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Goldeneye" unveils Pierce Brosnan as the coffee-bar James Bond: mild, fashionable and nice in a very 90's way. Mr. Brosnan, as the best-moussed Bond ever to play baccarat in Monte Carlo, makes the character's latest personality transplant viable (not to mention smashingly photogenic), but the series still suffers the blahs.
Today's Bond does have the Internet and a credit sequence resembling a pretentious music video. And he has a girlfriend with advanced computer skills (Izabella Scorupco, a deep-voiced model who looks as good as Mr. Brosnan, which is saying a lot). Still, he often seems adrift. And this film is missing such basics as the cold war and the James Bond theme music. The absence of the latter is sure to throw some audience members into a two-hour Pavlovian twitch.
Judi Dench, as the first woman to play his supervisor, M, is on hand to call Bond "a sexist, misogynist dinosaur" so that you won't have to. But the real problem is not a matter of Bond's antediluvian quirks. It's that "Goldeneye" bears no stamp of Ian Fleming beyond its title, which was the name of his Jamaican home. This film's screenplay, by Jeffrey Caine and Bruce Feirstein from a story by Michael France, features only flat repartee and fairly desperate homages to the Fleming style.
And so many other action films have borrowed from the Bond formula in the 33 (yes!) years since "Dr. No" that this one has a hard time looking special. A plane, a motorcycle, a huge dam, a bungee jumper and nerve gas all feature in the opening sequence, yet it still lacks the novelty that starts the best Bond films off with a bang. And Mr. Brosnan, who makes a fabulous clothing model and has mastered the one dramatic mode this role requires of him (wry), is not at his most believable during action scenes. When Bond rides in a tank through St. Petersburg during a scenery-crunching chase scene, Michael Dukakis comes to mind.
Clinging desperately to the idea of Russian villainy for old times' sake, the plot involves Russian gangsters trying to exploit a secret space-based weapons program to sabotage financial markets in the West. And its chief villain is 006 (Sean Bean), who was once Bond's colleague and now calls him "Her Majesty's loyal terrier." Beyond this, it's enough to note that character actors include Robbie Coltrane as a Russian hood and Joe Don Baker as a C.I.A. man, and that settings can be drably industrial unless the film is pointedly visiting Switzerland or the Caribbean, where it practically screams about the scenery.
Continue reading the main storyThough 006 has the poor form to bait Bond about his past, wondering theatrically whether all those vodka martinis can silence the screams of all the men Bond has killed, most of "Goldeneye" is relatively restrained. Martin Campbell, who previously directed the sci-fi prison film "No Escape" with Ray Liotta, supplies shootouts and explosions at reliable intervals, and without any special frills. The film's gaudiest feature is a vicious Russian named Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen), who bites and claws her lovers and has a way of confusing sex with death. Her nutcracker thighs, not to mention her name, suggest that the Bond babe is as ready as 007 was for a timely overhaul.
In the product-placement department, BMW, Perrier and the becoming Bond wardrobe are all advertised. "Goldeneye" is as much a merchandising event as it is a wishfully nostalgic movie.
"Goldeneye" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It includes several sexual episodes, along with double-entendres that either draw smirks or die trying.
GOLDENEYE
Directed by Martin Campbell; written by Jeffrey Caine and Bruce Feirstein, based on a story by Michael France and characters created by Ian Fleming; director of photography, Phil Meheux; edited by Terry Rawlings; music by Eric Serra, with "Goldeneye" theme written by Bono and the Edge; production designer, Peter Lamont; produced by Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli; released by United Artists. Running time: 130 minutes. This film is rated PG-13.
WITH: Pierce Brosnan (James Bond), Sean Bean (Alec Trevelyan), Izabella Scorupco (Natalya Simonova), Famke Janssen (Xenia Onatopp), Joe Don Baker (Jack Wade), Robbie Coltrane (Valentin Zukovsky) and Judi Dench ( M )
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