I Watch Films: For Your Eyes Only

 

For Your Eyes Only

In a pre-credits sequence James Bond 007 is interrupted at his wife’s grave and trapped in a remote control helicopter by a villain in a wheelchair. He gets control and kills the villain.

A British spy ship sinks in the Ionian Sea; it has on board an ATAC which communicates with nuclear submarines. The British try to get it back covertly using marine archaeologist Sir Timothy Havelock, but he is murdered by a Cuban hitman on board Havelock's yacht the Triana. British Intelligence now bring in their secret agent James Bond 007 (Roger Moore) and send him after the hitman.

(We know that the KGB are using their Greek contacts to try and recover the ATAC for themselves).

Bond heads to Spain after the hitman; meets Melina Havelock (Carol Bouquet), Sir Timothy’s half-Greek daughter who kills the hitman with a crossbow. Bond’s car having been blown up the two have to escape in Melina’s Citroen 2CV, a great silly little car chase as seen in many other spy films. The two seem to get on until Bond warns her not to seek revenge, dig two graves etc*.

Bond spotted someone paying off the hitman and we’re into the age of computers, so Bond and Q, the gadget man, use the “identograph” to learn who he is. It’s Loque, an underworld enforcer. Bond goes to his last known location, a ski resort in Italy.

The film gets into a Bond winter sports section here, as his local contact introduces him to Aristos Kristatos (Julian Glover), a Greek businessman who has worked with the British since WW2 where he won a medal. He tells Bond that Loque works for his rival Milos Columbe (Topol), a smuggler and gangster known as “the Dove”. He also has a protégé, Bibi Dahl (Lynn-Holly Johnson) a figure skater who tries to seduce Bond, though he decides not to be seduced, her being too young, also irrelevant to his mission. Good for Bond. She’s also interested in a German biathlete; he is part of the team who try to kill Bond.

Melina turns up, claiming that she got a message from Bond but he didn’t send it. They’re attacked again so he sends her away again. Bond heads for Greece to try and tack down this Columbo. Things start to get complicated as Columbo claims that Kristatos is actually the villain, which is resolved when Bond and Melina make a dive to get the ATAC and are double crossed, only to get a vital clue from a parrot.

After the wackiness of the last couple of Bond films this one gets back to basics; there’s a Cold War thing, both the Soviets and British Intelligence want it. Some locals want to profit from it and Bond has to sort it out. On top of this Roger Moore and Bond’s aging is dealt with, more or less gracefully; Kristatos and Columbo both got their start in WW2, now 35 years in the past. Bernard Lee, who played M, Bond’s boss right from the start, doesn’t appear; Lee died during the making of the film. This has a number of good stunts, and one sequence, in which Bond is climbing a cliff, is masterfully done, really visceral stuff. On the other hand it’s somewhat confused about the matter of revenge; having told Melina not to do it Bond kills Loque in cold blood, telling him it’s in revenge for the murder of his Italian contact.

Watch This: Competent spy thriller with several interesting scenes and stunts
Don’t Watch This: It’s still silly, Bond goes through mandatory ski, underwater and boat sequences and the plot turns on a parrot (Max (Chrome))

* I think she only kills one person in the film, and survives, so this is terrible advice