GoldenEye, unlike just about every other film in Bond 50 collection, has been given a moderate-to-heavy dose of digital noise reduction in most scenes, freezing grain, smearing it into an unnaturally smooth patina, and occasionally giving the actors' faces that distinct wax figure look. Along with the DNR, you'll be able to spot the side effects of edge enhancement, an artificial sharpening process that has a tendency to ring hard lines with black or white halos. Now, GoldenEye isn't nearly as bad as the atrocity that was the Predator reissue from a few years back, but the picture most definitely has a filtered, digitized quality that's hard to ignore. What's really unfortunate is that there are rare shots that haven't been overprocessed—some of the tight closeups during action sequences, for instance—and these look just fine, with a healthy layer of natural, cinematic grain. Ah well. Onto the good—despite the unnecessary manipulations, GoldenEye's 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer still looks vastly better than the old DVD. The cropping issue has finally been resolved and the image is presented in its full, intended aspect ratio. The color is vibrant and balanced. And clarity, though inherently hampered by the noise reduction—which essentially blurs out grain, removing fine detail in the process—is much tighter in high definition. I'm not sure exactly what happened here—why the film has been treated so callously compared to the other Bond movies—but there is a decent upgrade in picture quality here for those who can live with the DNR.
