Review: A View to a Kill

James Bond (Roger Moore) is sent to look into German-French computer chip billionaire and horse breeder Max Zorin (Christopher Walken). An industrialist with supposed KGB ties, Zorin’s company has supposedly created computer chips resistant to electromagnetic pulses, and psycho Zorin also has a crazy scheme to ensure that he has a monopoly on the industry. Grace Jones plays Zorin’s beguiling lackey May Day, Patrick Bauchau is scarred henchman Scarpine, Patrick Macnee is Bond ally Sir Godfrey Tibbett, and Tanya Roberts plays geologist Stacey Sutton (though I don’t actually recall hearing her name in the film itself). In smaller roles Fiona Fullerton plays Pola Ivanova, a KGB agent working for Gen. Gogol (Walter Gotell), and Alison Doody is the wonderfully named Jenny Flex (aligned with May Day).

The two worst Bond films to date are “Moonraker” and this tedious 1985 effort from John Glen (“For Your Eyes Only”, “Octopussy”, “Licence to Kill”). Of the two, this one’s the most deserving of the bottom spot, it’s a genuinely lousy film with barely a redeemable feature. The villain is boring, the plot borrows far too much from “Goldfinger” (with an occasional touch of the idiotic “Moonraker”), and the pacing is as lethargic as its leading man. Even the locations suck, as the only thing that seems to distinguish the France scenes from the scenes set in England is the Eiffel Tower.

The death knell sounds ominously from the outset as we’re greeted with very, very weak trumpets on the gun barrel that are as frail-sounding as 58 year-old star Roger Moore looks in the lead role (No, I don’t care that I’ve already told the same joke twice in similar fashion already). More on him later, trust me. The pre-credits sequence is an awfully blah skiing and snowboarding bit of nonsense featuring Gidea Park’s ghastly and pointless cover of The Beach Boys classic ‘California Girls’ (Apparently they were a tribute band, sounding like a third-rate one, though apparently one of their members did tour with The Beach Boys from time to time). Swedish-born Mary Stavin however, sure is hot as hell though. After that we get ghastly titles design, the series worst by the normally reliable Maurice Binder. It’s horrible day-glo nonsense, and the title song by synth pop boy band Duran Duran sucks too. If it weren’t for Madonna’s jarring and unbearable monstrosity for “Die Another Day”, it’d get my vote for worst Bond song of all-time. And yet, it was a massive hit for the band. We all know why that is, girls are superficial and thought Simon Le Bon was a spunk. Hey, you’re probably gonna call me sexist throughout this review, so I may as well lob a few missiles in the other direction while I can. And then we come to the requisite Bond and Moneypenny scene. Roger Moore and same-aged Lois Maxwell look every bit their age and by this point it’s ridiculous and sad. Q (Desmond Llewellyn) has discovered robotics. Apparently 1984-85 was all about robotics, Uncle Paulie had a robot maid in “Rocky IV”. This is similarly awful stuff (Though it gets worse. The final scene involving Q is the most embarrassing moment of the entire series for poor old Desmond Llewellyn).

The opening half of the film is excruciatingly dull, with the scenes set in England and France barely distinguishable from one another. It’s all hobnobbing and horse racing tedium that doesn’t remotely appeal to me. Uneventful, uninteresting and slow, the first half makes this feel like the “Antiques Roadshow” of Bond films. The only thing missing are the cucumber sandwiches (We got them in “Moonraker” instead). The only decent thing about this portion, and indeed the best thing in the entire film, is the classy performance by the inimitable Patrick Macnee. Playing Bond ally Sir Godfrey Tibbett, he’s a part of Bond’s dopey Singen-Smythe ruse (it’s pathetic), but at least Macnee is genuinely funny having to play Singen-Smythe’s ne’er do well butler. He’s definitely the only one having any fun in the film. Grace Jones’ May Day parachuting off the Eiffel Tower isn’t bad, but Bond subsequently driving half a car I almost as bad as the Gondola or invisible car. Definitely one of the worst Bond vehicles of all-time. Truth be told, it’s not just the first half that sucks, though the first half does seem to suck a lot slower. At least the first half has Macnee, the rest has next to nothing of even the slightest interest. There’s some pretty crap stuff happens in the Californian section of the film too, including a police chase that seems to belong in another film altogether. In fact, the only decent thing that happens in the U.S. is the calamity down in the mine, which isn’t unenjoyable. If you manage to make it that far. Credit where it’s due though, the score by the iconic John Barry (“Goldfinger”, “Robin and Marian”) isn’t the worst. Yeah, that’s some faint praise right there. Despite featuring the ultimate brit pop act on the title song, Barry’s overall score isn’t as heavy on 80s music as some of the others from the decade. Even when he includes an orchestral version of the song, it miraculously works rather well.

Look, there’s no getting around it. Roger Moore was fucking ancient by 1985. Yet, I didn’t feel that way just two years earlier on “Octopussy” (But then, I actually enjoyed that film which probably helps). 58 years very, very old, he’s considerably glassy-eyed and lethargic. He was never the most violence-prone Bond and his action scenes generally lent themselves more to outrageousness and comedy than serious thrills. However, watching the near 60 year-old Moore attempt to throw fists in this is embarrassing, and so very unbecoming of 007. He shouldn’t have signed on for this one, and he himself realised his time was about up when finding out that his leading lady’s mother was younger than him. Wearing a black leather jacket in this doesn’t make Moore look youthful and cool, it makes him look like a tit. Why is Bond wearing a leather jacket anyway? Hardly dapper.

There’s probably a lot of people out there who don’t know that Christopher Walken played a Bond villain, and if you told those people that he’s one of the weakest Bond villains, they likely wouldn’t believe you either. It seems impossible even to those of us who have seen the film and know that it’s true. The best way to understand it is to realise that this is a pre-“Batman Returns” Walken, he hadn’t become the Christopher Walken we all know and love by this stage. In 1985 he was probably best known for non-villainous, mostly non-quirky turns in “The Deer Hunter” and “The Dead Zone”. His Max Zorin is a flat, amazingly unthreatening Bond villain, and Walken looks ridiculous as a blond (Almost as ridiculous as one poor chap’s demise via car wash. Yep, car wash. It’s stupid). Occasionally the real Walken shows up with his inimitable line delivery, but very, very rarely. Walken is an actor certainly capable of menace and oddball fascination, but you don’t get any of that here and it’s a peculiar and unpleasant experience to see him fail so badly. He may not be the worst Bond villain, but so what? I’ll admit that Walken doesn’t get much to work with here, Zorin is incredibly ho-hum as a character (I bet Walken could’ve nailed a Bond villain in one of the Pierce Brosnan Bond films. Imagine him in “Tomorrow Never Dies”!). Three parts Hugo Drax from “Moonraker” and one part “Goldfinger”, replace Drax’s fox hunting with polo and steeple chase here and they’re pretty similar, and similarly ineffectual. It’s also completely unnecessary to make German-French Zorinn also an ex-KGB and bring back bloody Gen. Gogol. His scheme involves Silicon Valley, he’s played by a Yank, make the character a Yank, surely. As scripted by Richard Maibaum (whose association with the franchise goes back to the first and best Bond film “Dr. No”) and Michael G. Wilson (“Octopussy”, “Licence to Kill”), I’m fine with Zorin’s plan to monopolise the microchip industry. Yes, it’s almost the same as the scheme in “Goldfinger”, but other than that I’m fine with it. However, nothing else about the character works, and almost nothing else about the entire film works.

Of all the Bond girls, the most glamorous and interesting are the bit players Fiona Fullerton, Mary Stavin, and Alison Doody. Our main Bond girls are…well, one of them isn’t actually bad, but the other…woof. No one is ever going to confuse alleged singer Grace Jones with being a good actress, and that’s not what she was hired to be. Hell, she’s certainly not my cup of tea in the looks department, but once again I don’t believe she was hired for that, either. What I do believe she was hired for, and something that people seem to be blind to, is that she’s here to be Grace Jones and all that involves. For me it means she makes more of a lasting impression that just about any other goddamn thing in the film. You’ll not soon forget her, she cuts an…interesting figure in a black leotard to say the least. Basically a less aesthetically pleasing Xenia Onatopp, I actually kind of like her oddball, animalistic performance…up to a point. She’s certainly not dull, the problem comes in the final third when the screenwriters completely sabotage her character. It’s a very, very bad idea to change her character’s allegiance, especially so late in the game. Other characters might’ve made some sense, but for a buttload of reasons it makes zero sense with May Day. Almost nothing in this film works, but with May Day they’ve screwed up something that kinda was working. I will say though, that it’s a jolly good thing that she functions as a henchperson too, because fellow henchman Patrick Bauchau is particularly plain, letting his uninteresting facial scar do all the menacing work. The scar sadly underplays. Tanya Roberts meanwhile, is quite simply the worst Bond Girl of all-time. She’s introduced far too late, barely gets any screen time after that, and all the screen time she does get shows just how awful Stacey Sutton and the actress playing her are (And I say that as a huge fan of “The Beastmaster”. Acting wasn’t really required in that one). Roberts is a gorgeous woman, but she does more panting and moaning than most porn stars…and she’s not even having sex at the time. No, it’s like 90% of Roberts acting choice for her character. She and the character are utterly useless, especially since she’s the only main Bond Girl in history to essentially be a cameo player. Roberts’ incompetence and Moore’s geriatric, glass-eyed performance combine for a screen coupling with anti-chemistry. The worst romantic coupling in Bond history, Sean Connery had more sexual chemistry with Charles Gray’s swishy Blofeld in “Diamonds Are Forever”. 

Tedious, mostly uneventful, agonisingly slow, and largely miscast. Patrick Macnee is having fun, but Roger Moore is beyond too old, Christopher Walken shockingly misfires as the lead heavy, and this is the nadir of the Bond series to date. Definitely one of the more plagiaristic Bond films, and my vote for worst Bond film to date. Terrible title song, too.

Rating: D+