Secret
Agent Men:
GoldenEye
Nick of Time |
DIRECTOR
Martin Campbell
SCREENWRITERS
Jeffrey Caine
Bruce Feirstein
STORY
BY
Michael France
based
on characters created by
Ian Fleming
PRODUCERS
Barbara Broccoli
Michael G. Wilson
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Phil Meheux
MUSIC
Eric Serra
EDITOR
Terry Rawlings
CAST
Pierce Brosnan (James Bond)
Sean Bean (Alec Trevalyan)
Izabella Scorupco (Natalya)
Famke Janssen (Xenia Onatopp)
Joe Don Baker (Jack Wade)
Judi Dench (M)
Robbie Coltrane (Zukovsky)
Tchéky Karyo (Mishkin)
Alan Cumming (Grishenko)
Desmond Llewelyn (Q)
Samantha Bond (Miss Moneypenny)
Minnie Driver (Irina)
MPAA rating: PG-13
Running
time: 130m
U.S. release: November 17, 1995
Video availability: VHS - DVD
Other Martin
Campbell films
reviewed on this site:
- The
Mask of Zorro
See also:
- Die
Another Day
- Tomorrow
Never Dies
- The
World Is Not Enough
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As the new 007 in GoldenEye,
Pierce Brosnan is under at least as much pressure as Roger Moore
was when he took over. But, like Moore (at least in the
'70s), Brosnan wears the pressure gracefully. When Moore became
James Bond, in 1973's Live and Let Die, George Lazenby
had already failed to fill Sean Connery's tux; Connery returned
for one (supposedly) last appearance in Diamonds Are Forever
and then bequeathed the franchise to Roger Moore, who did something
very smart. Realizing that many 007 fans wouldn't accept him
either, Moore projected a certain indifference -- "Who cares
if you like me? I'm Bond now. Deal with it" -- that worked
quite well as Bondian insouciance. In his own style, Moore was
true to Connery's cool impassiveness, and he outlasted Connery
(until his indifference festered into boredom). Then came Timothy
Dalton, a fine, classically trained actor who took the role altogether
too seriously (this from the man who'd seemed able to camp it
up in 1980's Flash Gordon); he outlasted Lazenby by one
film. Now comes Pierce Brosnan, who would have been Bond instead
of Dalton if he hadn't been tied to Remington Steele.
He stands in relation to Moore and Dalton the way Moore stood
in relation to Connery and Lazenby, and there's the added pressure
of proving the Bond franchise still has legs.
Should we care? I don't have an emotional stake in James Bond.
The movies are essentially Cold War cartoons having no more to
do with reality than Boris and Natasha, and many of the 007 films
have a lot of dead space in between the outlandish stunts. The
latter isn't true of GoldenEye, which, under the direction
of Martin Campbell (No Escape), moves like a bullet. And
Brosnan, like Moore, understands that Bond isn't a serious endeavor.
The idea is to have fun in the role and look slick doing it.
He does. GoldenEye isn't anything great, but it's certainly
one of the least boring Bond entries (how's that for damning
with faint praise?), and Brosnan takes much of the credit. Some
of Bond's demons parallel Brosnan's (Bond lost his wife in On
Her Majesty's Secret Service; Brosnan lost his wife to cancer),
and Brosnan brings this to Bond without making a big point of
it or weighing the action down. Bond's womanizing and brutality,
we realize now more than ever, were cemented when he lost the
only woman he would ever truly love.
Oh, yes, and stuff blows up too. GoldenEye delivers the
goods -- the massive set pieces so absurd the audience laughs
and gasps at the same time. If you blink, you miss the plot,
which has something to do with computers and big weapons and
a scheme to wipe out England's economy. (If the movie is a big
hit, it can only reflect the deep American concern about the
well-being of British finance.) Sean Bean, unmemorable as the
terrorist villain in Patriot Games, is equally forgettable
here as the renegade Agent 006, the big arch-villain this time.
He has issues with Bond dating back to a shared botched caper,
and he sports a Blofeld facial scar that makes him no less boring.
His cohort is Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen), a hyperventilating
man-killer who crushes her victims between her powerful thighs.
This is perfectly in keeping with the Bondian take on sexual
women: They're fine if they can be seduced; if they're the seducers,
watch out. The woman-who-can-be-seduced here is Izabella Scorupco
as Natalya, a smart Russian computer hacker. Think Sandra Bullock
in The
Net with a Natasha accent. Perhaps the biggest challenge
Bond faces in GoldenEye is how to peel off all of Natalya's
layers of frumpy clothes.
All this, and stuff blows up, too. If the Bond films have one
saving grace, it's their escalating game of "We bet you
haven't seen this before, or if you have, you haven't
seen it this ballsy." GoldenEye sets the tone right
off the bat, when Bond hops onto a motorcycle, chases a pilotless
plane off a cliff, goes into free-fall, catches up to the plane,
slips behind the controls, and pulls it out of a certain crash.
Even Indiana Jones would be impressed. Indy would, however, know
what to do with the tank near the end. When 006 seizes Natalya,
Bond comes after them in a massive Russian tank, bashing through
cars on the street and finally derailing a train. Brosnan (in
his close-ups, anyway, when we're not watching his stunt doubles)
plays these scenes wittily, striking the ideal balance between
self-aware parody and focused seriousness. So does the director.
GoldenEye in general is fast and light. Is this what movies
were meant to do? It's what Bond movies were meant to do, anyway,
and though the 007 movies feel less liberating and fresh now
that we routinely get a dozen big, dumb spectacles a year, at
least the Bond revival may show Hollywood how it should be done.
If the series can stay as painless and mindlessly engaging as
GoldenEye, it has a future.
 In Nick of Time, the new thriller that
unfolds (like High Noon) in "real time," Johnny
Depp rides an elevator, and we ride with him; goes to the bathroom,
and we accompany him; gets his shoes shined (twice), and we sit
with him. Occasionally we cut away from Depp to see what Christopher
Walken and Roma Maffia -- villains who kidnap Depp's little daughter
to get him to assassinate the governor for him -- are doing while
Depp is peeing or going up and down. This is all entirely as
boring as it sounds. Aside from its time's-a-wastin' gimmick
(Depp has about 75 minutes to do the deed or his little girl
dies, and we experience those 75 minutes along with him), Nick
of Time is a standard sub-Hitchcock thing about conspiracies
and kindly shoeshine men with wooden legs that come in handy
(Charles S. Dutton plays the thankless role here). Viciously
impatient and no-nonsense, Walken and Maffia (the heroic attorney
from Disclosure)
are the only reasons to watch; Depp, making the leap into mainstream
"adult" fare after several years of risky roles that
didn't pay off at the box office, gives a novelty performance
-- look how clean-cut and ordinary he is! -- that is perfectly
opaque. We can't begin to identify with him. Another bummer from
John Badham, one of the more sadly erratic directors in the business
(once capable of Saturday Night Fever, now capable of
The Hard Way and Another Stakeout). His time as
a respected moviemaker is almost up, if it isn't already.
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