A View To A Kill

Wednesday 4th June

Finally I’m onto the last Roger Moore film, like Connery in his last film the Bond in this film is defiantly showing his age though it has been twelve years since Live and Let Die.

This film’s generic bad guy is Zorin; which according to the disclaimer at the start of the film is entirely fictional and not based on an actual person – if I cared I’d google but I’m guessing something similar to this film to part of it went down around the same time. 

Anywho, Zorin originally from Russia is now living in some sort of Californian palace with lots of horses while playing silly games with oil and sea water.  Bond masquerading as James St John-Smyth pretending to be interested in horses; manages to get himself a ticket to Zorin’s horse auction; making this one of the Bonds where Bond’s meets the bad guy – they both know who each other are but for civilities sake and not to cause a scene neither mention it or do anything about it until the last half an hour of the film – I suppose we wouldn’t have much plot if Bond were efficient all the time.

Keeping up the pretence that nobody is buying of being a reporter Bond continues to bide his time finding out more about Zorin and running into exes that steal his audio cassettes (you can defiantly tell this was made in the 80s) until finally he finds Stacey, who actually seems relatively normal at first but she may be the most clichéd and annoying bond girl we’ve encountered since Dr No.

He stalks the very blonde Stacey Sutton; now pretending to be James Stock; back to her house and with the help of her, her little cat and an antique vase they manage to chase off several assassins. In a moment of insanity which she’s probably call integrity Stacey rips up a 5 million dollar cheque from Zorin unfortunately for her she falls victim to red wine and crosses that fine line between seducing Bond and falling asleep while getting ready to.

Zorin sets city hall alight leaving Bond and Sutton trapped in an elevator; now this is where she turns into a proper helpless Bond girl able to do nothing but stand still and shriek “James!” at the top of her voice, obviously he saves her because he’s just a good guy like that – and he hasn’t got laid yet. To try and seal the deal Bond reveals he’s not actually clean cut James Stock from the Financial Terms but is actually part of the British Secret Service, steals a fire engine and manages to seriously piss off the Californian Police Department.

Sneaking into Zorin’s mines I was sort of hoping this would turn into the Bond version of Indianna Jones and the Temple of Doom; Stacey’s whining could easily rival Willie’s; bring back Nik-Nak as Bond’s vertically challenged sidekick and I may have just unearthed the ending this film should have had – sadly I was disappointed and they just chased each other around the tunnels on foot until someone decides to flood the tunnels.  There were rats, but I was after the temple of doom not the last crusade!

Compared to other Bond films I’d say this is fairly average; not exactly thrilling but there’s been a lot worse. There was a building that turned into a blimp; that was new; though I was really hoping for a Chitty Chitty Bang Bang style sing along as Zorin began to make his escape…“Oh you pretty little blimp house, pretty little blimp house we love you”…

For now at least Roger Moore sits at my second favourite Bond (we’re only on three at this point) for all his slightly boring moments overall he was far more interesting than Lazenby!