007 - GoldenEye

In GoldenEye, [Brosnan's] performance achieves darker, Conneryesque tones. And the movie's relatively realistic take on Bond -- realistic, that is, by the series' flamboyant standards -- helps to give his work weight.

James Bond, the British spy with a taste for the high life and a license to kill, comes back in surprisingly hardy and supple form.

Under the direction of Martin Campbell, GoldenEye is a film that respects its predecessors. No new heights are scaled here, but it's nevertheless a handsome, well-engineered film that gets the job done.

Giving 007 a sleek bullet of a BMW instead of his trusty old Aston-Martin isn't exactly going to turn the world of Bond upside down. And, as it turns out, neither does the casting of Brosnan.

Brosnan's right there, born to play the part. Perhaps by design, he captures a bit from each predecessor -- the panache of Sean Connery, the cheeky humor of Roger Moore, the serious grit of Timothy Dalton.

It's not a good sign that what I remember most about the movie is the lovely blue color of 007's new BMW convertible.

Supercharged with spectacular, thundering, brain-numbing fun.

I don't know whether the Bond series has a future, but if Xenia Onatopp ever returns to try for world domination, he may finally get a battle worth fighting.

Check your political correctness at the door and have a blast -- this is the best Bond since The Spy Who Loved Me.

With a dynamite opening reel that showcases the series renewed vigor, GoldenEye is two hours of well-executed thrills, high-tech mayhem and one-of-a-kind comedy.

At the most basic, crowd-pleasing level, Goldeneye does the trick.

James Bond's latest outing is big, and it's brash -- in short, it's double-oh-fun.

Entropy, the inexorable running down of an energy system, may have overtaken the Bond saga.

Brosnan, however, looks set to stay. He'll never recapture the amused cool of the young Sean Connery, but he does overcome the handicap of looking like a humorless male model.

There's something a mite pathetic about our culture still clinging to 007, but it's hard to deny that this is one of the most entertaining entries in the Bond cycle.

Richard Kiel, you are missed.

Among the better of the 17 Bonds and, perhaps more important for today's audience, a dynamic action entry in its own right, this first 007 adventure in six years breathes fresh creative and commercial life into the 33-year-old series.

Brosnan, as the best-moussed Bond ever to play baccarat in Monte Carlo, makes the character's latest personality transplant viable (not to mention smashingly photogenic), but the series still suffers the blahs.

Though GoldenEye is an acceptable Bond picture, it's a reasonable facsimile more than any kind of original, and it's hard not to feel a certain weariness while watching it unfold.