Project Bond: The Spy Who Loved Me

This might be Alan’s favourite, but I was pretty underwhelmed, it’s fair to say. There were a lot of familiar Bond elements (a reclusive hateful villain who is overly fond of sharks, a love interest of variable allegiance, so-bad-they’re-good one liners, a naked woman walking along the top of a gun, etc.), and very few new ideas, which showed.

Although it shares its title with one, this is the first Bond film not to be based directly on one of Ian Fleming’s books, so perhaps I was too quick to be dismissive of them in an earlier post. After some submarines disappear, MI6 and the KGB put Bond and Amasova on the case together, with sexy results, particularly when Amasova learns that Bond killed her boyfriend (though, to be fair, he was shooting at him from a black jumpsuit with lemon piping). Anyway, they find out that this fella Stromberg has been nicking all the submarines.

To get close to your man, Bond poses as a marine biologist, but he is immediately seen through, and Stromberg sends after him a very tall chap with metal teeth.

There’s a fight in a scrapyard followed by a car chase followed by a fight on a train followed by some strategy meetings followed by a showdown at Stromberg’s base (which, just for a change, is underwater, rather than an island). Bond frees all the submariners taken prisoner, because the woman who has been his equal throughout is now a helpless hostage, whom he also has to rescue, obviously. He then programmes two of Stromberg’s vessels, which were intended to destroy New York and Moscow, to destroy each other instead, which was fairly rad. Then he saves the girl and there are loads of innuendos, so everything is fine once more. Classic British values.