I Watch Films: A View To A Kill
I had a poster of this film when it came out (the saucy number I have illustrated this post with rather than the intruiging one with Grace Jones asking if Bond has met his match) , but didn’t go to see it in the cinema, probably because I would have been 9 at the time. The Wikipedia page suggests it was first on British TV in January 1990 when I would have been 14. That might be why it’s both the first Bond film I remember as being new (rather than just not seen before) and also the first that I realised was... flawed.
Basically this is the Bond film at the cusp between me just enjoying them as a child (not the kissing, ugh, but soon there will be a fight or a gadget or a shark or a chase) and me actually sitting down and deciding that some are better than others.
Anyway this one works hard to turn me off from the start. A promising ski chase after Bond finds a dead body in which Bond improvises a snow board from a skidoo he’s blown up is given the soundtrack of California Girls by the Beach Boys. (Why not Surfin USA if you must?).Thereby undercutting the (new to the mainstream) snowboard stunts by saying that we shouldn’t take it seriously. A continuing flaw with Moore-era Bond, putting a ridiculous sound effect over a cool stunt scene. Gah!
Moore as Bond looks a bit too old, Grace Jones as May Day is cool but not given quite enough to do, Christopher Walken as Max Zorin spends a lot of time machine gunning people in a not very interesting sequence and his description as an Anglo-French East German defector businessman is undercut by being so obviously American, I don’t care about Tanya Roberts’ character Stacy Sutton, Patrick Macnee’s Sir Godfrey Tibbett is killed after a fairly good comic turn. Despite that it’s very watchable. The set-pieces come together well, the ludicrous plot just about pulls us between them, and the actors manage to keep the generally underpowered lines on track. My theory that Bond is not really a secret agent but British Intelligence’s enforcer, sent to warn people that they are behaving badly, is well bolstered in this film, with his tissue-thin covers and deliberate goading of Zorin. Zorin, of course, doesn’t care.
Anyway, it was clearly time for Moore to retire and the team to re-think what Bond was. Not the greatest of swan-songs but not completely terrible.
Watch This: For a few good stunts, some bad jokes, a villain or two getting what’s coming
Don’t Watch This: If only the best of Bond films is for you
Comments