BEFORE: Somehow, while I was hanging out with James Bond, half of June sort of slipped by. I've got just one month until Comic-Con and I have to get off this topic and into some heavy sci-fi and comic-book films. That's the plan, anyway.
Dalton is out, and Pierce Brosnan (last seen in "Laws of Attraction") is in. We've got a new "M" too, more on that later, but good ol' Desmond Llewelyn is still with us, for a bit longer, anyway - he carries over from "Licence to Kill". He appeared as Q in 17 Bond films, and coincidentally "Q" is the 17th letter of the alphabet. Oooo......
THE PLOT: James Bond teams up with the lone survivor of a destroyed Russian research center to stop the hijacking of a nuclear space weapon by a fellow agent.
AFTER: There was a six-year delay in getting the next Bond film off the ground - while figuring out who should play Bond, and who even had the right to produce the next film. But eventually they got it all worked out, and Bond entered the 1990's, no worse for wear. After the opening scene of this film, the plot jumps ahead nine years, and I can't help but think that partially represents the long gap between films. Brosnan, of course, couldn't play Bond when he was first offered the role, because his TV show "Remington Steele" got renewed (ironically, it may have been renewed for one more season after he was asked to play Bond...) so they went with Dalton, and finally the role opened up for Brosnan years later.
And because this was the 90's, there's a very prominent "hacker" character - which on one hand makes sense, because you can't just take over a satellite or easily get bank info, but as in some other films of the time, "hacking" is depicted as an all-purpose activity that makes anything possible. You need to get missile codes? Just hack them!
The (re-)appearance of the female "M" now messes up my continuity, partly because of the order in which I've chosen to watch the films, starting with "Casino Royale". But it's not really my fault - "Goldeneye" introduced the new "M", but then in "Casino Royale", which was a reboot, they kept the same actress. So one way or the other, she was head of MI6 at the start of Bond's career, then she wasn't, and then she was again. But she looked older in "Casino Royale", which took place earlier but was made later, and she looks younger here, which took place later but was made earlier. So there's no way it makes sense - unless maybe she had some work done to look younger?
Other than that, I really liked the way the pieces came together on this one, but the drawback was that too many of the plot points seemed to be a rehash of pieces from "Dr. No" - the satellite, the underground Caribbean lair, etc.
LOCATIONS: Russia, Monte Carlo, Cuba
VILLAINS: Alec Trevelyan, Gen. Ourumov, Boris Grishenko
BABES: Xenia Onatopp, Natalya Simonova
ALLIES: M, Q, Moneypenny, Jack Wade (played by the same actor who played a villain just a couple Bond films ago...weird)
PASTIMES: Bunjee jumping, sky-diving, more baccarat
CARS: Aston Martin DB5. Classic. Also a BMW Z3 Roadster.
GADGETS: Explosive ball-point pen, laser watch.
THEME: "Goldeneye" by Tina Turner. Another mediocre one.
Also starring Judi Dench (last seen in "Quantum of Solace"), Famke Janssen (last seen in "Lord of Illusions"), Sean Bean (last seen in "Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief"), Izabella Scorupco, Alan Cumming (last heard in "The Smurfs"), Joe Don Baker (last seen in "The Living Daylights"), Robbie Coltrane (last seen in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1"), with a cameo from Minnie Driver (last seen in "Barney's Version").
RATING: 6 out of 10 back-up singers
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