A gauche avec Isabella Scorupco,à droite avec Sean Bean

‘Goldeneye’: Bona Fide Bond

By Desson Howe
Washington Post Staff Writer
November 17, 1995

Men can no longer carry on as they used to. But no one seems to have debriefed James Bond. In "Goldeneye," an entertaining collision of old values and new, the latest Bond (Pierce Brosnan) is still a dashing rascal in a tuxedo, defending queen and country from megalomaniacal psychotics, but never too busy for a little lady-killing.

Oh, this movie pretends to tackle the politics. M, Bond's imperious boss at MI6, is now a woman (Judi Dench), who takes a withering view of Bond's sexual shenanigans. But she's seen as a humorless, cobwebby bean-counter, rather than the new spirit of liberation.There's another politically correct moment when Miss Moneypenny (an old character played by new actress Samantha Bond) playfully informs 007 that his flirtatious comments are grounds for sexual harassment.

"What's the penalty?" he asks.

"Someday you'll have to make good on your innuendos," she says.

In other words, Carry on Bond, old boy. Do it for the Empire.

At the most basic, crowd-pleasing level, "Goldeneye" (Bond producer-for-life Albert Broccoli's 17th) does the trick. Naturally, the world's in big trouble again. Russian military renegades and a mysterious mastermind want to destroy the London financial market with state-of-the-art electromagnetic satellite zappers.Bond, whose mission takes him to Russia and Cuba, needs to identify the saboteurs and, as usual, fight his way out of a plethora of tricky, breathtaking situations. In a scene that's likely to produce the loudest audience response, for instance, Bond chases the bad guys through downtown Moscow in a tank.

Nowadays, you can almost program an exciting action movie (see "Batman Forever," "Die Hard With a Vengeance" and "Under Siege 2: Dark Territory" for further details). And as these kind of spectacles go, Bond pictures are among the easiest to reprise. "Goldeneye," written by Michael France, Jeffrey Caine and Bruce Feirstein, leaves few cliches unturned.

There's a girly opening song (written by Bono and the Edge, performed by Tina Turner), in which golden-hued babes undulate among Lenin-era statues and relics. Once again, super-inventor Q (regular Desmond Llewelyn, who's appeared in 15 of the 17 Bond flicks) shows 007 a new bag of deadly toys, including an explosive ballpoint pen that proves—in Bond's cheesy-witty parlance—the pen can be mightier than the sword. Then of course, there's Bond's perpetual martini order—shaken, not stirred.

On naughtier fronts, Bond dabbles romantically with nice girl Natalya Simonova (Izabella Scorupco), a computer programmer who survives an attack on a Russian space station and becomes an ally. He also has some bruising run-ins with bad girl Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen), who experiences quasi-orgasms whenever she participates in violence (sex and fighting are pretty much the same thing for her).

New Bond man Brosnan can't be faulted for much. He's always been generically sexy, a sort of programmed cover boy. In this new venture, he's appropriately handsome, British-accented and suave. He doesn't have a soul to speak of. But then again, not everyone can be Sean Connery. And given the inevitability of sequels and new blood, he's as dynamic a chiseled operative as anyone could hope for.