Release date: November 13, 1995 

No limits. No fears. No substitutes. Just a boat-load of one-liners!

GoldenEye. The seventeenth 007 James Bond film. The first with Pierce Brosnan as Bond and the film that spawned my favorite Nintendo64 game: GoldenEye. SO much could be said about this film and the series in general. Dating all the way back to 1962, the Bond film franchise has grossed billions of dollars and solidified actors as idols and generational sex-symbols.

This was my first Bond movie. Boy am I glad it was when I eventually went back to watch some of the older ones a few years ago. Might I say there are many blemishes of the Scottish and campy variety in Bond’s history. That’s even after excusing them for Roger Moore.

But alas. There’s no need to excuse very much in GoldenEye! 

GoldenEye stars: Pierce Brosnan, Sean Bean, Izabella Scorupco, Famke Janssen, Desmond Llewelyn, Smantha Bond and Judi Dench as M.

Directed by Martin Campbell who as exposed our eyeballs to other films like The Mask of Zorro and my favourite Bond film: Casino Royale, GoldenEye begins with a daring mission co-held by 006 Alec Trevelyan which leads to his apparent death. The film then picks up sometimes later when Bond, James Bond must team up with the sole survivor of an attack on a Russian research center that held the key to GoldenEye a catastrophic astro-nuclear device. Bond must save the girl, save the world and get revenge on his former partner, all while wearing fancy suits and drinking dry alcoholic drinks. Don Draper, eat his shorts!

WHAT WORKED:

– The Pacing. I have a big bone to pick with many 80 to early 90’s flicks. Most of them have pacing that is snail like slow. A pace that doesn’t build emotion or anticipation but rather puts the audience to sleep faster than a Dane Cook set. Thankfully ’95 might have been the turning point for this. GoldenEye is always in motion keeping the story moving and Bond rolling from suit to tux to jumpsuit.

– Brosnan. Before reading the Ian Flemming novels or Seeing Casino Royale, this was my image along with my generation’s image of James Bond: A suave, well spoken, sharply dressed man with a lady on his arm, a drink in his hand, a pistol under his pillow and a quip remark on his tongue. Maybe one or two lines missed their mark, but his delivery had a 92.7 kill rate.

– The gadgets. Something I miss and don’t miss at the same time from the newer Bond flicks. This time around, it’s very easy to suspend your disbelief and roll with the punchs and grenade-pens.

WHAT DIDN’T WORK:

– Fanke Janssen. As hot as she is in this and as strangely as she hasn’t aged much. I feel that either her character was written to be too much of a joke or she played it as Natasha Fatale from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.

THE LOWDOWN:

When looking back at the history of the 007 franchise you have 23 films that span six decades; there were bound to be a few bad ones. This isn’t one of them. Brosnan brought new life to a character that had been there and done that while never spilling his drink. GoldenEye has all the tools and qualities of a sold Hollywood action-spy film that will keep your butt firmly glued to the seat for 130 minutes. There’s probably no better way to start off a Bond-Marathon before going out to see Skyfall later this week than with GoldenEye, which is Verified Awesome!