- GoldenEye
- Tomorrow Never Dies
- The World is not Enough
- Die Another Day
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Bending the decades to build a viable group - top two go forward to slug it out with others, in a couple of weeks.
I chose GoldenEye, for me that is the only Brosnan Bond movie I think is realy good.
I hope I don’t get banned for backing DAD. It came out at a time when my life was changing for the better, and the film’s release and all the hoopla around it was part of that improvement. If I were less sentimental I would have gone with TND.
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For consistent enjoyment, I’d probably say Tomorrow Never Dies, but just on the strength of Xenia Onatopp’s thighs, Goldeneye got my vote. TND never quite hit that unique and classic Bond moment point that Goldeneye did, despite it having excessive periods of downtime. A less vanilla henchperson would have pepped the film up no end.
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Brilliant idea
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It always comes down to a battle between Goldeneye and Tomorrow Never Dies, which make for a very respectable one, two punch. GE is the icon and gets all the praise for saving the series (which it does deserve), but I think TND is the better film overall.
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The easiest choice for me in GE… The only Bond movie I’ve seen in which the whole audience cheered and applauded; when bond pulled the crashing plane out of the nose dive and we hit the title sequence.
From beginning to end that movie answered every question about Bond relevance and ability to still enthral with a Hell Yes!
But let’s not mention the dodgy closing credits song. You have to wonder what blackmail material Serra had to get that through.
TND has one of the best ever PTS! It has Dr Kaufman, it has the muted piano sound booth brawl. It has the inventive BMW chase…
But it also has the awful mills & boon Hatcher seduction scene. It has what felt to me like a rushed, by the numbers finale. and sadly Price’s limp villain. I don’t blame Price - he’s a really good actor who had little to no time to prep due to last minute casting.
Ah, if only crapfest MI:2 hadn’t made Antony Hopkins (originally cast as Carver) do reshoots, then we’d no doubt have a very top tier villain in TND.
We missed out on Hannibal lector playing Robert Maxwell in Bond… it’s a cruel world.
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And yet, I absolutely love Price’s Carver. He’s so over the top and Price is just having so much fun playing him. Also, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you guys which one I voted for…
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I’m a fan of his performance, too. The stealth boat shootout is one of my biggest guilty pleasures. Bond going all out with machine guns and the missile launcher installation. The bloodied and wounded Bond using the chain to swing across the water as the ship burns is also a great visual.
Goldeneye: muscular and confident. I don’t know if it’s just Serra’s score, but this just has such an edge compared to every other post-Cubby movie. Great cast from top to bottom, and Peak Pierce, if only because it’s the only movie where he doesn’t seem visibly depressed.
Tomorrow: about the least you’d expect from a Bond film. If they churned out one of these every two hears I’d be… grimly satisifed? That said, the film is basically DOA for me as soon as Bond hits the water after the HALO jump. Another good cast.
World: the only Bond movie that couldn’t be fixed by tweaks - the bones of this are absolutely beyond repair, and it needs a ground-up rewrite. Baffling, dull, grey.
DAD: obviously awful, to the extent you wonder how any footage got approved for release, but strangely likeable, like a dog that got brain damage after getting hit with a car.
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Me too! Such an uninspired and imo overrated finale (at least around here)
Ouch! The truth hurts! Even the QoS script feels more polished than this.
GOLDENEYE – After a SIX year hiatus, Bond was most definitely back! At last we got Pierce Brosnan as James Bond, and, after a cruel tease nine years previously, he didn’t disappoint. He WAS 007. Every scene he’s in with Famke Janssen’s Xenia Onatopp crackles. He’s great with the one-liners and he’s great with the fight scenes. His finale fight with Sean Bean’s Alec Trevelyan is one of the series’ very best (Bond vs. Grant is obviously #1 and the other contender is the Necros vs. Blayden butler). Brosnan and Bean really go at it–so much so you can practically feel it. The cutting of the fight is a little too quick for my tastes, but I can follow it, which is not the case for much of Quantum Of Solace. Bean is great as Trevelyan who is clearly a match for Bond and it’s nice to see 007 fight a rival 00. Janssen is terrific as Xenia and she clearly enjoys her role. She’s the best femme fatale of the series (sorry Fiona Volpe, you’re #2). Izabella Scorupco is very enjoyable as Natalya Simonova and does a great job. Alan Cumming is suitably amusing and somewhat irritating in his Boris Grishenko role. The stunts are amazing. None more so than the bungee jump off the dam in the PTS. Nothing screamed Bond is back better than that–and that was in the first TWO minutes! Bond’s escape from the Russian library and the ensuing the tank chase are awesome as well. Everything works in this film–well, almost. Eric Serra’s score is a big disappointment. It works better by itself than it does playing with the film. The one big exception is Run, Shoot And Jump. That was a solid tune. But overall, GoldenEye is a delight and one that, like The Spy Who Loved Me, will go down as one of the most important films in the series.
TOMORROW NEVER DIES – The third of the three most underrated Bond films in the series. The suspenseful, yet action packed PTS is fantastic. My favorite of the series. Love how everyone at MI6 is left having to view the results of Bond’s actions to get to the nuclear missile as it’s played out over a lone stationary camera. They can’t see him, and yet they see all the mayhem he is causing not knowing how close he is to succeeding or failing all the while an incoming missile is rapidly approaching to destroy everything. Absolutely awesome. The plot with its fake news storyline is solid and ahead of its time. Michelle Yeoh is really good as Wai Lin and I love how everything seems to come so easy for her–particularly in the Hamburg break-in–while Bond has to fight his way out. Jonathan Pryce is clearly enjoying himself as Elliot Carver and I like his take. Brosnan gives his best performance as 007. Once again the stunts are terrific–the car park chase, in particular, stands out as does the “silent” fight in the recording booth, and the aerial dogfight in the PTS. I also like Sheryl Crow’s theme song, but it is not as good as k.d. lang’s brilliant Surrender. The finale gets a little too machine gun heavy for my tastes, but it’s not a deal breaker. Regardless, TND is a terrific follow up to GoldenEye and deserves more appreciation than it seems to get.
THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH – A lot of potential, much of it unrealized. Nowhere was this more so than Robert Carlyle’s Viktor “Renard” Zokas. They set him up as this badass that could be even more of a badass due to the bullet in his brain. But other than his introduction with a really hot stone, it’s never really dwelt upon again. If they could have demonstrated it further in the submarine fight with Bond, they could have saved the premise but, alas, they did not. As a result, his character comes off a little on the lame side and one of the lesser henchmen of the series. I put much of the blame on director Michael Apted who, I feel, should never have been given the Bond gig. He’s not an action director and he proved it here. John McTiernan would have been a much better choice. I think he would have helped the film immensely. The stunts, other than those in the PTS, seem to be a little underwhelming. And although I am a David Arnold fan and enjoy his TWINE score, his effort on the parahawk chase doesn’t seem to make the chase more exciting or dangerous. I like the tune, but I don’t think it fully meshes in this scene, or maybe the action just isn’t quite good enough to match the music. Regardless, something seems to be missing in this scene even though the parahawk idea is a great one. Denise Richards’ acting also is a disappointment. She’s much better playing a bitch than a good girl, although maybe saying all that technical gobbledy gook took it out of her. On the other hand, Sophie Marceau rocks it as Elektra King as does Maria Grazia Cucinotta in a smaller role, and Garbarge’s theme song is spectacular. The EON team had good ideas in this one but weren’t quite able to flesh it out.
DIE ANOTHER DAY – I think this one’s been rated a little too harshly by many people. It’s not a great film, but it is not as bad as people think either. It’s actually entertaining, if over the top. As usual, Brosnan gives a great performance, Toby Stephens’ Gustav Graves is at his mustache-twirling best sans mustache, Rosamund Pike is great as Miranda Frost, the PTS is enjoyable, the Blades sword fight is highly entertaining–great to see a Bond sword fight–and I love the Aston Martin Vanquish. (I have no problem with the invisibility of the car. Bond movies are always about being a little bit into the future. Scientists are working on that stuff then and now, but while they’re not to the Bond world’s abilities, I still appreciate the production team’s attempt.) I also like, but not love, Madonna’s theme song, which does work well with the main titles. One other bit on the down side is the underwhelming CGI. While CGI, in and of itself, isn’t bad (even though the Bond people have rightfully so been proud of doing their stunts for real), what is bad is that the CGI wasn’t better executed. Nowhere is this more noticeable than in the parasurfing scene. It doesn’t kill the scene for me, as it apparently does others, but it does take one out of the film. I love the idea of Bond escaping by parasurfing to safety, but it needed more from the VFX crew. Overall, the film has its issues, but it still manages to entertain, which is what a film is supposed to do.
So my rankings are:
- GoldenEye
- Tomorrow Never Dies
- Die Another Day
- The World Is Not Enough
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