In 1986, James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) and Alec Trevelyan (Sean Bean), MI6 agents 007 and 006, infiltrate a Soviet chemical weapons facility in Arkhangelsk, with Bond performing a bungee jump to gain access to the facility and meet Trevelyan there. Before their infiltration, Trevelyan asks, "For England?" and Bond answers, "For England." Later, Bond witnesses Trevelyan being caught by the facility's commanding officer, Colonel Arkady Grigorovich Ourumov (Gottfried John). Ourumov then orders Bond to surrender. Bond remains behind a trolley of chemicals as he moves. When he emerges again, a soldier who nervously fires at him is shot by Ourumov. Bond walks out to surrender just as Ourumov appears to execute Trevelyan, then Bond releases several cylinders of chemicals. In the middle of the resulting confusion, Bond resets the charge timers from six minutes (as discussed with Alec earlier) to three, leaves the facility and attempts to escape in a plane. The plane is attacked by soldiers, but Bond is able to escape by grabbing one of the soldiers' Cagiva motorbikes, dropping off a cliff in it and re-entering the falling plane. As Bond steers the plane away from the cliffs, the bombs go off and destroy the site. Nine years later, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Bond is undergoing an assessment by Caroline (Serena Gordon), an MI6 psychological and psychiatric evaluation doctor, while driving an Aston Martin DB5 in the hills above Monte Carlo when he is pursued by a woman driving a Ferrari F355. After the chase ends, Bond seduces Caroline. That evening, Bond sees the Ferrari outside the casino in Monte Carlo. Bond enters the casino and ends up playing baccarat against the Ferrari's driver. She wins the first hand against Bond, but after he raises the stakes, the luck turns Bond's way. Bond watches from a distance as the women returns to a boat and takes some pictures of her that he sends back to London. He receives a print-out and a message from M's secretary, Miss Moneypenny (Samantha Bond) after they identify the woman as Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen), a Georgian fighter pilot, a member of the Janus crime syndicate and a sadistic lust murderer. Bond is assigned to observe Onatopp and investigate her involvement in a demonstration of the Eurocopter Tiger, a French hi-tech attack helicopter which is invulnerable to an electromagnetic pulse (EMP). Later that night, Onatopp has a sexual relationship with a Canadian Air Force captain who is piloting the Tiger at the demo. She kills him by crushing his chest between her thighs, and his ID card is taken by Ourumov, who has now risen to the rank of General. On the day of the military demonstration, General Ourumov and Onatopp use the stolen ID card to gain access to the ship where the demo is taking place. They kill another of the Tiger's pilots and take his place. Bond discovers the body of the Canadian Air Force pilot while investigating the boat on which he had seen Onatopp. Realizing their plan, Bond takes a boat to the demonstration but is too late to prevent the Tiger's theft. Returning to London, Bond oversees MI6 staff including Bill Tanner (Michael Kitchen), M's chief of staff, as they monitor a Space Weapons Control facility in Severnaya, Siberia, after the stolen helicopter turns up there. Ourumov and Onatopp attack the facility, where Ourumov aims a weapon in space at the control facility to erase all evidence of his theft of the satellite access controls for a second similar weapon. An EMP blast suddenly hits the site as the first weapon is deployed, destroying the facility and three Russian fighter jets sent to investigate a distress call emanating from the facility, and knocking out all satellite systems in orbit above it. Ourumov and Onatopp use the Tiger, which is unaffected by the EMP blast, to escape. A systems programmer named Boris Grishenko (Alan Cumming) conspires with Ourumov and Onatopp, and he also escapes the facility. In the London MI6 office, the newly appointed female M (Judi Dench's first appearance) assigns Bond to investigate after MI6 determine the blast came from a Soviet-era satellite armed with a nuclear EMP space-based weapon, code-named "GoldenEye." Although Janus is suspected of initiating the attack, Bond thinks that Ourumov has some involvement due to the weapon system requiring high-level military access. After the monitoring signal in London is restored, it picks up one sign of life of which General Ourumov is unaware. Meanwhile, Russian Minister of Defence Dimitri Mishkin (Tchéky Karyo) hauls in Ourumov for questioning over the Severnaya incident. For Bond's investigation, Q (Desmond Llewelyn) provides him with a new BMW Z3 roadster and a pen that when clicked three times will arm a grenade inside it, which can be disarmed if it is clicked three more times. Traveling to Saint Petersburg, Bond is advised by his CIA contact Jack Wade (Joe Don Baker) to meet former KGB agent-turned-gangster Valentin Zukovsky (Robbie Coltrane) and have him arrange a meeting with Janus. Escorted to the meeting by Onatopp, Bond discovers that Janus is led by Trevelyan, who faked his execution at Arkhangelsk and now carries a scar as a result of the attack there, and learns that Trevelyan is seeking revenge for the deaths of his parents, who were Lienz Cossacks, who collaborated with the Axis powers against communists in the Second World War, then surrendered to the British at the end of the war with a promise of citizenship, but were repatriated to the Soviet Union and were tortured and killed for their betrayal of communists. Trevelyan's parents survived the Soviet purge but killed themselves out of shame. Trevelyan has Bond sedated and bound to a chair in the stolen Tiger. When he comes to, he finds that there is a woman with him, Natalya Simonova (Izabella Scorupco). She is the other survivor of the Severnaya attack picked up by the monitors in London, having worked at the facility as a programmer. After escaping from Severnaya, Natalia was able to contact Boris from a computer shop and make plans to meet him, but the place where they agree to meet was where she was similarly sedated before being put in the Tiger by Ourumov, who wants to cover his tracks against Mishkin. Bond activates the Tiger's eject mechanism before the helicopter is destroyed by its own missiles, then he and Natalya are captured by Russian troops and taken before Dimitri Mishkin (Tchéky Karyo) for interrogation. In the heated argument between Bond and Mishkin, Natalya affirms that Ourumov was involved in the use of GoldenEye on Severnaya and Boris also survived the attack and is now working for Janus in operating a second GoldenEye satellite. Before Mishkin can act on the information, Ourumov arrives, kills him and captures Natalya. Bond escapes, commandeers a T-55 tank and uses it to pursue Ourumov and Natalya across St Petersburg. The chase leads to a missile train used by Janus, which Bond is able to derail by firing the tank's gun at the tracks. Bond boards the train and finds Trevelyan, Natalya and General Ourumov. Bond aims his gun at Ourumov, but Trevelyan holds a weapon to Natalya's back and gives Bond the choice between killing Ourumov or saving the girl. Bond tells Ourumov that Trevelyan is a Lienz Cossack, turning Ourumov against Trevelyan. Bond uses the distraction to shoot Ourumov before Trevelyan traps Bond and Natalya inside the train and gives him six minutes to leave it, "the same six minutes you gave me," which Bond understands as code that he actually has only three minutes, referring to what he did at Arkhangelsk. Natalya finds an internet connection on the train and uses a "spike" to track Boris to the jungles of Cuba before the program is terminated. She and Bond then escape from the train using his gadget watch before the bomb destroys it. Bond and Natalya travel to Cuba. In a small plane borrowed from the DEA, while flying over a lake in the area, the pair are shot down. After they crash land, Onatopp rappels down from a chopper and attacks Bond, trying to crush his chest underneath her thighs, but Bond shoots at the chopper, damaging it enough to make it lose control while Onatopp is still attached to the cable she used to rappel down. Her body gets caught between two trees, snapping her spinal column. Bond and Natalya then make their way back towards the lake they flew over earlier, and soon uncover a hidden base beneath it, concealing a satellite dish, and proceed to infiltrate it. Bond is captured while trying to rig explosives to destroy the base, and learns from Trevelyan that he intends to use the second GoldenEye to devastate London to conceal the theft of financial records from the Bank of England, meaning that, as he puts it, "the United Kingdom will re-enter the Stone Age" and "learn the price of betrayal - inflation adjusted for 1945." Natalya uses her credentials to access the satellite's guidance systems and reprogram it to fire its retro rockets, causing the satellite to re-enter the atmosphere, before she is also captured. As Boris attempts to undo Natalya's reprogramming, he nervously clicks many times on a pen that he had confiscated from Bond, which happened to be the one supplied to him by Q. Bond mentally keeps track of all of Boris's clicks in order to work out when the pen's hidden grenade is armed and when it is disarmed. When Boris pauses his clicks at a moment when the grenade is armed, Bond seizes the opportunity to knock the pen out of Boris's hands and into a puddle of chemicals spilled from an earlier fire-fight. When the grenade goes off, it causes a chemical explosion that allows Bond and Natalya to escape. To prevent Boris from regaining control of the satellite, Bond proceeds to sabotage the dish's antennae by jamming its gears with a metal pole. Trevelyan tries to intercept him, and the ensuing fight between the two culminates in Bond dangling Trevelyan below the antennae. Trevelyan asks Bond, "For England?" repeating a line he had used when he was agent 006, but this time, Bond answers, "No, for me" before letting go and watching Trevelyan plummet to the bottom of the dish. By this time, the GoldenEye satellite comes far enough down into the atmosphere for its heat to destroy it. Natalya soon rescues Bond in a commandeered helicopter, moments before the antennae malfunctions and explodes, destroying the base. The debris falls onto Trevelyan and crushes him to death. Boris finally undoes Natalya's reprogramming, albeit too late to save the satellite, but moments after declaring himself invincible, some liquid nitrogen canisters rupture, freezing Boris to death. After landing in what appears to be a safe meadow, the pair prepare to enjoy some solitude together but are interrupted by the arrival of CIA agent Wade and a team of U.S. Marines with helicopters who had been hiding all around the meadow, who escort them to the Guantanamo Bay Naval base.
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