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Wednesday, November 7, 2012

James Bond Retrospective: Part 5 Pierce Brosnan

It's funny how things work out sometimes.  Pierce Brosnan was originally going to get the part that ultimately went to Timothy Dalton.  Because there were rumors Pierce Brosnan might be the next James Bond, his television show Remington Steele got picked up for another season.  That meant Brosnan couldn't take the role of Bond, the rumors were squashed with the announcement of another season of Remington Steele and the choice of Timothy Dalton, and so Remington Steele gets cancelled.

But two movies later with a less than stellar Dalton, we get in my opinion is the greatest Bond movie in the entire franchise, Goldeneye!  And who is the man to bring James Bond to life?  Pierce Brosnan.  When I think of James Bond, I think of a guy like Pierce Brosnan.  He had all the cheeky one-liners of Roger Moore, the charisma of Sean Connery, and the straight up cold as ice, no nonsense of a George Lazenby.  Somehow Brosnan made it all work to perfection.

In many ways Goldeneye was a game changer.  It dealt with a "relic of the cold war" struggling to be relevant.  There wasn't any more rogue Soviets to fight but instead international criminals or in Tomorrow Never Dies, media moguls taking yellow journalism to the extreme.  The action scenes were all modern shoots with less fakey fighting like we saw in the Roger Moore movies.  If there is one critique of them is that they focused too much on action and explosions that the characters are forced to take a back seat to all the action. 

Brosnan played James Bond for four movies.  The best by far is Goldeneye.  It revolutionized the character and the tie-in video game is still one of the best out there.  If you haven't seen Goldeneye yet, put it on your must have for Christmas list.

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