Octopussy (1983)

Director: John Glen

Cast: Roger Moore, Maud Adams, Louis Jourdan, Kristina Wayborn

Have/ I Seen it Before: Sure. TBS, the 90s. That whole bit. Felt a little bit weird writing down the title on a VHS label, but that’s how one started to amass their movie collection with a $5.00 allowance.

I sometimes wonder if re-watching some of these films on those VHS recordings might have a little charm to them. Would it be a delight to take a bathroom break in the middle of this film to see a commercial for the Bigfoot Pizza and In The Mouth of Madness (1995). I may never again see a movie that way again. I’m oddly wistful about that in this moment.

Did I Like It: I’m stalling, aren’t I? There’s a lot of this film that works. Moore in his element, doing switcheroos on Fabregé and making googly eyes at a woman far classier than him. There are several mildly funny digs at the state of the competition—namely Never Say Never Again (1983)—although I may have been reading too much into the “REAL BOND” sign oddly hanging over Moore’s head at one point, and it seems like they’re using about twenty percent more of the Monty Norman theme than the average.

Then there’s the clown thing. I’ve made no secret of how little I think of shooting Ian Fleming’s borderline sociopathic spy into space. It was such a dimly-considered chase of where the movies were in that moment. But in this one, the man gets out of a sticky situation with a nuclear bomb by dressing as a god damned clown. In Moonraker (1979) he tries to take a page out of Luke Skywalker. Here, for no other reason than Moore is a little bored in the role*, decides to start saving the world using Charlie Chaplin’s playbook.

I do dislike that more than the space thing. Sorry, Sir Roger.

*And might have been well-advised to bow-out after the far superior For Your Eyes Only (1981).

Licence to Kill (1989)

Director: John Glen

Cast: Timothy Dalton, Carey Lowell, Robert Davi, Talisa Soto

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure. I was a boy and I had access to TBS. That’s the usual way one takes in the entire Bond canon. It was strange that I took that in just as Goldeneye (1995) was approaching its theatrical run, which meant this film was the most recent release in the series. Even then, it felt like a relic from some other era.

Did I Like It: I’ve been dreading re-watching this one a little bit. I’m so enamored of The Living Daylights (1986) and remembered as a boy not liking this one nearly as much that I’d be really underwhelmed in the here and now. While I don’t find this to nearly be the nearly-perfectly calibrated Bond-delivery device that Daylights remains, it is good. Quite good. My long-held belief that Dalton walked so that Daniel Craig could later run remains undiminished. The attempt at actually bringing the Fleming books to life is on full display, as this is ultimately closer in spirit and plot developments to the novel Live and Let Die than the film which shares its name.

The film is not without its more whimsical Bond-fun, opposed to what its reputation might suggest. It’s a delight to see Desmond Llewelyn’s Q get to do far more and serve the second act (that part of many Bond movies which can become interminable) far more than he is normally allowed.

Even one of the often annoying habits of the series is indulged with in a mostly pleasing, ultimately subtle way. The series can’t help but follow the trend of successful recently movies. Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977) is huge, and we get Moonraker (1979). Still not happy about that one, forget that it all happened before I was born. Batman Begins (2005) revitalizes a flagging franchise, and we go back to the beginning with Casino Royale (2006). Thank God. Here, though, while one might get a bland feeling from the drug trafficking plot, I can’t help but notice that Michael Kamen replaces John Barry*, and both Robert Davi and Grand L. Bush appear in parts of varying sizes. Tell me this film isn’t the way it is due in no small part to Die Hard (1988), and I’ll just be forced to shake my head.

The positives outweigh the negatives, though, and I can’t help but lament the fact that we didn’t get more outings with Dalton. The series would likely not have taken the shape it has now if he had, but one more might have been nice. His Goldeneye would have been something.

*Should anyone have replaced John Barry? Fair question. One also gets the sense that by the time we got to the 21st century, even the series itself is attempting to mimic Barry’s sweeping scores.

The Living Daylights (1987)

Director: John Glen

Cast: Timothy Dalton, Maryam d’Abo, Joe Don Baker, Jeroen Krabbé

Have I Seen it Before: I could keep going over the mid-90s heyday of the TNT Bond marathon and how it steeped me all things 007 during the height of the Pierce Brosnan era. Let’s just leave it at the fact that I’ve seen all of them.

Did I Like It: First of all, I like Timothy Dalton a lot. Screw you if you can’t deal with that.

This has almost nothing to do with the fact that he is in The Rocketeer (1991) and therefore deserves an appropriate level of adulation. Well, I’m pretty sure it has nothing to do with that. In truth, before Daniel Craig come on to the scene, Dalton was doing the brave and thankless work of picking up the pieces from the Roger Moore era and bringing the material back to its Ian Fleming core. Dalton even kind of looks like Hoagy Carmichael, long mentioned as the closest real-world equivalent for the look of the literary Bond.

This isn’t to say that Ian Fleming is a faultless paragon of literary virtue. Far from it, but when the film series was more interesting in adapting the Bond of the books, the films became much more interesting and far less fixated on reliving the format solidified by Goldfinger (1964).

The plot works, and even manages to keep me engaged through the long second act of Bond films, where you are most likely to find me slowly nodding off. The less said about the need of 1980s action cinema to turn the Mujahedeen into quirky allies the better, as that routine had a shelf life of about fifteen years before Bond would be sent to snuff out Kamran Shah (Art Malik) in my personal Timothy Dalton fan fiction*. 

The gadgets are great, aside from the racist-in-a-way-that-only-Ian-Fleming-would-like Ghetto Blaster. Sinful even more so because it has no role in the plot to follow, but the key chain and the Aston Martin V8 Vantage absolutely slaps. I will have words with anyone who says otherwise. A-ha’s title track is a toe-tapper, but the last time John Barry would hold a baton for a Bond film deserves much more of a moment in cinematic history than this film enjoys. The opening sequence that sees Bond the only survivor of a training exercise gone wrong is actually one of my favorite opening sequences, made only better by the fact that the rest of the film is imminently watchable.

Top all of that off with the realization that the death of Necros (Andreas Wisniewski) is the direct inspiration for one of my personal favorite pieces of short fiction I ever wrote, “50 Miles to Somewhere North of Cambodia.”

Is it possible The Living Daylights is actually one of my favorite Bond films. I’m going to call it. Yeah. It’s definitely up there with the Craig films for me, and even up there with the early Connery films. I’m owning that from now on.

*Which doesn’t exist. I assure you.

For Your Eyes Only (1981)

Director: John Glen 

Cast: Roger Moore, Carole Bouquet, Topol, Julian Glover

Have I Seen it Before: Yes... There’s a stretch of time in the mid 1990s where I would watch and record any Bond film that appeared on TNT. Without those marathons, I might never have viewed some of the middle-era Roger Moore films.

Did I Like It: Now comes the part in my review of a Roger Moore Bond film where I talk about how I don’t care for him as Bond. He’s too funny, and in that preening sort of way where he thinks he’s pretty funny, too. Sort of like Dane Cook with a vodka martini and a slightly less misogynistic misanthropy. I loathe Moonraker (1979) for feeling the need to chase the Star Wars (1977) and I think his best entry is the one everyone seems to shrug at, his final entry, A View to a Kill (1985), mainly because Moore plays against type. As such, For Your Eyes Only was never in my pantheon of go-to entries to re-watch.

As I continue to read through Nobody Does It Better: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized History of James Bond I was surprised to hear everyone talk about this entry as if it was a return to the form of more Fleming-esque source material, like From Russia With Love (1963) or On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969).

Then I re-ran my DVD, and I’ll be damned. This is the one where the pre-credits sequence has Bond getting his long overdue revenge on a maniacal villain complete with pet cat. We all know the fiend is Blofeld, but because the morass that became the rights to Thunderball and the larger SMERSH/SPECTRE lore, he goes unnamed. It’s a pretty good beginning to the movie, especially when its as close to coming up against Blofeld as Moore ever got.

The rest of the film is a smaller story (far smaller than the ridiculous previous entry, Moonraker) and that’s a welcome change for Moore. I do get the same sense of ennui that I feel during the last half of nearly every Moore entry (and for that matter, Brosnan as well), but even Moore’s penchant for humor worked better than it does at other times. I’ll be damned if that last moment with Margaret Thatcher talking to a parrot didn’t having me laughing, and that typing the phrase “Margaret Thatcher talking to a parrot” didn’t have me laughing all over again. So, good job, Roger Moore-era Bond. You got me.

Am I starting to like Roger Moore’s entries? Is that what happens when people get older? Will I start thinking Moonraker is actually worth my time? Surely not.

A View To A Kill (1985)

Director: John Glen

Cast: Roger Moore, Christopher Walken, Tanya Roberts, Grace Jones

Have I Seen it Before: It’s Bond. It’s a lock. I’ve even sat through the shitty ones.

Did I Like It: It may be the only Roger Moore I can say I actually like.

The text of this review appeared previously in a blog post entitled “How Could No One Else Like These Movies?” published 04/23/2017.

Roger Moore is my least favorite Bond. Yes, that includes the dour Timothy Dalton, the dim-eyed Australian George Lazenby, Peter Sellers, and… ahem… Woody Allen. That being said, not all of his movies are that bad. In fact, I’d be willing to say of his seven times at the end of the gun-barrel sequence, I actually like as many as two of them.

This—Moore’s final outing in the role—ranks dead last of the series on Rotten Tomatoes*, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why. Everyone knows that Roger Moore actually went into outer space in one of his movies, right?

Beyond obvious better candidates for worse Bond movies, A View to a Kill has a lot going for it. The theme song, from film composer John Barry and British group Duran Duran is a pure New Wave confection. The action sequences, culminating in a shoot-out at the Golden Gate Bridge is fantastic, and lest we forget: CHRISTOPHER WALKEN IS A BOND VILLAIN. Has there ever been an archetype that an actor was more destined to play than Walken playing one of the heavies in this film?

Critics point to Moore’s advancing age (57 at the time of filming) as contributing to the film’s underlying incredulity. For me, though, Roger Moore always brought a certain older quality to the role. Even in Live and Let Die (1973), he seemed stiffer, more mature than any of his brethren did in their initial movies. Besides, I think an increasingly geriatric Bond is an interesting idea, although I will admit both that I may be alone in this thinking, and that the movie—and the series, for that matter—never bothers to acknowledge that Bond might age.

But, come on! The man went into space in one of his movies! Why? Reasons, that’s why. As long as Moonraker (1979) exists, I can’t accept that this movie is the franchise’s nadir.

*Not including the strange-but-watchable off-brand Never Say Never Again (1983), or the afore-alluded-to comedy version of a multi-car pile up that was Casino Royale (1967).