Customer Reviews

Better Bond with Brilliant Bean and Brosnan - By: Stampy, 26 Oct 2008
James Bond (Brosnan) investigates the mysterious dealings of Goldeneye, a satellite which was kidnapped by a group of Russians.

Pierce Brosnan's (Mamma Mia!) first role as the famous British spy is probably his finest to date with specific & exciting acting, not to mention he is the cheekiest & smartest Bond since Connery.

Six years Bond fanatics had to wait after `Licence to Kill' was releasedin 1989 & weren't we treated? Goldeneye has everything a Bond fan could ever wish for, high action, attractive female leads & a fantastic trio of villains to make the ultimate knockout action thriller.

Brosnan's performance is excellent & really helps gain that edge of your seat excitement but also an ultimate relaxed feeling to. Bond's first line "Forgot to knock" will have fans smiling to.

Brosnan delivers the best acting out of a terrific cast which also includes a memorable performance by Sean Bean (Sharpe series) who never disappoints with a sweet evilness & malice to his character.

Izabella Scorupco is one of the least interesting Bond girls of all time. However Famke Janssen as Onatopp is one, if not the, best female Bond villain of the series to date with a fantastic viciousness & cutting edge to her personality.

The writing works well with great dramatic tension surrounding the characters. From the cool & sophisticated agent to the troubled & sad Russian researcher, writer Michael France has created one of the finest Bonds to date. Goldeneye isn't based on an Ian Fleming novel, which is evident with the amount of action encoded, which isn't a bad thing at all.

Goldeneye is all about the memorable action sequences. The film opens with a terrific & remarkable bungee jump of a damn. A true heart stopping & terrific piece of film making, which makes one of the finest Bond openings to date. The film is constantly hitting new heights with a dramatic plane flying sequence, a tank cutting traffic & plenty of high flying helicopters to match.

There are questions of realism but regardless Goldeneye treats viewers with its high octane vibe & a fantastic ensemble of performances, particularly by Brosnan & Bean.

8.5/10

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Remastered??? A great film spoiled. - By: Hellboysapien, 30 Aug 2008
Picture qualityin some scenes from the first half of the movie appear very grainy. It's saying something when the Goldfinger print is better than a more recent Bond. Do they bother checking their products before they release them? Also, the film has been cropped at the sides, so that the computer screen readouts of the Goldeneye tracking system don't fit on the screen. The previous edition had none of these problems, so what went wrong?

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Interesting, in that the villain is ex-MI6 - By: LXIX, 02 Aug 2008
Goldeneye introduced us to Pierce Brosnan as James Bond. After a 6 year hiatus it was good to see 007 backin action. Brosnan is okay, but some would maybe argue that he's a bit too smooth (a la Remington Steele) & lacks the hard edge of Connery or even Daniel Craig.

Goldeneye (named after Ian Fleming's housein Jamaica where he wrote the 14 original Bond books) has its moments, such as: the dam jumpin the pre-credit sequence, the tank chase through St. Petersburg, Onatopp (a celebrated baddiein the Pantheon of Bond girls) & the final duel with Sean Bean somewherein darkest Cuba.

I never liked the music to the four Brosnan Bonds. It's far too industrial & techie sounding (lacking the lush, suave orchestration of the earlier films). In terms of continuity, Q is still here with plenty of gadgets (although he is far grumpier) &in keeping with true events at MI6, M is a female.

Goldeneye, overall, is ok. If you like Bond then it's a must for your collection, but I would rank it somewherein the bottom half of the 21 Bond films to date (better than e.g. Licence To Kill or For Your Eyes Only, but notin the same league as e.g. Goldfinger or The Spy Who Loved Me. Just an opinion.

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"I think you're a sexist, misogynist dinosaur - a relic of the Cold War." - By: Nicholas Casley, 01 Jun 2008
Goldeneye is the seventeenth Bond moviein the series, & the first of four with Pierce Brosnanin the lead role. Indeed, it is the best of his four. Following a Scot, an Australian, an Englishman & a Welshman, Bond was now played by an Irishman. In my view, Brosnan was a good Bond, but the lack of control over his part that Dalton insisted upon meant that this & the other three of his movies led to Bond becoming a parody of his true self. Like the final movies of Roger Moorein the role, Brosnan's script emphasised to an absurd degree the superhuman strengths & luck of the part, as well as the equally absurd humour. Humour is goodin Bond but it must be a dark & brutal humour to be credible: playing Bond for laughs shows a lack of self-respect for the man. 'Goldeneye' was the one Brosnan moviein which these aspects were most under control.

`Goldeneye' followed a little hiatus of six years since the previous movie, `Licence to Kill'. During that time, the Soviet Union finally came crashing down, & the Bond team had to face the fact that the Cold War was over. There was also a great technical revolution during that time as Bond finally moved into the digital age. As well as a new Bond, there is a new Min Judie Dench, it being a conscious decision to make the female parts tougher. (The title at the head of this review is her description of Bond.) It's over an hour before Bond gets his first kiss.

There were a number of new facesin the Bond production team too, most notably of course the director, Martin Campbell, who contended that, "If we don't get this right, the series is dead." As the extras on the double-DVD show, Campbell is a man with a lot of energy (to put it diplomatically). Other new faces include Daniel Kleinman (for the late Maurice Binder), & Eric Serra doing the soundtrack.

There are the usual amazing stunts (jumping off a dam) & the usual ludicrously unbelievable stunts (freefall to catch up with & steer to safety a plane, tank chase through Saint Petersburg). Bond still escapes a million bullets without a hair falling out of place (but see the note about the censors, below). Thankfully the undercranking of the camera was kept to a minimum, & was not enough to make it obvious.

Despite being only one commentary, there is a generous helping of extras on the double-disc version. In the commentary we learn that the amazing opening dam jump was done for real, was a world record, & was done on the first take: it was the only take! We also learn that Sean Bean himself had once been a contender for the Bond role. I was interested also to learn that the censors do not like to see blood, or to see bullets hitting their mark, but they do not mind high body counts! So my previous gripes about Bond movies should be mostly laid at the censors' door rather than the producers'. (But it would be interesting to see a woman direct a Bond movie.)

There are the usual deleted scenes, anatomies of scenes, location-scouting, model-making featurettes. One of the best is a thirty-minute `Secret File', where you learn the production secret that comprises cat-litter & self-raising flour? There is also a good forty-minute TV special, `The World of 007', introduced by Liz Hurley. It's over-the-top & camp, but features some interesting interviews with the likes of John Barry, Roger Moore, & a variety of actors & production team staff.

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Boys with Toys - By: Mr. Stephen Kennedy, 10 Jan 2008
This was Bond back as fun, not serious - & a successful transition it turned out to be. It is hardly the reimagining it seemed back then, more of a return to the tonguein cheek of Roger Moore - except this time with an actor who could pull it off.
There's lots to like - Famke Jensen is one of the most deliciously over the top hench(wo)manin decades, Sean Bean plays 006 with great style, & there are surprising cameos - Robbie Coltrane, Minnie Driver, for example. Eric Serra's synth-rich score works pretty well, with enough of the classic themes coming through at moments you want them to - like the start of the glorious tank chase. And let's not forget two of Goldeneye's key successes - Judi Dench as M was certainly surprising casting, but it turned out to add a hugely successful character foil to Bond's `misogynist dinosaur'. Aside from Judi Dench bringing the role of womenin Bond movies into the modern world, Isabella Scorupco plays a fine traditional Bond girl, with added sassiness. And then there is that whole self aware aspect - Bond is recognised for being a `relic of the cold war', & there is even a few half heartedly psychological moments where Gasp! We are encouraged to understand the character a little better.
Locations are the bestin some time for a Bond movie, with St Petersburg appearingin person... surely the ultimate sign the cold war has ended, when a Russian city appearsin a Bond movie without Prague or some other Eastern European city standingin for it...
Negative points if you want to quibble... there's something about Bond with a machine gun that's just not right. Bond is supposed to be pinpoint & precise, & it's a shame the Brosnan movies got away from that to have him spraying bullets all over the place. And a few of the characters are just a bit too cartoonish, drawing one out from an otherwise well paced & well plotted movie.
Allin all though, there's no doubt that Pierce Brosnan's first stab at the Bond role made it his own for a decade. Goldeneye is one of those perennially entertaining & rewatchable movies that made the Bond franchise so durable.

As usual, the ultimate edition has every extra imaginable, significantly more than the previous Special Edition. Sadly however, we do not have the making of documentary that accompanied all of the previous movies. It's a shame that for this ultimate edition they could not have put together some sort of retrospective documentary with interviews as they had for the previous movies, & merely put together all the pre-existing material they could find.
Picture & sound are immaculate.