Goldeneye

Viewed: Somepoint towards the end of 2014

Finally posted: Sunday 26th April 2015

New Bond film with a shiny new Bond; Pierce Brosnan skydives his way into the role and into a USSR base he’s trying to blow up with Sean Bean. Obviously it’s not long before Sean Bean appears to snuff it and James is left to save the day all on his own, which obviously he does or this wouldn’t be much of a film.

Jump forward nine years and Bond is back at the Blackjack table trying to chat women up by winning their money.  Unsurprisingly Xenia is unimpressed but those anger management classes must be paying off as she deals with the whole thing extremely well – by strangling her Canadian lover and hiding him in the wardrobe.

There’s a shiny new Moneypenny and M to go along with a shiny new Bond which we meet as James get shown to the most imaginatively named ‘situation room’.  Q is back which considering it’s been over thirty years since Connery first started bankrupting casino’s everywhere is quite impressive and surely further proof that 007 and all that happens to him occurs in some sort of time vortex controlled by one of Q’s better gadgets?

Half way through and it’s time for the massive plot-twist, Sean Bean aka Alec isn’t dead at all, it was all just a ruse for Bean to demonstrate just how good he is a dying on-screen; que a heart-wrenching tale of how Alec hid away his childhood memories’ of his parents to give himself a way to eventually seek revenge against the corporation that destroyed them.

From here on in its Xenia and Alec vs James and Natalia, a Russian programmer with useful connections Bond’s taken a fancy to.  Xenia meets her end fairly quickly after everyone goes to Cuba; but if you’re stupid enough to walk around Cuba in a black jumpsuit then you can’t be surprised if you end up dead in a tree.

Following with tradition it all comes down to the last 20mins of the film; Bond appears to have certainly lost, with Natalia gone walkies and Alec’s underwater (obviously) base full of armed soldiers surely it’s all over.  The idea is simple, erase the digital records of the UK, stealing the Bank of England’s money and the records it ever existed along with everything else kept on government file. It’s so simple, yet so easily flawed by one of Q’s exploding gadgets which buys James and Alec time to have a quick fist fight and a heart to heart before Alec manages to survive a ridiculous long fall onto the top of a building, only to have the rest of the building fall on him.

This film must have been a pyrotechnic’s dream to make; as the writer’s answer to everything was “make it go Kaboom” – there were at least nine decent sized explosions in this, James Bond’s introduction to the 90s and the latest in special effects.

One Brosnan film down and I don’t mind this new Bond, the amount of sarcasm is ridiculous but he manages to pull it off without coming across as overly cheesy, though with three more films to go before the gauntlet is passed on that all has time to change.

License to Kill

Sunday 27th July

Starting very non-traditionally at a wedding Bond’s playing the part of best man at Della and Felix’s wedding. The actually wedding goes quite smoothly if you ignore the quick detour to capture some drug dealer guy called Sanchez before parachuting back in for the vows. Unfortunately it wouldn’t be a wedding in a Bond film if the wife survived past the first day and after he’s escaped Sanchez is pretty set on revenge.  It’s back to basics and feeding people, or at least parts of them to sharks, Felix survives and is rushed to hospital two limbs lighter.

Torn between avenging his friends and his next mission in Iran Bond throws a hissy fit and resigns from the secret service, which I think is the second time he’s pulled that one when things don’t go his way.  Unable to let him just get on with it Q tracks James down to stock him up with gadgets, well if you’re going to go after a billionaire drug dealer you defiantly need a camera with an inbuilt laser.

In terms of Bond girls, James teams up with one of Felix’s associates Pam and after very mild resistance she quickly falls into the highly clingy category.  Sanchez’ girlfriend, who I’m not even sure had a name pops up every now and again to try and steal him but Bond manages to fob her off on the Argentinian president instead.  

Just like the last Dalton film, I didn’t start enjoying this until the last half an hour when Bond manages to sneak his way into Sanchez’ laboratory; it would seem that no matter how clever hiding cocaine in petrol is it does leave the whole operation highly vulnerable, especially if part of your little demonstration to investors involves lighting the petrol.

So with the bad guys dead and Felix recovering in hospital it’s a typically happy ever after Bond ending, who would of thought Bond would save the day at the last moment and end up with the girl? Shocker!

One slightly confusing thing, we’re now on 1989 and the gadgets are still a bit naff… this film is only two years older than me so there’s no way it can be old (because I’m not).  While Q remains my favourite thing I was expecting better gadgets as we moved forward in time, but no we get a laser in a camera and an overly excited lighter – I think I preferred it when a briefcase that grew legs was cutting edge.

This also marks the end of Timothy Dalton’s brief stint as Bond, nor particularly sad to see him go, not particularly excited for Pierce Brosnan – yes it is comfy sat on this fence thanks for asking. In my opinion he’s by no means the worst Bond, Lazenby I’m looking at you but no rival for Sean Connery, maybe on par with the better Roger Moore ones, so I’m putting him second on my current list of Bonds.