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nd so I looked for the thread about Goldeneye reviews but...
couldn't find one...so...did my own.
Tonight we stuck on GE having not seen it for all the way through for five years. I was interested why it is so revered on these boards by a certain generation while I have always thought it was formulaic in the extreme. But I was prepared to give it another go. So I cracked open a can of beer, put a chicken korma on my knee and pressed play.
To be honest, it surprised me.
The PTS didn’t. It was worse then I remembered. I have never been a fan of the bungee jump. For precisely the reason that it IS a bungee jump. There’s no real danger to someone at the end of a piece of elastic. But to be fair there is not much danger in Tim dangling from a helicopter on a piece of elastic at the start of LTK. The plane/dive/catch up in midair didn’t work and I was rolling my eyes and I am someone who doesn’t mind the hovercraft gondola. To be honest there is OTT stuff in each of the film. I can roll with it.
The below I can’t
“Closing time James..”
“Buy me a pint..”
This was a problem all the way through the film. A long time ago I used to live with a lot of unemployed actors up in Islington. They used to have a saying called “It says here” whenever an unnatural piece of dialogue occurred on screen. As if the actor had no choice but to say the dialogue. It was often dialogue so bad it kicked you out of the story. This kind of dialogue had no basis in reality and you could almost see the script out of shot. GE had a lot of dialogue like this.
The Monaco scenes scream loudly that James Bond is back i.e. the glittering casino, the Aston Martin, the flirting, the vodka martini. It was a nice calm interlude before the story moves up a gear. Xenia Onatopp is slightly vulgar. Her pawing and howling at that chubby Admiral before bonking him to death was a little bit crude and I am no prude (as Bain123 will tell you).
The best bit in the entire film is the destruction of Severneya and MI6 watching it happen live. This was cutting edge in 1995. A good use of spy satellites and espionage via TV screen and computer before Spooks came along. Natalya gets a gentle introduction. There is no grand entrance like Honey or Vesper. And the scene where she covers up her dead friends was quite affecting. The much missed Derek Meddings is superb here and his miniatures and pyrotechnics are excellent. It’s a scene which moves the story along quite well.
And then we go to Russia or the bits of Russia they could afford to send a crew too. I recognised Somerset House, Brompton Oratory and Leavesden industrial estate doubling as St Petersburg. Robbie Coltrane is always good and there was a scene which caught me by surprise. I have been groaning about “It says here” dialogue all the way through but the conversation about the Lienz Cossacks with Coltrane is a wonderful little moment. Of course is is scuppered later on by
We're both orphans, James. But while your parents had the luxury of dying in a climbing accident, mine survived the British betrayal and Stalin's execution squads. My father couldn't let himself or my mother live with the shame. MI6 figured I was too young to remember. And in one of life's little ironies, the son went to work for the government whose betrayal caused the father to kill himself and his wife.
Seriously? No one talks like that. What a mouthful .It’s unrealistic. It looks good on the page but not coming from actor’s mouths on screen. Compare that with the “my country awarded him the king’s medal” speech in FYEO between Rog and Colombo. The dialogue flows and doesn’t seem forced. Maibaum and Mankiewicz had an ear for dialogue. Not so much Bruce Feirstein and Jeffrey Caine. My memory of this film is sharp dialogue. My memory now is unnatural dialogue.
I said GE surprised me. I remember it being a rather cold unemotional film. But there was one part which was quite sweet. Just before the most unconvincing interrogation ever between Mishkin and Bond, Natalya and he are alone and she say’s nervously “will they kill us?”and Pierce gives a rather sweet “trust me”. It’s underplayed and reminded me of the way Bond used to reassure the heroine in the novels.
What about Pierce? Well, he reminds me of Roger in LALD. Where the star of LALD was the crocodiles, the voodoo, and the boat stunts. The star of this film isn’t Bond it’s the return of “Bond cosiness” i.e. the tuxedo, the stunts, the hammy one-liners. It isn’t a grab you by the lapels portrayal like Connery. Dalton and Craig. It gets the job done and allows the franchise to continue.
And that’s the big plus to Goldeneye. To be fair, it does have verve. Martin Campbell kicks an energetic performance out of everyone and it rockets along. Set piece follows set piece at rapid speed probably not allowing you to stop and find holes in the hackneyed plot. I like the emerging radar dish from the lake and I don’t remember Natalya whacking Xenia with a log before and getting head butted. Maybe they cut it out on the TV versions.
The climax is alot of faffing around with an exploding pen with the dreadful Boris and the line at the end by Wade about Guantanamo made me double take considering we know what terrible things were to happen there in the future. I didn’t like the ending with the helicopters and the marines and the soft rock playout music was forgettable.
Coming away from it after not having seen it all the way through gave me a couple of pleasant surprises but to be honest the same feeling of ennui I had in 1995. Bond was back but he didn’t rock me to the core. It was so formulaic. I could write this. I was enjoying the left turn Bond of the late eighties. I felt the series had gone backwards. We were back to the crowd pleasers of the seventies without the Broccoli/Moore magic.
From then on I gamely hang on until something or someone better came along. Who knew I would have to wait a good ten years for that to happen.
Tonight we stuck on GE having not seen it for all the way through for five years. I was interested why it is so revered on these boards by a certain generation while I have always thought it was formulaic in the extreme. But I was prepared to give it another go. So I cracked open a can of beer, put a chicken korma on my knee and pressed play.
To be honest, it surprised me.
The PTS didn’t. It was worse then I remembered. I have never been a fan of the bungee jump. For precisely the reason that it IS a bungee jump. There’s no real danger to someone at the end of a piece of elastic. But to be fair there is not much danger in Tim dangling from a helicopter on a piece of elastic at the start of LTK. The plane/dive/catch up in midair didn’t work and I was rolling my eyes and I am someone who doesn’t mind the hovercraft gondola. To be honest there is OTT stuff in each of the film. I can roll with it.
The below I can’t
“Closing time James..”
“Buy me a pint..”
This was a problem all the way through the film. A long time ago I used to live with a lot of unemployed actors up in Islington. They used to have a saying called “It says here” whenever an unnatural piece of dialogue occurred on screen. As if the actor had no choice but to say the dialogue. It was often dialogue so bad it kicked you out of the story. This kind of dialogue had no basis in reality and you could almost see the script out of shot. GE had a lot of dialogue like this.
The Monaco scenes scream loudly that James Bond is back i.e. the glittering casino, the Aston Martin, the flirting, the vodka martini. It was a nice calm interlude before the story moves up a gear. Xenia Onatopp is slightly vulgar. Her pawing and howling at that chubby Admiral before bonking him to death was a little bit crude and I am no prude (as Bain123 will tell you).
The best bit in the entire film is the destruction of Severneya and MI6 watching it happen live. This was cutting edge in 1995. A good use of spy satellites and espionage via TV screen and computer before Spooks came along. Natalya gets a gentle introduction. There is no grand entrance like Honey or Vesper. And the scene where she covers up her dead friends was quite affecting. The much missed Derek Meddings is superb here and his miniatures and pyrotechnics are excellent. It’s a scene which moves the story along quite well.
And then we go to Russia or the bits of Russia they could afford to send a crew too. I recognised Somerset House, Brompton Oratory and Leavesden industrial estate doubling as St Petersburg. Robbie Coltrane is always good and there was a scene which caught me by surprise. I have been groaning about “It says here” dialogue all the way through but the conversation about the Lienz Cossacks with Coltrane is a wonderful little moment. Of course is is scuppered later on by
We're both orphans, James. But while your parents had the luxury of dying in a climbing accident, mine survived the British betrayal and Stalin's execution squads. My father couldn't let himself or my mother live with the shame. MI6 figured I was too young to remember. And in one of life's little ironies, the son went to work for the government whose betrayal caused the father to kill himself and his wife.
Seriously? No one talks like that. What a mouthful .It’s unrealistic. It looks good on the page but not coming from actor’s mouths on screen. Compare that with the “my country awarded him the king’s medal” speech in FYEO between Rog and Colombo. The dialogue flows and doesn’t seem forced. Maibaum and Mankiewicz had an ear for dialogue. Not so much Bruce Feirstein and Jeffrey Caine. My memory of this film is sharp dialogue. My memory now is unnatural dialogue.
I said GE surprised me. I remember it being a rather cold unemotional film. But there was one part which was quite sweet. Just before the most unconvincing interrogation ever between Mishkin and Bond, Natalya and he are alone and she say’s nervously “will they kill us?”and Pierce gives a rather sweet “trust me”. It’s underplayed and reminded me of the way Bond used to reassure the heroine in the novels.
What about Pierce? Well, he reminds me of Roger in LALD. Where the star of LALD was the crocodiles, the voodoo, and the boat stunts. The star of this film isn’t Bond it’s the return of “Bond cosiness” i.e. the tuxedo, the stunts, the hammy one-liners. It isn’t a grab you by the lapels portrayal like Connery. Dalton and Craig. It gets the job done and allows the franchise to continue.
And that’s the big plus to Goldeneye. To be fair, it does have verve. Martin Campbell kicks an energetic performance out of everyone and it rockets along. Set piece follows set piece at rapid speed probably not allowing you to stop and find holes in the hackneyed plot. I like the emerging radar dish from the lake and I don’t remember Natalya whacking Xenia with a log before and getting head butted. Maybe they cut it out on the TV versions.
The climax is alot of faffing around with an exploding pen with the dreadful Boris and the line at the end by Wade about Guantanamo made me double take considering we know what terrible things were to happen there in the future. I didn’t like the ending with the helicopters and the marines and the soft rock playout music was forgettable.
Coming away from it after not having seen it all the way through gave me a couple of pleasant surprises but to be honest the same feeling of ennui I had in 1995. Bond was back but he didn’t rock me to the core. It was so formulaic. I could write this. I was enjoying the left turn Bond of the late eighties. I felt the series had gone backwards. We were back to the crowd pleasers of the seventies without the Broccoli/Moore magic.
From then on I gamely hang on until something or someone better came along. Who knew I would have to wait a good ten years for that to happen.
This discussion has been closed.
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Just copy and paste your review there.