE!” but not for long, as canisters of nitrogen explode, freezing him alive. The movie finally ends with Bond and Natalya meeting up with Wade and the rest of the marines.

You know, it took me a long time to find my definitive best Bond film, and I think this is it. I never thought much of Goldeneye when it came out, but watching it now and really thinking deeply about it, I’ve come to really love it. For a twenty-year-old movie, it’s really aged well, and I don’t think that there could have been a better story for the first post-Cold War Bond.

Brosnan was born to play Bond, no matter what people say. In 1995, I believe he perfectly emulated every good thing about Bond actors in the past, and expanded upon it even more. Even with his outlandish hurt acting and jaw clenching, he still acted as cool and as calm as ever. Hell, this film probably has the best collection of actors to ever grace a Bond film, especially on the villains side. The way that Bean, Cumming, Janssen, and John all act together and communicate just makes Janus probably the best villain collection in these movies yet.

Goldeneye is perfection, from the direction (done by the fabulous Martin Campbell), to the actors, and even the soundtrack (which I listened to while typing this). I love this movie so damn much that I’m almost considering watching it again when I get done here. Such an amazing film…almost deserving of a rating higher than 5 stars if I had one. But I don’t, so it’s 5 out of 5.  Goldeneye is the best Bond film…I don’t think I’ve stressed it enough.