After a break of six years since the release of Timothy Dalton’s second and final outing as James Bond, LICENCE TO KILL, Roger Moore’s original successor Pierce Brosnan (he was touted as a Bond in 1986, but then was contracted to continue in REMINGTON STEELE after the publicity surrounding his casting as 007 made worldwide headlines) took over for the first of four films in spectacular fashion.
Bond is assigned by new female M (Judi Dench) to track down a new EMP-based weapons system called ‘Goldeneye’, which has been stolen by a couple of insiders, General Orumov (Gottfried John) and feisty Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen, X-MEN) at a base at Severnaya, Russia. Onatopp has links to a ‘Janus’ crime syndicate in St. Petersburg
Bond’s trail leads him to Vladimir Zukovsky (Robbie Coltrane) and the desire to set up a meeting with somebody from ‘Janus’ – who turns out to be an old acquaintance, Alec Trevelyan (Sean Bean), a fellow ‘double-oh’ who turned sides and has intentions to cause a global meltdown using the Goldeneye device….
From the classically-choreographed pre-credit sequence of Bond leaping off a dam to a weapons facility to its’ bang-for-buck climax, GOLDENEYE happily returned Bond to the world with consistency, but in a reflection of the times and the changes that had happened in the six years since LICENCE TO KILL, with a real sense of exotic energy that reminded one of YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE and FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE.