Apparently there are 27 James Bond movies (so far). I had seen only four of them—all before 1970, back in the Connery era—so I figured it was time to start watching again.

I was wrong.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I decided to watch Goldeneye, with Pierce Brosnan playing the role of Sean Connery. Everyone knows that the real 007 looks like Connery, so Brosnan never looked right to me. But that’s OK; the real problem is that the movie was boring, and that’s the last thing a Bond film is supposed to be.

A few observations:

• This was released in 1995, several years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. The movie’s scenes in Russia were convincing—at least to me, but what do I know?—though there wasn’t much tension there.
• I had expected to see a lot of cool gadgetry, and that expectation was indeed fulfilled. But gadgetry is not enough to sustain a two-hour movie.
• There were too many explosions. Yes, I know that’s par for the course, but it became tedious after a while.

So I think I’m done with Bond. I’ll skip the other 22 films.

Categories: Movies & (occasionally) TV