GoldenEye

Six years after the release of License to Kill, James Bond returned to the big screen in the form of Pierce Brosnan, who had formerly been best known as private detective Remington Steele in the television series of the same name. It also marked the beginning of the tenure of Dame Judi Dench in the role of M, which she would continue to appear as until 2012's Skyfall.

As the first Bond film to take place after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the film's plot revolves around the changing nature of the British spy game, with James Bond initially being portrayed as a man whose methods (on full glorious display in its 1986 prologue) are obsolete now that the cold war era has come to an end. Of course, it's not long before its clear that new threats are rising from the ashes, as well as from the ranks of MI6 itself, in the form of the film's villain, Alec Trevelyan, who was once 006 to Bond's 007. If only someone had told him that he was being played by Sean Bean, maybe he would have seen his eventual horrible demise coming from a mile away . . .

In comparison to Brosnan's other appearances as Bond, this one easily tops them all, featuring spectacular action set pieces (the tank chase scene in St. Petersburg always sticks out in my mind), numerous characters whose actors manage to make their cartoonish theatrics charming (Famke Janssen as the sadistic Xenia Onatopp, Robbie Coltrane as the ex-KGB officer turned Russian gangster Zukovsky, and Alan Cumming as the slimy hacker Boris Grishenko are particular stand outs), and Brosnan's performance as Bond sets a tone that comfortably falls somewhere between the more humorous Roger Moore and the grimly serious Timothy Dalton. I do think it's a bit odd that the title of the film is shared by Ian Fleming's estate on Jamaica (as well as an aborted Allied plan during WWII that Fleming also formed), but as stated in the entry regarding Timothy Dalton's tenure, by now they had run out of Fleming stories to adapt.

Attempting to reboot a series that has gone silent for six years is certainly a challenge, and the fact that this remains in my own top five list of Bond films certainly says something about its effectiveness.

That said . . .

2: The World Is Not Enough. The quality of Brosnan's other appearances as Bond dropped precipitously after Goldeneye, and the fact that I'm listing a film in which Denise Richards plays an American nuclear physicist named Dr. Christmas Jones as the second best should tell you something about the quality of the other two. The plot is something of a muddle involving a plan to blow up a nuclear submarine in order to sabotage a Russian oil pipeline in the Bosphorus, but the film's two villains (Sophie Marceau as the at first seemingly innocent Elektra King, and Robert Carlyle as Victor "Renard" Zokas) do enough heavy lifting to keep one engaged. This film also marked the last film in which Desmond Llewelyn portrayed Q, sending him off with true affection.

3: Die Another Day. Upon a second viewing, Die Another Day is actually not quite as atrocious as I had recalled, but it does suffer from two deep flaws: First, at the end of the day (ahem), it's nothing more than a remake of Diamonds Are Forever, complete with a villain undergoing a complete facial transplant and an orbital laser gun, but without any of the campy fun that made that film a joy to revisit. Secondly it features some of the most egregious effects I've ever seen in a Bond film to date. And I'm including Moonraker in that company. The scene during which a clearly CGI Bond is surfing always makes me groan. And, an invisible car? Ugh. That said, there's a decent sword fight and it is interesting to see an opening title sequence that actually advances the plot (dealing with Bond's imprisonment and interrogation by the country of North Korea.) For the most part, however, its derivative and forgettable.

4: Tomorrow Never Dies. This was an odd choice for last place, especially because I find it far more memorable than both The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day combined, but in spite of the appearance of Johnathan Pryce as the megalomaniacal media tycoon Elliot Carver and Michelle Yeoh as the Chinese spy Wai Lin, this film falls rather flat for me, especially due to the lack of any real menace from its villains, in particular Gotz Otto as Carver's Euro-Trash henchman who is an expert at . . . Chakra torture? I did find the concept of an updated full blown villainous William Randolph Hearst creating a war to sell papers to be be interesting, but here it's far too obvious to capture my attention for longer than the opening title song being sung by Sheryl Crow. I do enjoy the bit with Vincent Schiavelli playing an assassin with a medical degree, but again, it's a scene played more for laughs than for suspense, and in a spy thriller that's not usually what to shoot for.

Stayed tuned for the grand finale (for now), of Daniel Craig!