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The GoldenEye St.Petersburg tank chase - do you rate it ?
As my QoS Opera thread briefly but interestingly went off topic re the title of this thread,i have decided to give it its own.
Some of the comments have been very interesting,so feel free to copy and paste some of your comments from there on to here or we can keep going as it is.
Oh,and personally,i like the tank chase for the stuntwork and score,but,as others have said,i do think it should be an enemy of Bond driving it,chasing Bond in the car with Natalya AND the way the city is torn up doesnt seem something Bond would do.
It's hardly being a secret agent and we are talking being in Russia here !!!
Chat away peeps............
Some of the comments have been very interesting,so feel free to copy and paste some of your comments from there on to here or we can keep going as it is.
Oh,and personally,i like the tank chase for the stuntwork and score,but,as others have said,i do think it should be an enemy of Bond driving it,chasing Bond in the car with Natalya AND the way the city is torn up doesnt seem something Bond would do.
It's hardly being a secret agent and we are talking being in Russia here !!!
Chat away peeps............
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Comments
Personally I think the sequence is a lot of fun and the best of the large-scale set pieces the Brosnan films had. From a technical standpoint its superb. The planning and the detail that went into that chase is all there on-screen. My only real gripe is that there are a few quick shots of the stunt driver if you look closely.
I think it's meant to be an updating of the old "crash bang" sequences of the Moore films. He caused a fair bit of destruction in those too if I recall (AVTAK has not one but two of those sorts of chases). The use of the Soviet tank is of course in line with the cold war nature of the story.
Its silly and it certainly wouldn't appear in a Fleming book (the closest I can think of is when Bond escapes Dr No's Island in the dragon flame thrower), but I think its exciting and a lot better than some of the lesser chase sequences.
I had paid no attention to it until recently,when i suddenly stopped and thought 'hang on,Bond is in a stolen tank,smashing the crap out of St Petersburg in the middle of RUSSIA here !! '.
He is supposed to be a 'secret agent' and he is doing a destructive version of the 'bondola' in Venice ala MR ,basically saying 'Hello all,i'm a spy !! '
And the location isn't Paris or Istanbul,its Russia.
Thats the difference to me.
Fair point. There would certainly be a diplomatic crisis following Bond's actions in St. Petersburg.
If this had been Daniel Craig in CR M would have cut his balls off herself.
Personally I try not to think about that sort of stuff too much and appreciate the scene for what its meant to be: an entertaining crowd pleasing action scene.
Actually I remember hearing a comment from one of the crew saying that that was originally meant to be a motorbike chase but because he was in a military building they thought "lets have him jump on a tank".
Same here tbh...it's just 2 odd hours of fun and escapism !!
The Bond flicks all relax me if im a bit stressed,i think doctors should prescribe Bond flicks on prescription for stressed patients he he !!
That said I think GE gets away with it more than some of the later Brosnan films. I can appreciate the spectacle, the stunt-work and the music more here than later on.
A car chase has been done a million times before and I think it would have had nowhere near the same impact that the tank chase does. It's one of the most iconic moments out of all the films. It was a really exciting, original action sequence.
As for it not being very spy like: James Bond never is really. This is the bloke who is so much of a secret agent that some random diamond smuggler knows about him. The same bloke who faked his own death only to introduce himself as "Bond, James Bond" to the guy he's investigating. The same bloke who crashes through crowded restaurants in speedboats, drives bulldozers through busy construction sites, uses diggers to tear apart train carriages, reveals who he is to the local police, etc.
Bond's always been a crap spy really.
Modern Bond does seem all about causing destruction like it's real cool. With Moore, it was more comical, more Disney, and often police cars which kind of made it fun for some reason (nothing against cops, it's just an anti-authority thing).
I sometimes felt those car/police chases in DAF/the Moore era got quite boring to be honest. I like the double decker chase in LALD and the Citroen chase in FYEO but the rest played things up for laughs and didn't really have much in the way of actual excitement.
I've never really been a fan of the DAF Vegas chase for example.
Same in Goldeneye. Yeah the soldiers were just doing their job but it was either them or Bond. He'd be a pretty terrible 00 agent if he dropped his gun and then said to Natalya "they're only doing their job" before allowing them to either kill him there and then, or capture him and have him executed later.
They are so unoriginal and boring endings.
It was a reworking of previous Moorish chases but without the charm. it was well executed but strangely empty.
Its funny how the Dalton era was thrown out for more Moorish chases
It doesn't belong in a Bond movie. Bond machine-gunning Russian soldiers is a big no-no for me. Throughout the Moore era the Russians were actually portrayed as mildly menacing distant cousins. Connery and Moore never went round mowing down Commies in the way Brosnan does in the PTS. Then when he's finished killing people, he jumps in a tank for a comedy romp smashing up St Petersburg. It's naff, and utterly out of place. Yes, Moore had his absurd chases, but he never smashed up Venice with his Bondola or blew up the Arc de Triomphe with his 2CV.
He had to get out of there by any means,and hold back Ouromov & co any way he could.
But the tank scene,i agree,is a different situation altogether.
And as for the archive shootout? Like I said above, what the hell was Bond meant to do? The soliers all thought he'd killed the minister and those mildly menacing cousins you were on about were going to shoot him there and then or capture him and execute him. And why is it ok for Bond to kill countless henchmen but Russian soldiers is "a big no-no"?
How is the tank chase out of place? It fits the tone of the film: fairly light hearted but not to the point where you stop taking it seriously. And please explain why the tank chase is naff but you don't mind the Bondola, one of the stupidest moments in the series? Because from your post, it seems like you only prefer the Moore chases simply because there was less destruction which I don't think makes sense.
I think you're just clutching at straws here.
Come on, when you were sitting watching it in the cinema and Bond came crashing through the wall in the tank, did you really think "this is unfaithful to the character, he's putting lives in danger" or did you think "this is so cool!". And there have been so many interpretations of Bond that I don't think you can really be unfaithful to the character, simply because who the character is has changed so much over the years. EG- You could say Brosnan's Bond was unfaithful to the character because he wasn't close to Fleming but then you could say he was faithful to the character because he had everything you'd expect from the cinematic Bond (quips, gadgets, etc).
Besides, nobody actually got hurt (even when he crushes the police car we see cops get out of the wreckage) so it's all good. Is it unrealistic that nobody got hurt? Yes. But it's only a film and we got an awesome chase where Bond drove a tank so I'm fine with that.
I think a better example of "needless spectacle" in GE was when Alec tried to kill Bond and Natalya by leaving them in the helicopter and setting it to fire missiles to blow itself up.