Back in June of this year, in Episode 18, I introduced my son Thomas to his first James Bond movie. We started with the Sean Connery classic Goldfinger. As I explained to him at the time, the Bond movies don’t necessarily need to be watched in order. For this week’s Film at 11 podcast, we jump forward thirty years, and three actors, to take a look at Pierce Brosnan’s first 007 adventure, GoldenEye.
While I don’t think I would necessarily argue for GoldenEye being the best Bond movie, it’s one of the most fun and remains one of my favorites. After the disappointing box office returns of the last Timothy Dalton entry (for the record, also a favorite of mine), the franchise producers took some time to retool and revamp the series with a new star and a new attitude. The James Bond of the 1990s would be not just a gentleman spy, but also a full-tilt action hero, apt to carry an assault rifle as often as his iconic Walther PPK pistol. I saw this movie in the theater in 1995 and had an absolute blast with it. A few nit-picks here and there aside, I still love it to pieces.
Thomas had a really good time with this one as well.
| Title: | GoldenEye |
| Year of Release: | 1995 |
| Director: | Martin Campbell |
| Watched On: | Fandango at Home |
| Also Available On: | Blu-ray Amazon Prime Video Various VOD rental and purchase platforms |
Video Streaming
MGM first released GoldenEye on Blu-ray in 2012, sold both individually or as part of an elaborate Bond 50 box set. Unfortunately, due to a series of poor decisions, GoldenEye suffered decidedly the worst-looking video transfer of the entire set. As of the time of this writing in 2025, all subsequent reissues have just been copies of that same lousy disc.
A 4K remaster for the film later showed up on VOD rental and purchase platforms, but as of yet has not been released on 4K Ultra HD physical media. Considering that the streaming version is 4K resolution but only Standard Dynamic Range, I expect that the studio (under new ownership by Amazon) will probably remaster it again for HDR before issuing it on disc.
Currently, the film is streaming on Amazon Prime Video, but only in 1080p high-definition resolution. From the quick peek I took at it, I wasn’t entirely certain whether that copy came from the 4K master (downgraded to 1080p) or from the over-processed Blu-ray master. Rather than take that chance, I rented the movie from Fandango at Home in order to watch it in 4K for this viewing.
I would have loved to make some screenshot comparisons, but my attempts to take screengrabs from a web browser wound up downgraded even further to only 480p standard-definition and were useless for that purpose. I suppose I need a better graphics card in my computer.
The 4K streaming copy of GoldenEye looks substantially better than the Blu-ray. The egregious edge enhancement and Digital Noise Reduction artifacts have been cleaned up. The 2.35:1 image may not be amazingly sharp, but is crisper and more detailed than the Blu-ray. Colors are occasionally very vivid as well, especially the bright red of Xenia’s sports car.
On the other hand, the picture looks to have undergone some contrast boosting, which results in quite a lot of black crush and loss of shadow detail. While the 4K stream is by far preferable to the Blu-ray, it still leaves room for improvement. I hope that a 4K Ultra HD remaster with HDR will eventually come along to fill that need.
I often complain that modern movie sound mixes are too timid with bass, and pine for the more dynamic movie soundtracks of the 1990s. GoldenEye, however, may take that too far. The entire Dolby 5.1 soundtrack is swamped in bloated and obnoxious bass. The rest of the track has crisp gunshots and makes fun use of aggressive directional effects, but the overly-boomy bass simply becomes fatiguing after a while.
I’ll also note that when I streamed from Fandango at Home, the movie suffered two or three brief audio dropouts in random scenes. That problem may be platform or device specific. Because I was watching with my son, I wasn’t able to back up and replay the scenes to see if those dropouts were repeatable.
Related
- GoldenEye
- James Bond 007 (other)
- Fanke Janssen
- Sean Bean
Note: All screenshots on this page were taken from the standard Blu-ray edition of the film and are used for illustration purposes only.
The Video File Blog 
Hi Josh. So glad you both had such fun with this one. I love each Bond actor, but Timothy Dalton is my favourite because I feel he played him the closest to the character of the books.
This was a great intro for Pierce. I always wish Clive Owen had been cast during the 1990’s.
Maddy
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The first Bond I ever saw in the theater. Yes the BD is absolute garbage. I’m wondering how the remaining UHD box sets will shake out since there was only one good Brosnan and two, maybe three Moore films that I’d want to own.
I definitely want OHMSS and the two Dalton Bonds, though.
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