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Home , Alec Trevelyan, Bond girl, Brad Whitaker, Famke Janssen, Joe Don Baker, John Glen (director)

Are We Boring You, Mr. Bond?

Goldeneye (1995), Directed by Martin Campbell

By Fearless Young Orphan

For my friend Max, who convinced me to give it a try.

Six long years have passed since the Bruiser starred in , which much to my surprise was a standout Bond film. Now a lot of changes have place at MI:6, as there is a new (Dame Judy Dench, who is marvelous in the part), a new Moneypenny (Samantha Bond, no relation – or so we’re told) and a different guy working the 007 position. That would be Remington Steele (). He has a BMW. How very 1990s of him. Looking at Goldeneye as a whole, I found many outstanding aspects. I was most impressed by the casting. I’ve already mentioned Dame Judy Force-To-Be- Reckoned-With Dench, who gives Bond a nice telling-off right out of the cage. I believe she calls him a sexist, misogynistic dinosaur. Hahahahaha. That was funny. Moneypenny is tart and sexy. is the same old lovable Q and gets a wonderful scene in Q-Division, with much harrumphing and bluster over his beloved inventions.

Outside of MI:6, (Mitchell!) returns as megalomaniac arms-dealer , though he’s pretending to be American agent Jack Wade. This is all the proof I need that James Bond is a cipher agent: he doesn’t even recognize the guy! Luckily the so-called Agent Jack Wade doesn’t pull any tricks. Possibly this is subject matter for the next film.

Famke Janssen has long been a favorite actress of mine, running a close second to my girl-crush on . Famke is so cool it’s sick. In this movie, she is (A+ for the name), a Russian pilot and assassin who is a really, really fun girl, and likes her sex more than a bit rough. Murderously rough, you might say. Ah, she and I, like peas in a pod.

Our is Natalya Simonova (Izabella Scorupco), a smart brave woman who unwittingly becomes a part of the film’s adventures by being the only survivor of a massacre at one of two satellite stations that control the top-secret Goldeneye thingamajig. We’ll discuss that momentarily. This is Natalya’s paragraph. She’s another great Bond girl, pretty as a cream puff and kind of a smartass, very capable. Plus she’s good with computers, or with whatever passed for computers back in 1995. It was like the dark ages, man. So she’s a bit nerdy, which wins my heart every time.

Our supervillain is , formerly a Double-O agent himself, who has turned traitor after faking his own murder ten years earlier on a mission with Bond. Yes, I know, the dates mess with the cipher-agent theory. I don’t care! Remember the Joe Don Baker thing? Anyhow, I was squealing like a little girl to find that Mr. himself, aka Boromir, aka the coolest guy in the Lord of the Rings movies, aka the avatar of the Boromir Fan Club, aka the star of the documentary How Boromir Faked His Own Death to Save Middle Earth directed by me and starring BOROMIR! . . . where was I? Right, yes, well Boromir plays Alec and he’s all messed up and scarred and crazy villainous. He plans to take over the Goldeneye satellites and use them to electromagnetically pulse the dickens out of the world. Sean Bean has had a long career of playing second bananas or villains and I really, really think it’s too bad that nobody has ever figured out what a great leading man he is. He’s starred in lots of British television, particularly the Sharpe series, and he can carry a movie. See him also 2005’s ultra-creepy psychological The Dark (ooo scary!). Facebook told me that he’s soon to be starring in the HBO series Game of Thrones, which makes me happy as a clam. So that’s my petition on behalf of Sean Bean, and the reason why I was so delighted to see him here.

Finally, a solemn moment of respect for the appearance of Gottfried John as Russian General Ourumov. In 1980, Gottfried John was one of the major stars of Berlin Alexanderplatz, that ponderous and dreadful mess I watched back in October (see the “Worst Thing I Have Ever Watched” page for my unenthusiastic synopses). He played Reinhart, a sweaty and twisted freak in what was already a sweaty and sad and endlessly long movie, and I had assumed—well, hadn’t everybody?—that the experience probably killed him and all others involved. But no! Here he is, fifteen years later, well enough to star in a James Bond movie. My goodness, I was so relieved. Just think! If one star made it out alive, others could have as well! There could be refugees from Berlin Alexanderplatz hiding in movies anywhere. It warms my Oh thank God! Gottfried John is alive and well! I was so heart. damn worried about him . . . Okay, so you can see that the casting really impressed me; it was the best thing about the film. Luckily, this great cast was also given a good script with which to work, their dialog interesting, appropriate, often witty and smarter than we can often expect out of these films. Plotwise, this wasn’t half-bad either, as things led coherently from the theft of an important U.S. Military helicopter, to a massacre at the first Russian satellite station, to the finding and rescue of Natalya, to the infiltration of the second satellite station, to the showdown at the second satellite station. Everything Bond does makes sense and I never got the feeling that he arrived somewhere for no good reason.

There were some good stunts in this one, too, particularly a breathtaking bungee jump (by Bond, of course!) off the dizzying heights of a Russian dam, and a sensibly choreographed fistfight atop a gigantic satellite dish. But I have to admit I miss the action-film flair shown by John Glen in the last five films. There is a chase scene in Goldeneye in which Bond is actually driving a massive tank through the streets of Moscow (I’m assuming it’s Moscow, right?) running over cars and smashing statues and bridges and destroying everything in his path, heedless of civilians and any good Russian/English relations, no doubt, and I figure this should be thrilling to watch. Yet, I noticed my attention wandering. At the end it felt like nothing more than five minutes of a tank smashing things. There really was no tension in it; I feared for no one except the poor pedestrians. John Glen could direct action that generated an amazing amount of tension, considering the fact that we knew the hero could not be killed. Here in Goldeneye, the action feels jumbled and noisy, and isn’t very interesting.

I nearly forgot to mention, Tina Turner sings the theme song! She sounds like a real badass, like she might She’s “on the top.” Get it? hang out with Xenia Onatopp. Good girlfriends there. As for the opening theme-song video, things have not changed or improved much in a long while. I hope those poor models were well-paid.

Sigh. Okay, I’ve danced around the subject as long as I can. Now I have to deal with Remington Steele. First, a peace offering: I like Pierce Brosnan, always have. I think he’s a good actor with plenty of range; he can play funny, charming, evil, good, menacing, seductive, even not-terribly-bright, without any trouble. What bothered me was that he managed to leave every one of those traits behind and play the biggest empty space I have ever seen in a Bond movie. I swear, it was like there was nothing there. I think I understand what he was going for, or I really tried to understand it. Cool and ruthless, right? Only with a soft tormented underbelly of regret? Maybe? Or something like that? Well, maybe I didn’t understand. This is the first Bond movie I’ve seen where the movie carried on quite well without Bond; in fact it was better when the camera was pointing at anybody else. He’d walk into the picture and the film would lose a dimension. He’s Bond dark matter; he is . . . omigod . . . he is the Anti-Bond.

Most of my friends know I’m a fan of Roger Ebert, who writes well about movies even when he’s brazenly disagreeing with me. Goldeneye calls to mind a comment Mr. Ebert made long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, about the strange flat interpretation of the characters in the infamous Star Wars prequels. Of Attack of the Clones, he said something I’ve never forgotten, which was “Actors speak more slowly than they might--flatly, factually, formally, as if reciting. Sometimes that reflects the ponderous load of the mythology they represent.” I love that turn of phrase: Ponderous load of the mythology. I’ll dare to repeat those words now, because I think they may summarize what was wrong with Remington Steele. He was trying to be all things Bond, without daring to infuse his Bond with any new personality traits (which the other Bond actors have done happily and successfully in my opinion). Thus, we were left with this Anti-Bond, who fits the description because he “likes Martinis” and “wrecks cars” and “digs chicks” but never reaches beyond it to become anything particularly memorable. I’ve seen other reviews of the film that disagree with me on this point, considering Remington Steele to be a great Bond. This difference of opinion is common enough, and I suppose it depends on what you want out of your James Bond. I want someone whom I am willing to follow through the plot, no matter how silly it may be, and every time this Bond showed up, I thought, “Oh no, there he is again.” It does not really help matters that ’s Bond was a surprising revelation to me. I thought he was wonderful in the part, as good as, but different from, Connery, Moore and even the He must be James Bond, because he “plays Baccarat.” one-time-only Lazenby. Brosnan certainly looks like James Bond ought to look, though I happen to think he also looks sedated. And bored. He looks as if the events around him are simply boring him to death. The Anti-Bond needs anti- depressants, perhaps. As my extremely creepy English professor once said, “A bored person is a boring person.” Exactly, Dr. S.

I think this is going to change, if my recollection of that thing with is correct, though the change is not for the better. I remember one of the reasons I hated was that Remington Steele struck me as a smarmy pervert. But my memories of many things Bond have been proven wrong before. We’ll have to see how this plays out, as the James Bond project winds precariously to its climax.

Poor Natalya, she’s just realized that Bond stopped breathing half an hour ago.