ROBERT COTTON Trevelyan works because he IS James Bond. What would Bond be like if he turned bad? Here's your answer. Could have gone much farther, but didn't need to storywise. The final reveal of his scheme is handled fairly well, but pulls this incredibly dangerous man down to the level of a high-tech bank robber. Revenge is a dish best served gold. Ourumov is barely functional. Xenia is a guilty pleasure. The look on her face as she kills the satellite technicians is so, well, over the top, that I can't help but grin to see someone who enjoys their work that much. Well played, well written, stylish and evil, she easily takes the focus from Bond in all of their scenes together. What Fatima Blush wanted to be. JAMES McMAHON Alec Trevelyan - Here's a really nice variation on the classic Bond villain, who is usually somewhat avuncular.  Alec Trevelyan is Bond's contemporary and serves several classic formula roles.  He's not just the main villain, he's also young enough to fill the hench-person role, and interestingly, he fills a standard 007 female role of betrayer, too.  These help make him more interesting and complex than the usual Bond formula would allow for.  It's our good luck that he's played by the terrific Sean Bean, who has a lot of the characteristics to be a great Bond himself.  I'll have to make do with him as stalwart British fighting hero, Richard Sharpe, instead. Xenia Onatopp - Fun, fun, fun.  She's a cross between Fatima Blush and Fiona Volpe.  Not as wild as the former, and not as sexy as the latter, but all around pretty terrific character, ably played by X-Men's Famke Janssen. ED WERNER Alec Trevelyan. The whole concept of a fellow 00 agent setting Bond up and turning traitor is fantastic. I'm actually kind of confused as to why no one thought of this before. The plot is great, if a little over the top with the Goldeneye satellite system (but hey, it is a Bond movie). Sean Bean as Trevelyan is very believable as a former 00 and the climactic fight scene between the two of them is very well choreographed and filmed. Brosnan and Bean play off each other very well, you can almost see that these two guys have a history between them. This is a classic pairing of good against evil in the Bond series.

TOM ZIELINSKI Xenia Onatopp - The exquisitely beautiful Famke Janssen is perhaps my favorite Bond girl of all.  I didn't like the forced Georgian accent much, but the rest is of the Onatopp character is just about perfect.  Her freaky orgasmic pleasure when killing is as intriguing as it is disturbing, and her roll with Bond in the steam bath is memorable for more than her "body scissor" technique.  GoldenEye is a good James Bond film and Janssen's Onatopp is a big reason for it. BILL KOENIG Another case of good actors dealing with underdeveloped characters. PAUL BAACK GoldenEye is another Bond Villain two-fer. One of them is pretty good, the other not so much. Alec Trevelyan, the erstwhile 006 of Her Majesty's Secret Service, is a pretty interesting creation. His backstory gives him a believable motivation (revenge!) for his malefactions, and Sean Bean's regular-guy affability gives you the feeling that Trevelyan could have gone down another, better road. Fortunately for us, he mostly just wants his vengeance upon England, and to get "richer than God." General Orumov is described as wanting to be "the next Ironman of Russia." I guess that's despite the fact that we mostly see him nervously drinking out of a pocket flask, like an alcoholic Don Knotts. Eventually, he just disappears off the screen -- to this day, I'm not entirely clear on what happened to him. Xenia Onatopp, now... aaaah, here's the real Bondian deal. So beautiful; so deadly. So completely whacked in the head. Give her a machine gun and some people to shoot it at, and she's well on her way to multiple orgasms. I love how, after her defeat in the bathroom brawl with Bond, she actually growls in animalistic frustration, so inchoate is her lust and her rage. Sadly, her death is confusingly staged by director Martin Campbell, and is a little bit of a letdown after such an energetic, high-voltage performance. This was something of a star-making turn for Famke Janssen, and ultimately a classic Bond Film character.

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