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A View to A Kill
Some jiffy-pop shack with inflatable blimp option
1985
Review: November 13, 2007
Director: John Glen
Starring: Roger Moore, Christopher Walken, Grace Jones, Tanya Roberts
If you want, not required.
THE SETUP:
James Bond, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
DISCUSSION:
How did this end up in my DVD player? Mostly because I had just finished watching Sheena: Queen of the Jungle, and wanted to see more of the uniquely gifted Tanya Roberts. Plus, I had also been curious to watch a Roger Moore Bond film of the 70s / 80s, and I had never seen this one. Oh, and Grace Jones is in it. So I rented it and… oh, now my head hurts.
Before the movie starts we must suffer through a 20-minute ad [seems like it] for the all-new, all-remastered-for-the-50th-time James Bond collection. We then have an interminable menu for this film, making me eager just to get to the fucking movie. Finally it starts, with this whole action prelude in which Bond gets a microchip and skis, then snowmobiles, then snowboards to safety. I noticed how the music was fairly sedate in this action scene, and I admired the way Bond seamlessly snatched a snowmobile from this guy, but then, while she's snowboarding, suddenly the soundtrack starts playing the Beach Boys' "California Girls!" Only it's not even the Beach Boys, it's a sound-alike remake. My jaw was agape. This was akin to someone coming in and dumping a 5-gallon bucket of ice water over my head. Here I am, trying to take your ludicrous movie semi-seriously, and THIS is how you reward me. I'm afraid the movie lost 98 out of a possible 100 points here, and it wasn't even 6 minutes in.
Then suddenly we go into our credits sequence, which you will recall features the title song by Duran Duran. That's… well, as awful as it ever was, and it is further marred by possibly the cheapest-looking Bond credits sequence I know of. We're basically talking about naked women with drips of fluorescent paint and a black light. Approximate production price: $6.72. Basically, you could produce this credits sequence, or you could buy an extra value meal. Now, my understanding was that this was in the running for the worst Bond film ever, so I was surprised to see that it has quite a few defenders on the IMDb. It certainly seemed to me as though they put next to no effort into it, and it does seem terribly rote and by-the-numbers.
Anyway, so James comes into the office and has his stipulated flirtation with Moneypenny, then we find out that what he stole in the first scene was a microchip that would be capable of withstanding an electromagnetic pulse. Somehow this all relates to Zorin, that's Walken, who buys horses that don't have good breeding, which somehow always win right in the final stretch. His bodyguard is May Day, that's Jones. So Bond goes to have lunch with the French chief of police [or something], in a restaurant that is supposedly halfway up the Eifel Tower, yet covers it's windows with heavy curtains! Kind of defeats the point, you know? Anyway, the way it's edited, it looks as though Bond is sitting, contentedly watching Jones creep in along a balcony and knock out this, uh, butterfly-fisher-thing-person, then placidly sitting by as she swings the end around and poisons the commissioner, whereupon he suddenly seems shocked. He takes off after her, and she runs up and skydives off the tower. Bond hops the next elevator down and steals a cab, taking off after her. Bond of course destroys the cab, at which point we find out that a Frenchman, upon seeing his car destroyed, will exclaim "Oh, my car!" in a French accent ["Eeeoh, Mai Carre!"], rather than actually saying anything in French. They're very thoughtful that way. The chase ends with the back of the car being ripped off with Bond still in it, then skidding about 275 feet to the EXACT spot where May Day landed [incredible!], but with her able to make a narrow getaway. I know we have to suspend our belief here, but one doesn't need to be egregiously insulted, you know. I was holding my head, staring at the screen, saying "WHY did I think I wanted to see this?"
So now Bond has to go out and pose as a guy invited to Zorin's estate for some party or other, and this other guy, who I think was supposed to be his superior, playing his servant. There is a lot of pure comedy and Bond orders his boss around, for example, watching him struggle under a mountain of bags, and saying "Here, let me help you," and taking only an umbrella. So they have the big party, were we finally see us some Tanya Roberts, who is an associate of Zorin's—he writes her a $5 Million check. But she seems a little moody. Maybe it's because someone advised her to use too much eye liner. Anyway, Bond flirts with her—oh, have I mentioned that Roger Moore was 57 when this was filmed, and certain sources say he had to have his hair thickened before every shot?—then sneaks downstairs to the secret horse doping facility / microchip hoarding compound, where he learns that Zorin puts remote-controlled microchips in his horses that release steroids when he needs them to hit the accelerator. I don't think steroids work quite like that, but no matter. James finds all this out himself when he is put on a cracked-out horse on a rigged jumping course, blah, blah, blah, he gets captured. This is AFTER sleeping with Grace Jones, by the way. I just love Grace's little "wrap" she swathes herself in after a brisk bout of martial arts.
SPOILERS, I SUPPOSE > > >
So we find out a little background information on Zorin. Turns out he is the result of another one of those pesky Nazi breeding programs, which ended up producing a bunch of genius psychopaths. Ain't it always the way? So James finds out that there's some secret underground lair of some sort and sneaks in through this pipe. PLEASE take note of the obviously fake plastic crab—available at tourist shops across Florida [I know, I used to have one just like it]—affixed to the grate over the pipe, and note how it does not move, even when the grate it's on is being jerked around. Maybe it was part of a Nazi breeding program that cross-bred crabs with sloths. Hello, it totally could happen. Anyway, James almost gets pureed by the whirling blades of death, and around this time I started to wonder: You know, how much could he POSSIBLY get paid as a secret agent for going through all of this?
So then there's this whole shoot-out at Tanya's, and afterward James whips up a quiche out of leftovers. You'll note that Tanya changes her gown in order to feed the cat and eat the leftovers. They bond. During this time we not that the Duran Duran title song adapts quite nicely to incarnations as an orchestral theme.
So James and Tanya are going to go to city hall for some records, but Zorin is there and they get thrown in an elevator and set on fire. During the escape you'll start to notice that Tanya is pretty much absolutely helpless. This is from back when women having any ability above and beyond hair-tossing was a serious turn-off. Anyway, Zorin has staged what is supposed to look like an accidental fire by using gallons of gasoline—good thing the police won't be able to detect THAT! Then James and Tanya come down a huge ladder off the room, her draped unconscious over his shoulders in the most ludicrous way, then steal a fire truck. James lets Tanya take the wheel [she CAN drive, at least] while he goes out onto the ladder. Then the ladder comes loose and he's swinging all over the street, which is so involving you may not have time to ask yourself: "So what was he doing out on that ladder anyway?"
So James and Tanya drive their fire truck out to Zorin's secret lair, sneak in, and finally figure out what his diabolical plan is. He's going to cause a huge earthquake, which will cause the sea to reclaim silicon valley, and he'll control all the microchips in the world, or whatever. What any of this has to do with the horse racing steroid scandal from the beginning is anyone's guess, not to mention the microchip that can withstand electromagnetic pulses, but you know, I never fully understand the plots of Bond movies. I do sort of admire the low-tech appeal of Zorin just lining a cavern with hundreds of bags of explosives, rather than having one big bomb. Once he's done, he floods the place, killing all his hard-working assistants—isn't it the working man who always pays?—and sending James and Grace to their deaths as well. Grace turns on Zorin, but I was more fascinated by the unusual spectacle of seeing her hair wet. Anyway, then Grace decides to sacrifice herself by riding the bomb out of the mine, which was dumb and completely unnecessary, but she DID go on to co-star in a film with Hulk Hogan, so maybe she made the right choice.
Meanwhile Zorin and pals have hopped in their jiffy-pop shack with inflatable blimp option and are flying up to watch silicon valley vanish. Shit, I'd want to see it, too! They swoop down [as quick as you can swoop in a blimp] and pluck up Tanya right off the ground. James grabs onto a line, and just holds onto that line for miles and miles until they get to the Golden Gate bridge, where they have their big final showdown. I do sort of like that the title "A View To A Kill" does actually have some tie-in to the ending of the movie, though. Oh, and don't miss Tanya's little freak-out in the cockpit of the blimp. You would think that she is plotting to seize the controls of whatever, but her repetitions of "Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!" make it seem like she's having some sort of moment of mental instability, which I totally have to respect.
< < < SPOILERS END
It's not the worst thing ever. I started to semi-like it after awhile, I just realized that the playing of "California Girls" while James was snowboarding had really put a bad taste in my mouth. In the end, the movie was able to gain back 36 points, which is fairly impressive after that one silly song choice almost torpedoed the movie. But it has a good cast, everyone game for a good time, but Walken especially fun as the flat-out psycho Zorin. One even gets used to Moore's 57-year-old agent, with him eventually just coming off as this slightly loony dirty old man.
But I was also reminded why I don't watch Bond films more often. First of all, there's this unspoken agreement that they all need to be at least two hours long, or you're not getting your money's worth. This began to grate, as it seems like someone, somewhere is just trying to generate action scenes that don't necessarily add anything to the movie expect additional minutes. And while it's no surprise that they follow a formula, this one seemed among the most formulaic of all of them, to the point where it was quite tired. But they seem to be having fun and it's hard to stay immune forever—although I don't think I ever want to see this movie again. This one is almost completely gadget-free, however, and we never have a scene in which Bond tours her majesty's R&D department with Q.
This was Moore's last Bond film, then the series entered the dark days of it's Timothy Dalton years, before being [slightly] rejiggered with Pierce Brosnan. You can definitely sense that the strain is beginning to show here, but, perhaps because of that, it has a loose vibe that makes it difficult to completely despise.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
There's no real reason to, but if you do, you'll live, and might even have a middling-fine time.
