GoldenEye

Pierce Brosnan finally got his shot at playing James Bond in 1995's GoldenEye, and he made it count. After a six-year gap following Licence to Kill, the franchise roared back with a story that dragged 007 into the post-Cold War world. Martin Campbell directed this sleek, muscular entry, which pits Bond against a former MI6 colleague nursing a decades-old grudge. The cast is stacked: Sean Bean as the vengeful Alec Trevelyan, Izabella Scorupco as a resourceful programmer caught in the crossfire, and Famke Janssen as Xenia Onatopp, an assassin who kills with her thighs. Judi Dench's debut as M signaled a shift, her first scene dismissing Bond as a 'sexist, misogynist dinosaur.' Shot on location in St. Petersburg, Monaco, and at Puerto Rico's Arecibo Observatory, the film cost $60 million and pulled in over $352 million worldwide. It proved Bond still had plenty of life left.

The title comes from Ian Fleming's Jamaican estate, where he wrote the Bond novels. Fleming named it after a wartime intelligence operation he was involved in. The movie was also the first Bond film with an original screenplay, not based on any Fleming story. Michael France wrote the initial draft, with Jeffrey Caine and Bruce Feirstein polishing it. The theme song, performed by Tina Turner and written by U2's Bono and The Edge, earned a Golden Globe nomination. Eric Serra's electronic score divided fans, but the film's action set pieces, especially the tank chase through St. Petersburg, became instant classics. The bungee jump off the Contra Dam, performed by stuntman Wayne Michaels, was the highest ever off a man-made structure at 220 meters. [edit]

In 1986, James Bond and fellow MI6 agent Alec Trevelyan infiltrate a Soviet chemical weapons facility in Arkhangelsk. They plant explosives but are discovered by Colonel Ourumov, who executes Trevelyan with a shot to the head. Bond escapes by leaping off a cliff on a motorcycle and boarding a departing plane as the facility explodes.

Nine years later, Bond is driving a female psychiatrist through the mountains near Monaco during a mandatory psychological evaluation. He gets distracted by a woman in a red Ferrari, leading to a road race that ends at a casino. The woman, Xenia Onatopp, leaves with a Swiss admiral and kills him during sex by crushing him with her thighs. MI6 connects Onatopp to a Russian crime syndicate called Janus.

At the Severnaya space weapons facility in Russia, programmer Natalya Simonova works alongside hacker Boris Grishenko. General Ourumov and Onatopp arrive to inspect the GoldenEye, a Soviet orbital weapon that uses electromagnetic pulses to destroy electronics. Onatopp opens fire on the staff, killing nearly everyone. Ourumov steals the activation keys, and Boris betrays his colleagues by helping program the weapon to destroy the facility. Natalya barely escapes the explosion.

M briefs Bond on the GoldenEye theft and assigns him to investigate Janus. Bond travels to St. Petersburg, where he reunites with CIA contact Jack Wade and former KGB agent Valentin Zukovsky, now a Russian mafia boss who lost his leg in an earlier encounter with Bond. Bond discovers Janus is led by someone who knows MI6 protocols intimately. He tracks Natalya, the only surviving witness, and the two form an uneasy alliance. They are captured by Ourumov and taken to a military archive, where Bond stages a spectacular escape by stealing a T-55 tank and pursuing Ourumov's convoy through the streets of St. Petersburg. The chase ends at a cemetery of Soviet statues, where Bond and Natalya board Trevelyan's armored train.

Aboard the train, Bond confronts the leader of Janus: Alec Trevelyan, who faked his death in Arkhangelsk. Trevelyan reveals his father was a Cossack who fought alongside the Nazis and was forcibly repatriated to the Soviet Union by the British after the war, where he was executed. Trevelyan plans to use the GoldenEye to destroy London's financial district, triggering a global financial crisis, then retreat to a hidden satellite control center in Cuba.[edit]