Recommendations of the Editorial team
The women’s names are half the fun: Xenia Sergeyevna Onatopp and Natalya Fyodorovna Simonova. The Soviet Union had lost the Cold War, but the sharpest weapons were still around. And no one is hotter than Xenia Onatopp, in action for the Russian terrorist organization “Janus” and played by Famke Janssen as an ardent Amazon. Natalya Simonova, played by Isabella Scorupco, is her antipode: a loyal, sweet-faced sweetheart who of course saves the world, because Natalya has no guile. So James Bond is once again dealing with both archetypes: the whore and the mother.
Six years had passed since The Breath of Death. There were contractual difficulties between the production company Eon and MGM/United Artists, which delayed the new film. Apparently the unloved Timothy Dalton gave up the role, even though the contract called for one more film. Albert R. Broccoli, who had stuck with the fierce stage actor, hired Pierce Brosnan in 1994, who looked as if he had been born James Bond. The Irishman was supposed to play the role of his life in 1986, but shortly before the finish, the television series “Remington Steele” was renewed – Brosnan had to fulfill his contract.
The woman – or the world? Bond has to make a decision
Four screenwriters wrote “GoldenEye,” and that obviously shows in the film. Bond must start over by reassuring himself that he is still his old self. But when Brosnan confronts his nemesis Xenia Onatopp in the casino, he introduces himself with a smile that’s a little too mocking and self-assured. He’s just TOO GOOD looking, he’s too elegant and too athletic, he’s not a man of irony. Sex with Xenia is of course an act of combat, staged as a silhouette with strained moans and grunts: a war between the sexes, she is on top, but he is on guard. Xenia is the woman he has to get around – Natalya is the woman he (maybe) loves. And that’s why in the end he has to choose between Natalya’s life and the world.
It doesn’t make a Bond film. Martin Campbell presents the topoi with crystal clarity: the jump from the dam, the car races, the rocket impact, the tank ride, the showdown. Sean Bean is the burly traitor Trevelyan, Gottfried John is the sleazy General Ouromov (with a similar name to Oblomov), Judi Dench is the new “M”, Alan Cumming is the computer nerd Boris Grishenko, Robbie Coltrane and Minnie Driver have small roles, and Samantha Bond, funnily enough, plays Miss Moneypenny.
In the plot, all global improbabilities come together, only for a private tragedy to be told at the end: Bond’s renegade partner Trevelyan is a villain because he was once adopted as a descendant of the “Lienz Cossacks” and envied his friend Bond – the dubbing comically claims “Linzer Cossacks” as if they were pastries. If “GoldenEye” seems confusing, it’s only because the later Brosnan films didn’t exist yet: the purring is nonsense, but manageable. Everyone speaks slowly and understandably, everything is woodcut.
But: Pierce Brosnan had a trailer for the Ferrero-Rocher television commercial.