After a six-year hiatus that saw the Bond franchise get entangled in legal issues, script issues and casting issues, Bond finally returned in 1995’s GoldenEye. Producers originally wanted Pierce Brosnan to replace Roger Moore ten years earlier, however Brosnan was unavailable due to his contract with the television show Remington Steele. But with the long hiatus between Bond films, Timothy Dalton resigned from the role, and the producers finally had the man they wanted all along. GoldenEye is also the first Bond film to be released after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, however Russians still serve as the main villains in this installment.

To me, GoldenEye feels like the first modern Bond film. The film making is more sophisticated, the action sequences are more realistic and the acting is less campy. As a genre, Action films were starting to become much more sophisticated in the late 80’s and early 90’s, so it was incumbent upon the Bond film makers to keep up. In a lot of ways this is a very serious action film that still maintains some of the Bond “camp”.

Pierce Brosnan made his Bond debut in this film, and it was equal to the debut of Timothy Dalton in The Living Daylights. Not as brooding as Dalton, Brosnan seemed more influenced by Sean Connery in the way he portrayed the role. He carried the role with a subtle sophistication that he pushed in ways that were subtle yet over the top. For example, after he beats up one of the deck hands on a yacht that he’s investigating, he casually wipes his forehead with a towel. It’s a very funny moment with good comedic timing. But later in the film, after bowling over all of Moscow in a tank, he dapperly straightens his tie in a moment that feels a little more forced. Brosnan seems to give Bond a little more ego than the other actors did, and he plays the role with an arrogance that, while not unbecoming, is a tad off putting and makes him feel less human than did Dalton or Connery or even George Lazenby for that matter.

Brosnan played this installment almost in a more “athletic” way than any of his predecessors. There is a lot more running and stunt work than we’ve seen before, and, perhaps due to the nature of the story, Bond is much more militarized in GoldenEye. In the opening sequence, and then throughout the film, we see Bond constantly firing automatic weapons and taking out enemy soldiers several at a time. This is the exact opposite of the Bond that Dalton played and much more in line with Roger Moore’s Bond. In fact, the only other time I can think of Bond using a machine gun is in Octopussy when he fires it while riding down a banister. There may be other examples, but I can’t think of any at the moment.

This military Bond does help to create one of the iconic sequences in the series, and that is of Bond driving the Russian tank down the streets of Moscow as he chases General Ourumov. It’s a terrific chase scene with a lot of over the top action. Many of the car chases throughout the James Bond series are iconic or revolutionary in some way, but this chase took it to a whole new level, and it’s one of the aspects in this film that helped usher the series into a more modern age.

Story-wise, this film is decent but not great. This is the first Bond film to not take any of it’s material from any of Ian Flemming’s novels, and it doesn’t have as strong of a Hero’s Journey as the truly great films in the series do, but it’s an engaging story, as Bond attempts to find out who stole the Russian weapon GoldenEye, and what they plan on doing with it. The story cleverly uses the fall of the Soviet Union to serve as a backbone to the premise of a rogue Russian general trying to sell state secrets for money. But there are also some strong thematic elements to the story as well that help to add depth to it and make it so engaging. Ultimately, this is a story about loyalty and it’s rewards, as well as how you’ll get your comeuppance if you don’t show it. It’s a powerful theme that not only adds depth to the story, but to the characters as well. In fact, it is an instructive theme to use because everyone in this film, be they major or minor characters, shows varying degrees of loyalty, and they all are rewarded or punished based on that.

One of the things that separates Bond films from other action films are the motifs that have been used over the decades. The cool cars, the gadgets that always save Bond at just the right moment, the sinister villains, the quirky allies, the sexy Bond girls. This film has all of them. There is the exploding pen that saves Bond just before the climax. The watch with the laser that allows him to escape the train as it’s about to blow up, and the ever stylish Aston Maritn has been replaced by the product placement of a BMW, but it still serves the same purpose. His quirky ally in this film is CIA agent Jack Wade, played by Joe Don Baker, who you might remember played the villain Brad Whitaker in The Living Daylights eight years earlier. He is a much more fun-loving character this time, and is a good counter balance to the serious way in which Brosnan played Bond.

There are three villains in this film that Bond has to deal with. General Ourumov and his sidekick Xenia Onatopp seem to be the main players for the body of the film. Onatopp is a sadistic killer who brings herself to orgasm with every hike in the body count. Ourumov is an alcoholic man passed his prime, but looking to get the big score that has always eluded him. But the brains behind the organization is former agent 006, Alec Travelyan. We meet him with Bond in the opening prologue, and he appears to be killed by Ourumov. However, we learn that his loyalties lie somewhere other than the Queen, and he steals GoldenEye in order to destroy London with an electromagnetic pulse that will also freeze the world’s financial markets and cause world wide chaos. In fact, when Bond gets to his lair in Cuba, we’re almost taken through a time warp to the 60’s. Alec’s lair is under a lake where they control the satellite that will do the damage. There’s an army of armed guards, and when I first saw it during this viewing, part of me was waiting for Blofeld to appear with his cat. Again, this is a motif that only Bond can pull off consistently, and this version was given a contemporary look, but it was classic Bond through and through.

GoldenEye has a Bond girl in Nitalya Siminova who probably has one of the best character arcs of any Bond girl. She starts out the film as a shy and meek computer programmer, but grows in to a woman who can not only take care of herself, but ends the film as Bond’s equal, holding a helicopter pilot at gunpoint in order to make him rescue Bond from the collapsing satellite antenna. She might not be the best or most memorable Bond girl in the pantheon, but she does displays the most growth and feels like perhaps the most realistic Bond girl in the series.

There is one more point I want to make about GoldenEye and that is that it is of its time. The mid-90’s were perhaps the high point of the politically correct era, and this film reflected some of those attitudes. Whether it’s Moneypenny playfully threatening Bond with a sexual harassment charge or M (now played by Judi Dench for the first of 7 times) telling Bond, “I think your a sexist, misogynist dinosaur.” We are clearly in a new era of how Bond deals with and relates to women and sexual politics. He only sleeps with Natalya, and even then only after they’ve been through a lot together in a more traditionally cinematic  relationship. The times are changing, and Bond is changing with them.

Overall, GoldenEye is a strong debut for Pierce Brosnan, and that debut raised hope in audiences and critics that the franchise was headed for new heights. They would be, for the most part, disappointed.