Last time we looked at the start of a Bond era, now let's look at the end of one. Roger Moore is generally remembered as the real followup to Sean Connery's iconic outing (poor George Lazenby--I actually think On Her Majesty's Secret Service is a good 'un), with his gentlemanly yet smooth demeanour, and classic showings like The Spy Who Loved Me. It also helped that Moore was quite the charismatic gentlemen in real life, and became the face for the series for quite a while, from silliness like The Man With the Golden Gun to more serious flicks like For Your Eyes Only.
But some things get drawn out too much in the name of box office cash, and his role was one of them. Moore already felt he was aged enough with 1983's Octopussy, but that didn't stop execs from dragging him back to keep going as if nothing was different. This lead to, among other things, Bond here coming across less as a suave seducer, and more like an increasingly wrinkly wannabe mack daddy who probably insists that his hairline is entirely genuine.
The film's awkward tone is best exemplified at the very start, where Bond is retrieving something or another in the Arctic, fighting off Soviet special forces in a snow chase. At first it's pretty thrilling...and then out of nowhere, once Bond ends up on a snowboard, the score suddenly segues into California Girls, for reasons beyond my comprehension. I mean I'm also wondering how this visibly pushing-sixty Bond isn't breaking his ankles with these stunts, but yeesh, that must've taken a fair amount of drugs to seem sensible.
And that's before we enter the title sequence, which gives us Duran Duran's theme--an enjoyable one to be sure, but between the visuals screams 'This was made in the eighties! Did we mention this is the eighties? Is your mullet expanding yet?!" To be fair John Barry's score is actually enjoyable too, complete with cheesy yet fun guitar riffs.
The plot itself keeps up the tone, which is themed around microchips--the home computer revolution was in full swing around this time, and no time is wasted in trying to seem topical. In a series of events eerily similar to Goldfinger twenty-odd years prior, Bond finds himself starting from investigating drugged racehorses to uncovering an evil scheme by Max Zorin--played by none other than Christopher Walken. You want Walken talkin' and walkin' like Walken does, you got it--he plays an utterly gleefully evil bastard lead along by his Nazi mentor, and hams it up when he's gunning down his own workers seemingly just for the hell of it.
And that's before we get into the other selling point of the film-- Grace Jones herself as his seeming lover and henchwoman May Day. Being able to toss around KGB agents like ragdolls and seem pretty darn convincing about it, Jones adds a helluva lot of screen presence and memorability to an otherwise shaky production. As far as Bond hench-folk go, she definitely leaves an impression, and when you pair her with Walken, the two devouring every scene they have, that's one of the handful of reasons to actually watch this.
The rest is a mixed bag at best--Tanya Roberts plays Stacy, Bond's love interest, and a completely forgettable one at that. She's a geologist, or something, and beyond something about helping to uncover Zorin's plan, that's about all I got out of her. They would've been better off playing up May Day more--who, after all, does eventually turn to Bond's side at the last minute. Even the action is sort of middling, apart from an admittedly pretty spectacular climax over the Golden Gate Bridge. Want to see Walken kidnapping people in a blimp and going to town with a fireaxe hundreds of feet above a bay? Then hey, this provides.
It's easy to see why A View To A Kill was the final piece for Moore--his swagger now veers from chuckleworthy to borderline wincing a couple of times. Still, if chuckling along at the awkward atmosphere and enjoying the genuinely memorable bad guys strikes a chord with you, I say go ahead--while A View To A Kill is nowhere near the best of Bond, at least it's not completely forgettable like, say, Quantum of Solace. Next time, we look at a 007 outing that's definitely memorable--for reasons right and wrong...
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