If you’re looking for rich, thought-provoking cinema, a James Bond movie is probably not what you’re going to watch. Both Ian Fleming’s original novels and most of the twenty-five 007 films convey a general theme of heroism and patriotism, focusing on the defense of Western freedom and the British way of life from Soviet and other threats. Beyond that, however, they’re generally straightforward action and adventure stories.

There are, however, a few exceptions. A small number of Bond movies deliver much more interesting stories and explore important topics. Chief among these is 1995’s GoldenEye, which celebrates its thirtieth anniversary this year. It revived what many thought was a dead franchise after a six-year hiatus punctuated by the fall of the Soviet Union, the franchise’s traditional enemy faction.

Rather than sidestepping the elephant in the room, GoldenEye addresses it directly with a storyline built around the dying days of the USSR. The opening title sequence (which, in a Bond movie, is always an elaborate, abstract music video) features the destruction of Soviet iconography such as Marx and Lenin statues and hammer-and-sickle monuments. The story opens with Bond seeing his partner Alec (Sean Bean) get summarily executed during a 1980s raid on a Soviet facility. Then, after the title sequence, it jumps forward to the 1990s to follow the theft of a new European military helicopter that’s flown into Russia by a mysterious criminal organization.

As these two seemingly disconnected events come together, the story explores the clash between ex-Soviet personnel and politicians and post-Soviet Russia’s (unfortunately superficial and short-lived) attempt to adopt a market economy and more Western style of government. For example, Russian General Ouromov (Gottfried John) longs for the “glory” of the Soviet Union’s former power and pursues deals with criminals to try and become “the next iron man of Russia,” bringing him into conflict with a patriotic minister of justice keen to expose his corruption.

The richest part of the story, however, is its exploration of the British mistreatment of the Lienz Cossacks, who were forcibly repatriated to the USSR to suffer in Stalin’s camps after helping the British during World War II. The film’s main villain turns out to be the orphan of two of these Cossacks, raised by a surrogate British family from an early age, who harbors a deep-seated sense of resentment towards a country that betrayed his parents and whose intelligence services tried to hide his true origins from him.

Released at a time when Bond films were increasingly seen as an outdated remnant of 1960s spy mania, GoldenEye goes to great lengths to update the franchise for 1990s audiences without compromising on the its core identity. Bond’s British patriotism is preserved intact, but his characteristic womanizing (some of which was controversial even in the 1960s) comes under heavy fire from M (Judi Dench), the new female head of Mi6, Britain’s foreign intelligence agency. She chides him for being “a sexist, misogynist dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War,” which is a direct acknowledgement of how many at the time regarded the franchise itself. Similarly, the movie’s “Bond girl” Natalya (Isabella Scorpio) dresses Bond down for his seemingly cavalier attitude toward killing that previous Bond girls had tended to overlook or even find appealing:

Natalya: You think I’m impressed?! All of you! Your guns, your killing, your death . . . for what?! So you can be a hero? All the heroes I know are dead.

Bond: Natalya, listen to me . . .

Natalya: How can you act like this? How can you be so cold?

Bond: It’s what keeps me alive.

Natalya: No. It’s what keeps you alone.

GoldenEye’s Bond, however, is still fundamentally Bond—he’s suave, composed, romantic, and ruthless when he needs to be. The film’s success in modernizing the character without changing his essential qualities is thanks in large part to actor Pierce Brosnan, who achieves a near-perfect balance of the past actors in the role—the severity of Timothy Dalton, the humor of Roger Moore, and the sophistication of Sean Connery. By successfully updating the Bond franchise for the 1990s without fundamentally compromising his Bond’s character, the film demonstrated that the essential values of heroism, courage, and defending freedom are timeless.

No discussion of a Bond movie would be complete without talking about the film’s action, and GoldenEye certainly doesn’t disappoint in that regard. It opens with a breathtaking real-life stunt: a 720-foot jump off Switzerland’s Verzasca Dam that kicks off a consistently impressive spate of practical stunts throughout the film. Most impressive is the scene in which Bond chases the villains, who have kidnapped Natalya, through the streets of St. Petersburg in a stolen tank, casually destroying various structures and monuments along the way. The fact that the film, despite its less-than-favorable depiction of the Russian military and government, succeeded in obtaining permission to film the sequence on location in the city is remarkable, and this helped further cement the film as a post-Soviet installment in a series that had always featured other locations standing in for the Soviet Union in the past.

GoldenEye is, in many respects, Bond at its best. The film’s willingness to directly address the changed global context and tackle important subjects set the stage for its outstanding follow-up Tomorrow Never Dies to broach the modern issues of China’s territorialism and media manipulation of world events. GoldenEye belongs on any best-of list of Bond movies and spy movies in general.

"Billionaire hedge funder Bill Ackman has been mocked on X for advising young men struggling to find a date to go up to a woman in public and simply say: 'May I meet you?'

"Claiming that he found success himself with this technique, Ackman added: 'I think the combination of proper grammar and politeness was the key to its effectiveness. You might give it a try.'

"Some felt his advice was hopelessly naive and unrealistic. But at a time when 45 per cent of men aged 18 to 25 have never asked a girl out in person, he should be applauded for offering some kind of solution to our current crisis.

"Increasingly, we are seeing a generation of 'lost boys' opting out of education, employment, marriage and fatherhood, in favour of more dystopian pursuits, often found online.

"Scott Galloway, an NYU professor, investor and podcaster, published a bestselling book this month, 'Notes on Being a Man,' which highlights the problem and encourages men to 'get out of the house,' 'take risks' and 'don’t let rejection stop you.'

"I would add another piece of advice to this list for my fellow men: be interesting."

~ Rob Henderson from his column 'You Don't Need a Better Pickup Line. You Need a Better Life.'

A friend who wrote a thesis several years ago on common law solutions to environmentalism asked me this question a few weeks ago, and I've only recently got around to answering (I've paraphrased the question just a little):

Q: How did Maori activists [he asks] attain the apparent status they now possess in the environmental movement? In other words, why do NZ environmentalists bow to Maori prejudices? When I wrote my thesis this absurdity was not evident as it is now. Please can anybody shed some light on this?

So here's my rather belated answer: Read 'Were Māori environmentalists?' 

Bob revisits capital and interest theory to show why the textbook result “interest = MPK” only holds in a one-good world, and why in actual markets the interest rate emerges from time, prices, and capital valuation—not raw productivity.

Dr. Wanjiru Njoya explains how “phony civil rights” expand state power at the expense of self-ownership and property, and offers a conservative-libertarian case for liberty rooted in reality.