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!

Octopussy

Tuesday 20th May

Onto the penultimate Roger Moore film; problem is from the title and previous Moore experience I’ve decided I hate it before I even put it on.  

So we start in East Berlin with a clown; who is actually agent 009 (why doesn’t he get his own films!) being chased and killed by knife-throwing twins – well it’s a more original start than *insert big pieces of machinery* has been stolen and someone’s annoyed.  Instead a dying clown annoys a group on people by falling through their window on party night holding a counterfeit Faberge egg.

To help him get over the death of his friend, Bond is off to a Sotherby’ auction to look at shiny things; and some hope that this film might not be so bad begins to rise. Unfortunately we’re not shopping for very long, just to witness the auction of the aforementioned Faberge egg for an obscene amount of money; bitter that he didn’t win Bond swaps the original egg for a fake, a clever idea but it didn’t really do much good.

Bond doesn’t actually meet Octopussy until at least halfway through the film, and thankfully it’s merely an unfortunate nickname her father gave her. As always when Bond seems to be making a lady-friend drama ensues and someone tries to kill them both; giving Bond a way out; essentially faking his own death to avoid any of the “you never called me” conversations later on.

Back to Germany, back to the circus and back to the knife throwing twins, but now as well as knives they have a rather powerful bomb that the Russians are out to cause mischief with.  Something I don’t think we’ve seen before is Bond chasing a train in a car, I’m pretty sure that until this point all the vehicle chases we’ve seen have been fairly matched and it’s no surprise that the poor car end up in a canal.

The Russian bomb is poised to go off in the middle of a circus show on a US airbase in Germany – at least I think that’s what happened… it’s the final few seconds as Bond struggles to convince people to the existence of the bomb; though in their defence you don’t normally believe the things people dressed as clowns believe you. Surely with such a powerful device disarming it is out of the question, well apparently not and when all else fails you just take it apart yourself, with 1 second to spare of course, just for added affect.

Of all the Moore films this one isn’t bad I mean a man got killed by taking an octopus to the face, at one point Roger Moore was dressed as a crocodile and at another a gorilla and Q came to the rescue in a hot air balloon so it can’t be classed as terrible if only for those bits.  It didn’t bore me though personally I would have liked a bit more of the whole Octopussy diamond merchant story and a bit less hide and seek in a circus caravan park.