Goldeneye
Tags: flashback

Plot synopsis:
In 1986, at Arkhangelsk, MI6 agents James Bond and Alec Trevelyan infiltrate a Soviet chemical weapons facility and plant explosives. Trevelyan is captured and gunned down by Colonel Arkady Grigorovich Ourumov, but Bond flees as the facility explodes.
Nine years later, in Monte Carlo, Bond follows Xenia Onatopp, a member of the Janus crime syndicate, who has formed a suspicious relationship with Charles Farrel, a Canadian Navy admiral. As Onatopp crushes the admiral to death with her thighs during sex, his credentials are stolen by Ourumov, who uses them to board a French Navy destroyer with Onatopp to steal a Eurocopter Tiger helicopter. Ourumov and Onatopp later fly the helicopter to a bunker in Severnaya, Siberia, where they massacre the staff and steal the control disk for GoldenEye, an electromagnetic Soviet satellite weapon from the Cold War. They program the GoldenEye to destroy the complex, and escape with programmer Boris Grishenko. Natalya Simonova, the lone survivor, contacts Boris and arranges to meet him in Saint Petersburg, where he betrays her to Janus.
In London, M assigns Bond to investigate the attack. He flies to Saint Petersburg to meet CIA operative Jack Wade, who suggests that Bond meet with Valentin Zukovsky, a former KGB agent and business rival of Janus. Zukovsky arranges a meeting between Bond and Janus. Onatopp surprises Bond at the Grand Hotel Europe and attempts to kill him, but he overpowers her. She takes Bond to Janus, who reveals himself as Trevelyan; he faked his death at Arkhangelsk but was badly scarred by the explosion. A descendant of the Cossack clans who collaborated with the Nazi forces in the Second World War, Trevelyan had vowed revenge against the British after they betrayed the Cossacks, which drove his father to kill Trevelyan's mother and himself. Just as Bond is about to shoot Trevelyan, Bond is shot with a tranquilizer dart.
Bond awakens, tied up with Natalya in the helicopter, which has been programmed to self-destruct. They escape but are captured and transported to the Russian military archives, where Minister of Defence Dimitri Mishkin interrogates them. Just as Natalya reveals the existence of a second satellite and Ourumov's involvement in the Siberian massacre, Ourumov arrives and kills Mishkin. Intending to frame Bond for the murder, he calls the guards, but Bond and Natalya escape. In the ensuing firefight, Natalya is captured. Bond steals a tank and pursues Ourumov through St. Petersburg to Trevelyan's train, where he kills Ourumov. Trevelyan escapes and locks Bond in the train with Natalya, setting it to self-destruct. As Bond cuts through the floor with his laser watch, Natalya triangulates Boris' satellite dish to Cuba. The two escape just before the train explodes.
Bond and Natalya meet Wade in Cuba and borrow his plane, where the same night, they make love. The next day, while searching for GoldenEye's satellite dish, they are shot down. Onatopp rappels down from a helicopter and attacks Bond. After a fight ensues, Bond shoots down the helicopter, which snares Onatopp and crushes her to death against a tree. Bond and Natalya watch water draining out of a lake, uncovering the satellite dish. They infiltrate the control station, and Bond is captured. Trevelyan reveals his plan to rob the Bank of England before erasing all of its financial records with GoldenEye, concealing the theft and destroying Britain's economy.
Natalya programs the satellite to initiate atmospheric re-entry and destroy itself. As Trevelyan captures Natalya and orders Grishenko to save the satellite, Boris unwittingly triggers an explosion with Bond's pen grenade (received earlier from Q), which allows Bond to escape to the antenna cradle. Bond sabotages the antenna, preventing Grishenko from regaining control of the satellite. Bond and Trevelyan fight on the antenna's suspended platform, which finishes with Bond holding a dangling Trevelyan by his foot. Bond releases Trevelyan, who plummets into the radio dish and is subsequently crushed to death by falling debris. Boris survives, but is then frozen solid by a cascade of liquid nitrogen. Natalya commandeers a helicopter and rescues Bond. It drops them in a field, where the couple are rescued by Wade and a team of Marines.

Review: the missing Bond film?. 'Goldeneye' is the story of Ian Fleming's exploits in the Secret Service during World War II, and plays like the Bond movie we had all forgot - incidentally, Charles Dance, who plays Fleming, would have made a wonderful Bond in his day; what a shame it never happened.With a TV feel but a strong and absorbing plot (including a fun role for Julian Fellowes as Noel Coward), Goldeneye delivers on all fronts, becoming an interesting curio on the side of the main 007 films.Strong support from Phyllis Logan, Patrick Ryecart and other familiar faces from 1980s TV makes this move along smoothly. It has emotion, tension, gambling, Martinis, and a bit of sex. Just like the perfect Bond mix in fact.. Decent Time Passer/Quasi-Bond Film. This film features the adventures of Ian Fleming, the real life spy who wrote the original James Bond novels.This film plays vaguely like a Bond movie, though with more realism and less action.  It does have the same sort of flirtatious attitude to it, though. This makes the film a rather interesting curiousity piece for Bond fans.Lots of allusions to Bond, not just direct references, hinting that a number of things in Fleming's life got put into the novels.  I'm not sure about the accuracy of these allusions, but they do enhance the film.  And one death in the film affectedly more emotionally than the vast majority of Bond movie deaths.It is a bit dry at times, and does have a bit of a TV movie feel to it. That said, overall I was pleasantly surprised, and this is certainly above average for a TV movie.  Bond completists should definitely check this one out.. Worth Watching. Typical TV movie-type bio on Fleming's life. Though Dance does a good job in the role (and even looks a lot like Fleming), the producers try to make the film seem like a pseudo-Bond film with the pretentious Bond film music intruding over scenes that don't require it, and showing Dance in Bond type scenarios, which of course Fleming was never in. At least it does not shy away from the darker parts of his life - his affair with a socialite married woman who would become his future wife; his affinity for sexual fetishes such as pseudo rape and whipping; the death of his girlfriend in an London air raid (she dies while on an errand to fetch his handmade cigarettes).The period detail looks accurate and it was fortunate that they were able to actually film the Jamaica scenes at the actual Goldeneye estate. My other major fault with the film is the casting of Julian Fellowes as Coward. He neither looks like Coward or talks like him. It's a shame as Coward was a close friend of Fleming's and is such a historical figure.There were so many better parts of Fleming's life and career they could have touched on, considering the large amount of historical figures he knew and worked with during that era of WWII and the Cold War. This seems like a watered down biography, and I think that the film's low budget probably had a lot to do with this. Hopefully one day PBS will do a proper job of Fleming in a miniseries. Until then, this will have to do. By the way, skip any of the other current film "bios" of Fleming. They are atrocious, mostly fictional and are a large disservice to the life of such a fascinating author.. A celebration of Britishness. Don't expect a James Bond film - there's not much in the way of action, stunts or gadgets. There are, however, several good-looking women, an interesting story of espionage and international intrigue, and an respected actor, Clarles Dance, in the role of Ian Fleming.The film (for it is just under two hours in length) is a biography, based on the real-life wartime adventures of Ian Fleming, who was a commander in the British Navy. The story is inter-cut with scenes of a slightly older Fleming filming an interview from his Jamaican retreat, Goldeneye. His friend Noel Coward is never far away, and supplies much of the humour.The feature is worth watching, mainly for the the depiction of how the James Bond novels were inspired from real life events.