GoldenEye *** (1995, Pierce Brosnan, Sean Bean, Izabella Scorupco, Famke Janssen) – Classic Movie Review 404

In 1995, Pierce Brosnan steps suavely into 007’s shoes, after a six-year gap in James Bond movies since Licence To Kill. The 17th Bond film GoldenEye is a busy, excitingly entertaining action adventure that proved a big box-office bonanza.

There’s a rather smutty, derivative script and, as they have run out of Ian Fleming titles, they have named it film after Fleming’s Jamaica home. But some thrilling action sequences are highlighted by a busy chase through St Petersburg with Bond at the controls of a tank.

Sean Bean is adequate but uninspired as Bond’s adversary Agent 006, Alec Trevelyan, former MI6 spy bitter at his Cossack parents’ treatment by the British after the war. So he plans the electronic theft of billions from the City, wiping records of the transactions with secret GoldenEye satellites. Bond chases Trevelyan off to Cuba and targets his satellite control station and the duo engage in the now traditional climactic fight.

Bean’s blandness is compensated for by feisty Bond girls in Izabella Scorupco as Natalya Simonova and Famke Janssen as Xenia Onatopp. Judi Dench makes a tasty meal of her spymaster character M (memorably telling Bond: ‘I think you’re a sexist, misogynist dinosaur, a relic of the cold war, whose boyish charms [are] wasted on me’), and Samantha Bond replaces Caroline Bliss as Miss Moneypenny.

Robbie Coltrane gained worldwide recognition as Russian gangster and ex-KGB officer Valentin Dmitrovich Zukovsky in the James Bond films GoldenEye (1995) and The World Is Not Enough (1999).

The sole, and very welcome, survivor of the past is Desmond Llewelyn as Q. Minnie Driver appears in a cameo as the memorably appalling Russian nightclub country singer Irina.

It is the first film in the franchise to use no story elements from source novelist Ian Fleming and the first not produced by Albert R Broccoli, replaced at Eon Productions by his daughter Barbara Broccoli. Albert was involved as a consultant producer in his final film project before his death in 1996.

The story is conceived and written by Michael France, with screenplay work by Jeffrey Caine and Bruce Feirstein.

The  cast are Pierce Brosnan as James Bond, Sean Bean as Alec Trevelyan, Izabella Scorupco as Natalya Simonova, Famke Janssen as Xenia Onatopp, Joe Don Baker as Jack Wade, Robbie Coltrane as Valentin Zukovsky, Tchéky Karyo as Dimitri Mishkin, Gottfried John as Colonel Arkady Grigorovich Ourumov, Alan Cumming as Boris Grishenko, Michael Kitchen as Bill Tanner, Serena Gordon as Caroline, Desmond Llewelyn as Q, Samantha Bond as Miss Moneypenny,  Judi Dench as M, and Minnie Driver as Irina.

Goldeneye was the title of a 1989 TV movie about the life James Bond creator Ian Fleming with Charles Dance. Sean Connery’s son Jason Connery also played Fleming in Spymaker (1990).

The Secret Intelligence Service HQ in the film is the real SIS building in Vauxhall, London.

Next: Pierce Brosnan returns as James Bond in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997).

Robbie Coltrane died at Forth Valley Royal Hospital in Larbert, Falkirk, on 14 October 2022, aged 72. He is remembered for Scrubbers (1983), Krull (1983), The Supergrass (1985), Defence of the Realm (1985), Absolute Beginners (1986), Mona Lisa (1986), The Fruit Machine (1988), the James Bond films GoldenEye (1995) and The World Is Not Enough (1999), From Hell (2001), and as half-giant Rubeus Hagrid in the Harry Potter films (2001–2011).

© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 404

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