Bond Films: Bond by Brosnan

Pierce Brosnan's history with the Bond franchise is an interesting one. Like Roger Moore, he was considered as a Bond replacement long before he actually got the role; he was originally considered to replace Moore, but at the time was obliged to play Remington Steele on TV, and so the producers went with Timothy Dalton (who had also been considered earlier . . .maybe that's the norm). As a kid Remington Steele was one of my favorite shows, so when Brosnan was tapped to play Bond, I knew ahead of time he'd be a good one.

Brosnan Bond is a pretty capable blend of the preceding Bonds. He's as down-to-Earth as the Connery era, fights a range of villains as diverse as Seventies Bond, and smooth and lethal as Eighties Bond. He's sharp, witty, and deadly. Brosnan Bond's plots and villains are generally good, with some weird detours, such as the genetically-modified trans-racial villain of Die Another Day.

Brosnan Bond saw the fall of the Soviet Union and started after the end of the Cold War; ironically, this Bond doesn't fight SPECTRE, the global conspiracy Ian Fleming created as an adversary simply because he didn't believe the Cold War would last. Instead, this Bond fights mostly variations of the Mad General, whether Russian or Chinese, and the mega-wealthy industrialist in Tomorrow Never Dies. While this seemed fresh at first, by 2002 Brosnan Bond was a little lost. Who exactly was he fighting? What was his raison d'etre?

Pierce Brosnan, like so many Bonds before him, aged out of the role. A tall glass of water at first, by the end of his run he was approaching 50 and getting into creepy Roger Moore territory, sleeping with woman potentially young enough to be his daughter. Furthermore, while he kept fit, the overabundance of special effects barely concealed a lack of engaging plot - generally a plot so ridiculously implausible that the audience had no emotional investment . we may like Bond for being able to go through the motions, but we need more than the motions to get us through.

I like Brosnan Bond. I don't like to rate the Bond actors against each other, because they each stand on their own, but I think he was one of the better ones - smart, sexy, lethal. Brosnan Bond was everything a Bond should be. Unfortunately, he was saddled with a question of that that is, and but the end of his run, we were all desperate for an answer.