Review of GoldenEye (1995) by Filipeneto — 19 Feb 2018

Directed by Martin Campbell and produced by Barbara Broccoli (daughter of Albert Broccoli, who stepped down for health reasons), has screenplay by Jeffrey Caine and Bruce Feirstein, and is the seventeenth film in the franchise. It was produced after a long gap of six years, due to legal problems involving firms that had rights to the franchise. And it's very different from what was in the eighties, beginning with the cast: a veteran Judi Dench gave life to M, and for the first time the role was assigned to a woman; the role of Miss Moneypenny was awarded to Samantha Bond and 007 was assigned to Pierce Brosnan. From the list of previous films only survived Desmond Llewelyn, the eternal Q. In the film goes even Izabella Scorupco in the role of Bond-girl Natalya, Joe Don Baker in the role of Jack Wade, Robbie Coltrane in the role of Valentin Zukovsky, Alan Cumming in the role of Boris, Famke Janssen in the role of Xenia Gottfried John in the role of General Ourumov and Sean Bean in the role of villain Alec Trevelyan.

In this film, James Bond seeks to combat Janus, a powerful criminal who stole a Russian mass destruction weapon, Goldeneye. To stop the villain that threatens to destroy London, he will ally Natalya, a Russian expert computer working on the Goldeneye project before it being stolen.

This is the first Bond film to be released after the end of the Soviet Union, when the film industry had questioned the appropriateness of continuing the franchise. Despite the doubts, Pierce Brosnan took the role and the task of bringing his character to a new era of "invisible enemies" (using the words that M will say in "Skyfall", ten years later, when faced with precisely the same doubts). Although not one of the best films of the franchise, "Goldeneye" knew, in fact, update it. Brosnan is not surprising in his role but can be up to the challenge. Surprising is Judi Dench, in the role of M, achieving a remarkable performance. Its the first time that MI6 boss assumes a major role in the plot, and shows even little appreciation for Bond, considering him a relic of the past and something to be discarded, as to seem a form of play with the criticisms made to the franchise before the film's release. The chosen locations are excellent and some of the film's scenes are worthy of memory. This is the case of the tank sequence in St. Peterburg's streets, or the final fight in the antenna. The script is also well thought out, despite having decided to completely ignore the novels of Ian Flemming. The story revolves around the end of the USSR and the "remains" that were all this past: we do not speak only of weaponry but also of people, as Bond and Alec, were marked by decades of cold war. The theft of Russian weapons may be the introduction of the new Bond world of terrorism? Perhaps. The opening theme of this film, sung by Tina Turner and consists of Bono, in my opinion, one of the best of the entire franchise.