Project Bond: A View To A Kill

I was quite ready to say goodbye to Roger Moore, you’ll be surprised to learn, but I would not be allowed to do so before being subjected to another pointless skiing scene. This one, before the opening credits, has nothing to do with the plot of the film, and I’m fairly sure they’re just trying to annoy me now.

It turns out that this bloke Zorin has been fixing horse races with microchips that he nicked off MI6, so Bond has to go after him. He’s trying to get information out of another lad, Aubergine, when the latter is shot and killed with a dart fired by May Day, Zorin’s henchwoman, or henchperson. Bond chases after her, and ends up driving the front half of a car onto a bridge before jumping off it, onto a boat, in hot pursuit, but to no avail.

This instalment is a bit more like the spy stories of old, with more actual spying and a fair bit of double-crossing and the like. It’s also a bit strange in that there are recognisable people in it (Christopher Walken is Zorin, and Grace Jones is May Day). The story is nothing too special, and there are plenty of the cliches that are typical of Moore’s era, and the later part of Connery’s, but it’s one of the better films with Moore in the role, with a couple of decent villains and a less ridiculous script. It ends, as you might expect, with a blimp crashing into the Golden Gate Bridge, with sexy results.

I preferred this film to any of the previous three, or perhaps even four, and I definitely noticed an improvement in Moore throughout his tenure, but I certainly won’t be sorry to see the back of him.