Director: Martin Campbell
Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Sean Bean, Izabella Scorupco, Famke Janssen
Have I Seen It Before?: I may be the only person my relative age who has seen the movie, more than he has played the seminal Nintendo 64 video game, which itself was released in August of 1997, just a few months before the release of the films sequel, Tomorrow Never Dies (1997). Now you know.
Did I like it?: It’s clearly Brosnan’s best attempt in the role, buying him a measure of goodwill that would get him through the odious, Roger Moore-esque valley that was his swan song, Die Another Day (2002). If he had been more present and awake for his remaining three films in the series, he might have been in the running to rival Sean Connery himself.
Goldeneye is an interesting relic of its time. In the six years since the release—the longest between entries in the series—of Timothy Dalton’s last shot at the role, License to Kill (1989) the Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union collapsed, and the machismo that had been core to the series up until this point started to feel passé.
Some wondered if there was room for Bond in such a brave new world.
Which is hilarious, when one realizes that the far more scary and insidious threats were still in our future, and that the era of sexual harassment was not only not over, but was reaching its peak, Clinton-led golden age, and Bronsan is more than equal to the task of lecherously and sort of absent-mindedly forcing himself on women left and right.
The film also has some weird elements that age it squarely in the mid-90s.
Is it possible that Boris Grishenko (Alan Cumming) is the worst computer hacker ever to be conceived by 1990s film (a steep competition, to be sure)? His passwords are easily guessed words from the English dictionary, it appears one has an unlimited number of guesses to gain access to his systems, his fingers dance insanely over just a few keys of any keyboard (admittedly, he’s not alone among 90s movies hackers on that front), and when things inevitably go south for him in the third act, he takes out his frustrations with a monitor, like that is going to do something to re-set the guidance system of the GoldenEye weapon.
Also, the music is little weird. The theme, strangely written by Bono and The Edge, but performed by Tina Turner is fine, but apparently the production was somewhat disjointed, and the score reflects nothing of the melodies introduced in the theme. And then there is that score. Oh, man, that score, though. Long gone is the sweeping dramatic scores of John Barry and in its place is an occasionally off-putting faux techno score from French composer that felt vaguely antiquated at the time of release. As much as the rest of the film is strong, the music throughout may be the weakest throughout any of the 50-year-plus history of the series. I’ve often thought that a good score can make a film—for instance, Halloween (1978) borders on unwatchable with John Carpenter’s music—and one wonders if this could have been one of the absolute greatest in the series if John Barry could have been persuaded to return.