Goldeneye

GOLDENEYE

Goldeneye successfully launched Pierce Brosnan as 007 and resurrected the dormant Bond franchise in the mid-1990's. Not a classic Bond picture but a pretty good one all things considered. Brosnan was green as 007 and outshined by Sean Bean as Alec Trevalyan, renegade agent 006. I still love the following exhange: 006: "Half of everything is Luck, James." 007: "And the other half?" 006: "Fate." Bean delivered the best Bond villain in decades, with Famke Janssen as the homicidal Xenia Onatopp just under him, so to speak. Enjoyable to see Russia just a few years after the Cold War ended, although The Bourne Supremacy now makes Goldeneye's Russia sequences seem antiquated. The less successful aspects of Goldeneye include Bond completely defying the laws of physics when he plummets off a cliff to enter a propeller plane, Bond destroying half of Moscow in a ludicrous tank chase, and Alan Cumming's annoying turn as a turncoat computer programmer. Izabella Scorupco is no great shakes as a Bond Girl. Judi Dench as the new M delivers some tart commentary on the franchise, calling Bond a "misogynist dinosaur... a relic of the Cold War." At this point, the James Bond franchise was still proudly so.