GoldenEye

San Francisco Examiner by

It is both the best-looking James Bond film and the best-looking James Bond.

Washington Post by Desson Thomson

New Bond man Brosnan can't be faulted for much. He's always been generically sexy, a sort of programmed cover boy. In this new venture, he's appropriately handsome, British-accented and suave.

The New York Times by Elvis Mitchell

Mr. Brosnan, as the best-moussed Bond ever to play baccarat in Monte Carlo, makes the character's latest personality transplant viable (not to mention smashingly photogenic), but the series still suffers the blahs.

Washington Post by Hal Hinson

And yet, Goldeneye proves the character's viability as a pop icon: It isn't a great movie, but it's great, preposterous fun.

ReelViews by James Berardinelli

Also, there's more action in Goldeneye than in previous 007 entries -- enough to keep a ninety-minute film moving at a frantic pace. Unfortunately, this movie isn't ninety-minutes long -- it's one-hundred thirty, which means that fully one-quarter of Goldeneye is momentum-killing padding.

Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum

There's something a mite pathetic about our culture still clinging to 007, but it's hard to deny that this is one of the most entertaining entries in the Bond cycle, which started with "Dr. No" (1962).

Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman

Still, just about everything in Goldeneye, from its rote nuclear-weapon-in-space plot to the recitation of lines that sound like they're being read off stone tablets (''Shaken, not stirred!''), has been served up with a thirdhand generic competence that's more wearying than it is exhilarating.

San Francisco Chronicle by Peter Stack

When the action is extreme, GoldenEye is supercharged with spectacular, thundering, brain-numbing fun.

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

This is the first Bond film that is self-aware, that has lost its innocence and the simplicity of its world view, and has some understanding of the absurdity and sadness of its hero.