I Watch Films: Goldeneye

 

Goldeneye

In a prologue* British secret agents James Bond 007 (Pierce Brosnan) and Alec Trevelyan 006 (Sean Bean) invade a Soviet chemical weapons plant run by Colonel Orumov; Trevelyan is caught and killed, Bond escapes and destroys the base. Nine years later, after a credits sequence that takes as a motif the fall of the Soviet Union, James Bond is being assessed by MI6, when he encounters Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen), ex-soviet pilot and assassin for the Janus crime syndicate. Suspicious he investigates, to discover she has murdered a Canadian Admiral by crushing him with her thighs, and then she and an unseen partner steal a prototype helicopter from the French Navy, Bond late to the scene.

The hunt for the helicopter leads to the Severnya Space Weapons facility in Siberia. The helicopter is electromagnetically shielded; to the surprise of everyone in the MI6 control room a space-based electromagnetic pulse weapon known as Goldeneye goes off wrecking everything.

M (Judi Dench) sends Bond into Russia to try and find the Goldeneye controls and the helicopter, via the Janus crime syndicate. He discovers that the mysterious Janus is actually Alec Trevelyan, who wants revenge on Britain for the betrayal of his parents who were Lienz Cossacks who fought with the Nazis in WW2. Bond is trapped in the helicopter with one of two survivors of the Severnya attack, Natalya Simonova. They escape a death trap to be arrested by the Russians. While Bond is bantering with the Russian Defence Minister Simonova works it out; General Orumov is working with Trevelyan. Orumov arrives, kills the Defence Minister and kidnaps Simonova. Bond goes off in pursuit in an extraordinarily violent sequence, hijacks a tank and stops Janus who is on an old Soviet armoured missile train. They escape, though not before Simonova discovers that the other survivor from Severnya, Boris, also working for Janus, is in Cuba, where they go for a final, also violent confrontation.

The film, made after a six year gap in Bond productions, has to ask the question, what is Bond now the Cold War is over? It answers the question of course by saying, no, nothing is dead and buried. When you turned over whole families of Nazi supporters (?) to the Soviets to be executed, there are survivors who hold a grudge. The chemical weapons facility you destroyed? There will be repercussions. The Goldeneye weapon is a satellite whose cover comes off to reveal Soviet era livery. Trevelyan asks Bond, hey all that time drinking and shagging, does it make up for everyone you got killed, everything you lost? M accuses Bond of being a sexist misogynist dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War, and then he is proved right and her methods wrong, and she sends him right out on a mission. Nothing is ever over, the past is the present is the future.

Imagine if they made a Bond film with something to say, something relevant even.

Watch This: Some great stunts and a spy film that engages with the themes of the 90s.
Don’t Watch This: Brosnan quips, murders and shags his way through a lot of post-Soviet nonsense

 

* A novelty for a James Bond film; indeed as this section is set nine years before, in 1986, it takes place between Roger Moore’s A View To A Kill and Timothy Dalton’s The Living Daylights. This is, presumably, the same character; any thoughts of continuity are dismissed as things Bond did during the Cold War which is definitely over and will not be considered again.