James Bond: Pierce Brosnan (1995-2002)

GoldenEye (1995)

Dir. Martin Campbell

A heads-up for any fans of the James Bond series: I'm not a devotee and will probably use parts of this post as a critique of everything that's wrong with the whole series, simply because the films themselves encapsulate everything - they aren't known for their diversity, after all.

My real interest in GoldenEye begins and ends with the locations, not with the actual Bond character. That might sound strange, but it’s all down to an enduring love of the N64 game of the same name (see HERE). Seeing onscreen the rooms and corridors that I know so well from the in-game experience is fun times.

When the film moved away from those areas, or to be more precise moved to areas that the game neglected to recreate, my attention waned.

It’s one of Pierce Brosnan’s better roles, I admit, but it really is little more than average as far as super-spy action movies go. If you remove the main villain from the equation (I can’t say who it is because of spoilers) then it’d be good only for the bad puns. I shamelessly love bad puns.

The suave sexism is an established character trait, so criticising it for continuing that is pointless. It would be more apt to criticise it if it had chose to remove it. However, it could've attempted to better balance it. I assume the addition of Judi Dench as M, 007’s superior, was supposed to address that. She may have evolved in later films, I sincerely hope so, but in GoldenEye she comes across as the opposite extreme, a sexless female with school principal blood, placed awkwardly into the narrative to be ballsy and chastise the boy-man until he’s once again out of sight and can get up to his old tricks again. Credit to the writer(s) for trying, I suppose.

To sum up the negatives: I feel the acting of the principal cast is at best average and at worst Xenia Onatopp; the Russian accents are laughable; the direction is uninspired; the music is decent enough, except for the weak romantic theme that drops its head in shame more than once; the camerawork is occasionally awkward; the penis-tank was a huge mistake.

-Pensive but ready for penis-tank action face.-

On a positive note, the reflection alluded to by the villain is the highlight and something that should have been deepened - but not to the point of overuse, just enough to cast doubt on the validity of the hero’s idealistic view of his own ability. Vulnerability and doubt are things that James may want to understandably avoid, but a good scriptwriter knows that such things can add much-needed depth when they're embraced and given licence to work their magic.

I know it's easy to say such things after the movie is made. The hope is that all concerned learned from the mistakes and that the next film did it better...

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

Dir. Roger Spottiswoode

...The next film. The guns, women, cars, gadgets, subtle and not-so-subtle innuendo, carefree sex, incorrigible antics, money squandering and fantasy, action-hero, lover routine are both a safety net and oft-times lead weight to the franchise. Tomorrow Never Dies falls foul to some of them but manages to avoid a few others.

I played a video game based on TND, too. It was on PS1 and was certainly no GoldenEye, so I've no whimsical attachment to it. Even so, I do think TND is a better film. Maybe the makers had more time to prepare? Who knows? What seems clear is that by choosing to do a few things differently they improved upon the formula a little.

I should say that I'm not wholly free of bias this time either. I love Michelle Yeoh. Her talents were often wasted, but at least she broke the ‘Bond Girl’ mould a majority of the time. Most women melt after one glance from the super-spy and spill after one poke. Michelle doesn't. She’s his equal in ability and intelligence, and when she does begin to look at him with gooey eyes it’s out of respect not underling awe.

-Synchronised motorbike on rails face-

The other lady is Teri Hatcher, but the less said about that the better. Not because it’s spoiler, but because she’s a blank tool in place for the most basic and shallow reasons.

M sees Bond in action and thereafter becomes more human; i.e. less obviously ‘written’. She even dares an innuendo of her own, which could've come off badly but remarkably doesn't. She appears to have been imbued with some independent thoughts. It's a vast improvement.

The story is entertaining enough for the most part. Like in GoldenEye, there seems to have been an attempt to give the villain a goal other than world domination for its own sake. He’s a media mogul who doesn't want to rule the world, per se, he wants to rule how it’s reported - to be the god of information. But the good intentions of the script fall away over time and Mr Villain devolves into another egocentric comic book bore that likes to hear the sound of his own voice.

By the end it’s reduced to being Bond by Numbers, including a finale on an exploding base of nefarious operations and a man-to-man fight with a determined henchman. Zzzzzzzzzzzz.

The World Is Not Enough (1999)

Dir. Michael Apted

I can accept a supercar with anti-aircraft missile launchers hidden in it, a watch with a grappling device, and even the notion that Denise Richards isn’t completely useless, but taking a dunk in the Thames and not either dying or mutating into something resembling a politician’s foreskin is asking too much of my suspension of disbelief.

And then I’m expected to swallow that the Millennium Dome has a practical use? Please...

The first hour is very dull stuff, setting up a story about an oil line somewhere in the Middle East and Bond’s reasons for having to go there and fuck shit up put the house affairs in order.

On the plus side, M’s character is strengthened by her showing a weakness to emotion, preceded by a snippet of info about her personal life, a snippet which may even have been placed to complement the new depth. A ‘weakness’ giving her strength might seem like a contradiction, but that’s not the case at all, for reasons that are spoilery.

-A lady who knows she's getting paid face.-

The antagonist is Robert Carlyle, an ironic and semi-tragic character (by Hollywood standards) that only really works because of Carlyle. He won’t make it high on a list of memorable Bond villains, but nor will he make a list of worst Bond villains and that’s something to be celebrated.

I liked how the suave MI6 agent was forced to wing it from time to time like an average Joe, helping him seem like less of a self-parody.

Die Another Day (2002)

Dir. Lee Tamahori

I suppose I should make some effort to say that DAD exists, even though I found there to be little to no value in anything that happened in it.

The continent-hopping MI6 agent goes off the radar for a string of clichéd set-pieces that occasionally masquerade as a franchise self-homage in place of any kind of interesting story.

I almost dozed off while viewing. For real. It was late afternoon on a lazy Sunday, so I wasn't tired and I wasn't even hung-over. It was that bad.

There's a hovercraft and some surfing.

The villain is a vengeful dick.

Halle Berry.

Not related to the film in any kind of meaningful capacity but worth noting anyhow is how awful Madonna's theme tune is. It's my number one choice for worst Bond theme, by a large margin.

-Why the hell didn't I quit after three films? face.-

I spread viewing the four films out so that I wouldn't overdose on their 'charms'. I scheduled one a week during October of last year and it was still too much. Even so, I might tackle the Timothy Dalton films someday. But not for at least six months. It'll take that long to recover my senses.