TotalTelly.co.uk

Devoted to Popular, Cult and Retro TV

James Bond - Goldeneye (Ultimate Edition 2 Disc Set) [1995]


RRP: £16.99
Our Price: £4.62 (subject to change)

Editorial
Amazon.co.uk Review

The film that marked the successful rebirth of the 007 franchise, which had laid dormant for over half a decade, GoldenEye remains Pierce Brosnan’s finest moment as Britain’s most famous secret agent.

The plot? This one involves the Russian mafia, a rogue agent and a powerful satellite, although realistically it’s the standard 007 formula at work. Thus, there’s gadgets, girls and plenty of action, with the plot trying to squeeze in where there’s room.

There are several reasons though why GoldenEye works so well. Firstly, it successfully ushered in a new cast, with Judi Dench’s M, Samantha Bond’s Moneypenny and Robbie Coltrane’s Valentin Zukovsky all marking their 007 movie debut. Then, the baddies are strong, although Sean Bean’s ruthless 006 is overshadowed by Famke Janssen’s career-making performance as Xenia Onatopp. And then there’s that vital 007 ingredient--the action. From a stunning pre-credits sequence, which is arguably the film’s highlight, through to several high-tempo action moments throughout the rest of the film, it’s highly enjoyable stuff, and impossible to resist.

Finally, there’s Brosnan. Arguably the most successful Bond since Sean Connery defined the role, his laid back, hard-edged charm serves him well, and he never looked more comfortable as 007 as he does in his maiden outing.

In short, GoldenEye is not only a terrific Bond movie, it’s a strong action movie full stop. --Jon Foster

Editorial
DVD Description

The effortlessly suave and sophisticated Pierce Brosnan makes his acclaimed debut as Agent 007 in this riproaring espionage thriller featuring the most eye-popping opening sequence yet! When an MI6 agent (Sean Bean) turns rogue and plans world domination with a terrifying satellite-borne weapon, Bond must pursue his former ally to Cuba, Monte Carlo, Switzerland and even Russia, all while dodging a sexy, deadly femme fatale (Famke Janssen) who will stop at nothing to put the "squeeze" on the intrepid spy!
Editorial
Special Features

THE ULTIMATE EDITION CONTAINS: NEVER BEFORE RELEASED ON DVD: DECLASSIFIED: MI6 VAULT Deleted Scenes With Introductions by Director Martin Campbell • Directing Bond: The Martin Chronicles • Building a Better Bond: Pre-Production Featurette • The Return of Bond - The Start of Production Press Event • Driven to Bond: Remy Julienne • Anatomy of a Stunt: Tank Versus Perrier • Making it in Small Pictures: Derek Meddings • On Location With Peter Lamont GoldenEye™: The Secret Files • Pre-Title Storyboard Sequence With Director Martin Campbell

007 MISSION CONTROL Interactive Guide Into the World of GoldenEye™ THE COMPLETE SPECIAL FEATURES LIBRARY: MISSION DOSSIER Audio Commentary Featuring Martin Campbell and Michael G. Wilson • The World of 007 - Original 1995 Television Special Hosted by Elizabeth Hurley • The GoldenEye™ Video Journal Promotional Featurette • "GoldenEye™" Music Video Performed by Tina Turner MINISTRY OF PROPAGANDA Original Trailers, TV Spots, Photo Gallery & Radio Communications

Editorial
Synopsis

Directed by Martin Campbell, GOLDENEYE makes the transition to a more modern image for the James Bond series. Bond's out-of-date womanising is presented with a feminist challenge from the newly cast Judi Dench as an impenetrable M, and Samantha Bond as a wiser and more forthright Moneypenny. The action sequences--replete with helicopter hi-jinks and copious explosions--are complex and stylish, making the film a polished sensation. This instalment in the series introduces actor Pierce Brosnan in the role of suave, debonair, and irresistible 007. Despite the end of the Cold War, James Bond still finds himself pitted against nefarious Russians who want to rule the world. This time around, his enemies are a gang of mobsters and former military men who have gained access to the Goldeneye, which can cut off electrical currents in London. Alec Trevelyan (Sean Bean) is the leader, with General Ourumov (Gottfried John) an additional threat. Sizzling Bond babe Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen) is the sleek robber who, with Ourumov, successfully steals the Goldeneye, which the villains plan to use in their quest to control financial markets around the globe. However, this grizzly group of scoundrels is no match for Bond, who constantly outwits their attempts to assassinate him. Bond rescues the tough and lovely Natalya Simonova (Izabella Scorupco)--who was caught in Trevalyan's deadly web--and she eventually helps Bond turn the tables on his foes as he uses his quick instincts, innovative weapons, and cool gadgetry to save the day.

Remastered??? A great film spoiled.
Review date: 2008-08-30 Rating: 8 out of 10

Picture quality in some scenes from the first half of the movie appear very grainy. It's saying something when the Goldfinger print is better than a more recent Bond. Do they bother checking their products before they release them? Also, the film has been cropped at the sides, so that the computer screen readouts of the Goldeneye tracking system don't fit on the screen. The previous edition had none of these problems, so what went wrong?

Similar Products

Reviews


Interesting, in that the villain is ex-MI6
Review date: 2008-08-02 Rating: 8 out of 10

Goldeneye introduced us to Pierce Brosnan as James Bond. After a 6 year hiatus it was good to see 007 back in action. Brosnan is okay, but some would maybe argue that he's a bit too smooth (a la Remington Steele) and lacks the hard edge of Connery or even Daniel Craig.

Goldeneye (named after Ian Fleming's house in Jamaica where he wrote the 14 original Bond books) has its moments, such as: the dam jump in the pre-credit sequence, the tank chase through St. Petersburg, Onatopp (a celebrated baddie in the Pantheon of Bond girls) and the final duel with Sean Bean somewhere in darkest Cuba.

I never liked the music to the four Brosnan Bonds. It's far too industrial and techie sounding (lacking the lush, suave orchestration of the earlier films). In terms of continuity, Q is still here with plenty of gadgets (although he is far grumpier) and in keeping with true events at MI6, M is a female.

Goldeneye, overall, is ok. If you like Bond then it's a must for your collection, but I would rank it somewhere in the bottom half of the 21 Bond films to date (better than e.g. Licence To Kill or For Your Eyes Only, but not in the same league as e.g. Goldfinger or The Spy Who Loved Me. Just an opinion.

"I think you're a sexist, misogynist dinosaur - a relic of the Cold War."
Review date: 2008-06-01 Rating: 8 out of 10

Goldeneye is the seventeenth Bond movie in the series, and the first of four with Pierce Brosnan in the lead role. Indeed, it is the best of his four. Following a Scot, an Australian, an Englishman and a Welshman, Bond was now played by an Irishman. In my view, Brosnan was a good Bond, but the lack of control over his part that Dalton insisted upon meant that this and the other three of his movies led to Bond becoming a parody of his true self. Like the final movies of Roger Moore in the role, Brosnan's script emphasised to an absurd degree the superhuman strengths and luck of the part, as well as the equally absurd humour. Humour is good in Bond but it must be a dark and brutal humour to be credible: playing Bond for laughs shows a lack of self-respect for the man. 'Goldeneye' was the one Brosnan movie in which these aspects were most under control.

`Goldeneye' followed a little hiatus of six years since the previous movie, `Licence to Kill'. During that time, the Soviet Union finally came crashing down, and the Bond team had to face the fact that the Cold War was over. There was also a great technical revolution during that time as Bond finally moved into the digital age. As well as a new Bond, there is a new M in Judie Dench, it being a conscious decision to make the female parts tougher. (The title at the head of this review is her description of Bond.) It's over an hour before Bond gets his first kiss.

There were a number of new faces in the Bond production team too, most notably of course the director, Martin Campbell, who contended that, "If we don't get this right, the series is dead." As the extras on the double-DVD show, Campbell is a man with a lot of energy (to put it diplomatically). Other new faces include Daniel Kleinman (for the late Maurice Binder), and Eric Serra doing the soundtrack.

There are the usual amazing stunts (jumping off a dam) and the usual ludicrously unbelievable stunts (freefall to catch up with and steer to safety a plane, tank chase through Saint Petersburg). Bond still escapes a million bullets without a hair falling out of place (but see the note about the censors, below). Thankfully the undercranking of the camera was kept to a minimum, and was not enough to make it obvious.

Despite being only one commentary, there is a generous helping of extras on the double-disc version. In the commentary we learn that the amazing opening dam jump was done for real, was a world record, and was done on the first take: it was the only take! We also learn that Sean Bean himself had once been a contender for the Bond role. I was interested also to learn that the censors do not like to see blood, or to see bullets hitting their mark, but they do not mind high body counts! So my previous gripes about Bond movies should be mostly laid at the censors' door rather than the producers'. (But it would be interesting to see a woman direct a Bond movie.)

There are the usual deleted scenes, anatomies of scenes, location-scouting, model-making featurettes. One of the best is a thirty-minute `Secret File', where you learn the production secret that comprises cat-litter and self-raising flour? There is also a good forty-minute TV special, `The World of 007', introduced by Liz Hurley. It's over-the-top and camp, but features some interesting interviews with the likes of John Barry, Roger Moore, and a variety of actors and production team staff.


Boys with Toys
Review date: 2008-01-10 Rating: 8 out of 10

This was Bond back as fun, not serious - and a successful transition it turned out to be. It is hardly the reimagining it seemed back then, more of a return to the tongue in cheek of Roger Moore - except this time with an actor who could pull it off.
There's lots to like - Famke Jensen is one of the most deliciously over the top hench(wo)man in decades, Sean Bean plays 006 with great style, and there are surprising cameos - Robbie Coltrane, Minnie Driver, for example. Eric Serra's synth-rich score works pretty well, with enough of the classic themes coming through at moments you want them to - like the start of the glorious tank chase. And let's not forget two of Goldeneye's key successes - Judi Dench as M was certainly surprising casting, but it turned out to add a hugely successful character foil to Bond's `misogynist dinosaur'. Aside from Judi Dench bringing the role of women in Bond movies into the modern world, Isabella Scorupco plays a fine traditional Bond girl, with added sassiness. And then there is that whole self aware aspect - Bond is recognised for being a `relic of the cold war', and there is even a few half heartedly psychological moments where Gasp! We are encouraged to understand the character a little better.
Locations are the best in some time for a Bond movie, with St Petersburg appearing in person... surely the ultimate sign the cold war has ended, when a Russian city appears in a Bond movie without Prague or some other Eastern European city standing in for it...
Negative points if you want to quibble... there's something about Bond with a machine gun that's just not right. Bond is supposed to be pinpoint and precise, and it's a shame the Brosnan movies got away from that to have him spraying bullets all over the place. And a few of the characters are just a bit too cartoonish, drawing one out from an otherwise well paced and well plotted movie.
All in all though, there's no doubt that Pierce Brosnan's first stab at the Bond role made it his own for a decade. Goldeneye is one of those perennially entertaining and rewatchable movies that made the Bond franchise so durable.

As usual, the ultimate edition has every extra imaginable, significantly more than the previous Special Edition. Sadly however, we do not have the making of documentary that accompanied all of the previous movies. It's a shame that for this ultimate edition they could not have put together some sort of retrospective documentary with interviews as they had for the previous movies, and merely put together all the pre-existing material they could find.
Picture and sound are immaculate.


An excellent package for an excellent Bond film - but a flawed transfer
Review date: 2007-12-12 Rating: 10 out of 10

After six years in limbo as EON and the new owners of MGM/UA found themselves and the series locked in legal action at lawsuits, Timothy Dalton decided too much time had elapsed to renew his licence to kill, ushering in the Brosnan era. At the time hailed for `saving' the series (just as Dalton and Moore had been before him), the star's own bitter feud with the producers and the success of Daniel Craig in reinventing the role seem to have combined with disappointment with some of Brosnan's subsequent Bond films to the point where it's harder and harder to find any Bond fans with a good word to say about his tenure. But in 1995 GoldenEye was certainly welcomed with open arms and blockbuster business and it holds up remarkably well.

If there's a problem with Brosnan's take on Bond, it's that there really isn't much of one. He looks good in the suits, does what's required but where every other Bond actor brought something new or of their own to the part, Brosnan is more of a composite of previous Bonds, an across-the-board demographic-pleasing but nothing radical Bond, veering more towards the unflappable suavity of Roger Moore than the danger of Connery or Lazenby or the gritty bleakness of Dalton. But then, if Brosnan brings nothing new but his face to the part, in many ways, like The Living Daylights, GoldenEye is a kind of transitional Bond film rather than anything as radical as Casino Royale, the old Bond formula recognisably in place with all the surface gloss and expected ingredients but with a post-Cold War spin to dust off some of the more clichéd aspects.

While the plot isn't exactly realistic, revolving around a scheme to use a stolen Russian electromagnetic pulse satellite weapon to wreak a lucrative revenge for past wrongs done to the villain's family, the treatment isn't as over the top or as arch as it could have been (for that, you need to see Brosnan's final outing, Die Another Day). The writing is much stronger than usual, the film plot-led and finding a good mix between the action you expect and some insights into the characters you don't, for the first time in the series' history the leading ladies really do have decent roles, and Martin Campbell's direction is particularly powerful: while it is a little short on long shots, betraying his TV background, it's got none of that going-through-the-motions feel to many of the more prolific Bond directors' efforts. Terry Rawlings' editing is also interesting and often highly effective, while even Eric Serra's much criticised score - that hideous post-title sequence car chase aside - is often stronger than it's given credit for even if it is perhaps too giant a leap from the traditional Bond sound for most purists.

If the film is still highly enjoyable, the Ultimate Edition DVD, however, is a definite mixed blessing. The new extras are particularly good - 4 deleted scenes and several new featurettes, including ones on the tank chase, car stunts, model work, pre-production, location scouting and Campbell's directing (which much footage of him in a bad mood on a particularly bad day). There's also the press conference introducing Brosnan, the original TV promo `GoldenEye - The Secret Files' and all the extras from the original release (though c Curiously the extra TV spot from the laserdisc release is still is missing). It's also uncensored in the UK this time, Xenia's headbutt restored (though the alternate shot replacing it in the UK version is now gone). All of which SHOULD make this a perfect disc - with one notable caveat. Unfortunately the new transfer is not, with the picture wildly overcropped - it's still in the 2.35:1 ratio, but top, bottom and both sides have been cropped, which is very noticeable on the computer readouts in the film. For that reason, if you aren't bothered about the extras you might want to stick with the previous special edition, which IS in the right ratio.

Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
Tcheky Karyo
Pierce Brosnan
Desmond Llewelyn
Gottfried John
Michael Kitchen

Creators:
Pierce Brosnan (Primary Contributor)
Tcheky Karyo (Primary Contributor)

Director(s):

Recording label: Mgm Home Ent. (Europe) Ltd.
Manufacturer: Mgm Home Ent. (Europe) Ltd.
EAN: 5035822357297
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 2
Format: Colour, PAL, Widescreen,
Release date: 2006-07-17
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Audience rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
Region code: 2
Running time: 124 minutes
Theatrical release date: 1995
Language: Greek (Subtitled)
Language: Dutch (Subtitled)
Language: Norwegian (Subtitled)
Language: Finnish (Subtitled)
Language: English (Subtitled)
Language: Danish (Subtitled)
Language: Swedish (Subtitled)
Language: Hindi (Subtitled)
Language: English (Original Language)

Add to Cart

© 2006 Darren Hester, DesignsByDarren.com, Some Rights Reserved.
Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional