GoldenEye is not merely a masterpiece; it is a model for how future James Bond films ought to be made. It establishes its characters against a history already in place, declining to pause for elaborate origin stories or flashbacks. The origin story, once so well told on the silver screen, has become a curse upon modern cinema, and it is one that I feel began with comic-book superhero films and their near-constant reboots. Let us begin with the way GoldenEye perfectly introduces new faces with a sense of prior existence already intact. Valentin Zukovsky, played by the late Robbie Coltrane, arrives with a limp, a grudge, and a precise recollection of the evening James Bond shot him. A few lines of dialogue and a gesture with a gun are all it takes; the history is simply there. We understand the nature of their relationship at once: former Cold War adversaries, mutually wary, still nursing grievances, yet grudgingly willing to do business. The audience need not be told the full story of their earlier encounter in a flashback. Alec Trevelyan, portrayed by Sean Bean, is handled in much the same way. First introduced in the pre-title sequence as 006, he reappears as the villain in the film's plot twist. The revelation that his parents were Lienz Cossacks gives his grievance its weight, conveyed through conversation rather than exposition. Even Bond's parents are mentioned only once in dialogue that highlights the contrast between the two orphans: "We're both orphans, James. But where your parents had the luxury of dying in a climbing accident, mine survived the British betrayal and Stalin's execution squads. My father couldn't let himself or my mother live with the shame. MI6 figured I was too young to remember. And in one of life's little ironies, the son went to work for the government whose betrayal caused the father to kill himself and his wife." That is all. No flashback, no explanation of the Aiguilles Rouges, no flashback sequence of the formative traumas for both Bond and Trevelyan. The detail serves only to sharpen the contrast between the two men and lend weight to Trevelyan's grievance. The audience is trusted to accept that Bond has a past and that it has shaped him without having to watch it unfold in an origin story. GoldenEye understands that a well-placed line, delivered by an actor who understands the character, can accomplish more than twenty minutes of retrospective narrative. The film simply gets on with the matter at hand; its characters arrive already formed. That is precisely how Pierce Brosnan's Bond arrives too: fully formed as Agent 007, a licensed-to-kill spy, and Brosnan is excellent in the role, he plays it with an ease and lightness that never descends into mere pastiche. There is charm in abundance, but there is also a discernible brutal edge; one senses the cold professional beneath the smile. His exchanges with Dame Judi Dench's M are particularly well acted. The new M is introduced without ceremony: she is the new authority of the post-Cold War world, while Bond remains the same secret agent, unchanged by the times. We do not have to be reintroduced to Bond after the six years hiatus between Licence to Kill and GoldenEye; we already know who Bond is. Then there is Samantha Bond's portrayal of Moneypenny. Like Lois Maxwell opposite both Sean Connery and Roger Moore, she shares wonderful chemistry with Brosnan's Bond and an evident delight in their banter. She holds her own with considerable style; one never feels she is merely imitating Maxwell. She makes the role her own while remaining unmistakably Moneypenny. The film is impeccably cast, and every actor delivers. The result is a world that feels larger than the immediate plot, populated by characters who seem to have existed long before the cameras arrived. It was a splendid start to Brosnan's tenure. #GoldenEye #PierceBrosnan #SeanBean #JamesBond