I believe Pierce Brosnan makes a relatively bland & robotic Bond compared to the three greats before him; and this, probably by no mere coincidence, is exemplified in the first minute of this movie, when he does the “turn left and shoot” pose. Sean Connery holds his spare hand out to the side as a counter-balancing hand, a bit like would be done in fencing but with his hand facing down as if holding a pad for a boxer to throw an uppercut at, kind of like a surfer’s balancing pose; Roger Moore holds his gun with both hands; Timothy Dalton lets his spare hand hang to his side, with a realistic balance of tension & relaxation; then Pierce Brosnan leaves his spare hand down, similar to Dalton but more floppy, and his whole body flops round at the same time, very nonchalantly like a careless lifeless teenager or a synthetic dummy, or someone who has never trained any kind of martial art before but wants to portray dominant tactical movement nonetheless. The way he pulls the door open 25 minutes in, is no different. It’s like he’s huffing & puffing while trying to act slick, when really he’s all floppy and the door is the dominant entity between the two of them! Having said that, as bland and uncoordinated a Bond as he may be, the fact his movies are much more highly funded than his outstanding predecessors’ movies were, kind of brings his movies up to the same level as most of those Bond movies before him. The fight scene at 25 minutes in, for example, when James gets through the door on the boat he’s sneaked on, is all flashy camera switching. There’s no genuine martial arts acumen or even athletic acumen on display, but good cinematography has ways of compensating for this, and the tempo and general vibe of that fight scene was not bad to be honest.
Backtracking now – the opening scenes at the very start of this movie are a bit ‘Mission Impossible esque’ with jumping down cliffs and entering rooms through ceilings.
In the first 5 minutes we’re introduced to one of the other main characters – agent 006 played by Sean Bean. I’m usually a fan of his but I’m not a fan of his demeanour in this movie – he hasn’t reached his prime as an actor yet, and he’s got a rather repulsive smug look on his face in this movie in my opinion. Either the role doesn’t suit him, or it came too early in his career for us to really see the best of him. Anyway, he’s one of the main supporting actors in this movie.
Another of the main supporting actors we meet in the first 10 minutes is Gottfried John who is best known for his performance as the main villain in this movie – General Arkady Grigorovich Ourumov, who is also head of the Russian Space Division but turns on his own countrymen and goes rogue.
After we get a ridiculously unrealistic mid-air recovery of a nosediving passengerless plane to end the opening scenes, this leads into the theme tune by a croaky voiced Tina Turner in her mid 50s. It’s a funky tune but it’s not got quite the same kick as the best Bond theme tunes, for my taste. Another singer could have sang the same lyrics to the same tune and yet done it much better than Tina, I think.
One of the main Bond girl from this movie is Xenia Onatopp, who is played quite well by Dutch actress Famke Janssen (she also played Liam Neeson’s wife in the Taken movie series, and Phoenix in the early X-Men movies of 2000, 2003 and 2006) and now she plays the main female baddie in GoldenEye – she’s General Ourumov’s sidekick, who together with him, steals a state-of-the-art EMP-proof helicopter from a miliary demo after killing and impersonating an admiral then a couple of pilots. She also makes orgasmic noises after shooting & killing people.
Before the end of the first half hour, we meet the second of the main women in this movie, Natalya Fyodorovna Simonova, who is played by Polish actress Izabella Scorupco – she’s not a bad actress and is quite pretty too – definitely above average for a Bond girl but not on a par with the best of them for my taste. She’s a non corrupt programmer at a Russian top secret base that Ourumov & Onatopp shoot up. To their surprise, she manages to survive, then gets caught, escapes, gets caught again, and befriends James Bond who she’s being held prisoner with around half way through the movie. When we first meet her, we also met her colleague, a Russian programmer & hacker called Boris Grishenko (played alright by Scottish actor Alan Cumming, the main baddie in Spy Kids) and he is working with Ourumov & Onatopp.
The script & screenplay get pretty intense & captivating as Bond & Simonova are questioned by Defense Minister Dimitri Mishkin (played pretty well by Tchéky Karyo, who also plays corrupt Inspector Jean-Pierre Richard, the main antagonist in Kiss Of The Dragon, a Jet Li classic). Simonova then points the finger at General Ourumov who then walks in, acts suspicious, tried & fails to argue, then kills the minister and tries to kill Bond & Simonova but they manage to escape. Simonova soon gets caught again, but Bond makes his way out in a tank.
