A View to a Kill

Sean Connery is the best James Bond. Period. Yet, for many fans of the franchise, especially those belonging to Generation X, the favourite incarnation of the world’s favourite secret agent was provided by Roger Moore. He played that character in more films than anyone else and, subsequently, has created a standard all his successors were supposed to meet, usually without much success. Because of that, A View to a Kill, 1985 film directed by John Glen and the last starring Roger Moore, was and still is something of a bittersweet experience for many James Bond fans.

Cold War was still going during the production, and this is reflected in the opening scene. British secret agent James Bond (played by Moore) is in Siberia, where evades Soviet patrols and successfully smuggles stolen chip for the safety of Alaska. Back at London headquarters, it is established that the Soviet chip represents an advanced technology that could withstand EMP attack, but that it is an also a copy of the similar chip developed by Western business conglomerate owned by Max Zorin (played by Christopher Walken), immensely wealthy and successful tycoon with shady background. Bond is given the task of investigating who is leaking technology to Soviets and whether that person is Zorin himself. The trail leads to France where Zorin is conducting spectacular sale of racing horses. Bond travels there under cover of a prospective buyer, aided by horse racing expert Sir Godfrey Tibbet (played by Patrick Macnee) who acts as his valet. They discover that Zorin drugs racing horses with the help of his chips but their cover is blown and Tibbet gets killed. Bond barely escapes the same fate and the further trail leads to San Francisco where he meets Stacey Sutton (played by Tanya Roberts), geologist and granddaughter of the oil tycoon whose company has been taken over by Zorin. With her help he investigates Zorin’s mining operations and finds Zorin’s diabolical plan to cause artificial earthquake that would trigger catastrophic flooding of Silicon Valley and leave Zorin with absolute control of the global chip market.

Despite having more than impressive results at the box office and becoming one of the greatest hits of its time, A View to a Kill was disliked by the critics and even many fans of the series consider it to be among instalments with lesser quality. The most common argument against film was miscasting or, to be precise, casting of Roger Moore who was 57 years old at the time and apparently too old to play iconic action hero. This notion, shared by Moore himself in latter interviews, can be justified in the action scenes where the film makers increasingly had to rely on stunt doubles or the love scenes where Moore’s character goes to bed with women decades his junior, and which looked somewhat icky even in those less “politically correct” times. Moore, however, has already perfected the role and even with all those flaws delivers the goods playing the suave, wisecracking and charming secret agent a whole generation has learned to love.

The real problem with the casting is a Bond Girl. Tanya Roberts, star of popular 1970s TV Charlie’s Angels is tragically miscast as Bond’s partner. She looks pretty and that’s about the only quality that she brings to the film. She completely lacks chemistry in the scenes with Moore and her character, despite being described as some sort of “geologist”, serves as almost archetypal Damsel in Distress. It’s quite different story with the Bond Girl which is, at least for the most of the film, Bond’s opponent. Grace Jones, Jamaican pop star and one of 1980s ultimate fashion icons, is very effective as Zorin’s main sidekick and part-time lover Mayday. Her androgynous image that both oozes eroticism, danger and hostility makes Mayday into one of the most exotic and unusual women Bond went to bed with. Her strong physicality also makes her very convincing opponent for Bond in action scenes. Yet, her impact is somewhat diminished with some poor scriptwriting choices near the end, when Mayday switches her loyalty and side with the Bond. On the other hand, Christopher Walken seems like a perfect choice for Zorin, villain who is ambitious, intelligent and capable, but unquestionably evil and who doesn’t mind getting his dirty. This culminates near the ending of the film, when Zorin with apparent joy needlessly murders his loyal henchmen. It could be argued that Walken played this role a little bit too well, setting his future career to the path of typecasting as psychopathic villain.

Another, less visible but more important, flaw of A View to a Kill is the script. While it attempts to connect the fiction of James Bond with the real world, mainly through using the motive of emerging information technology and importance of Silicon Valley for US and global economy, it fails to make coherent story and use those motives in actual plot. Unlike the gold in Goldfinger, which was used as the main element of the plot in that film, chips are here only mentioned as some sort of weak McGuffin. Not even gadgets, one of the usual ingredients of the Bond formula, are used. The only actual use of modern technology is computer face recognition programs, which looked like science fiction in 1980s, while there are part of every day life now, thus making A View to a Kill strangely prophetic.

John Glen, on the other hand, is competent director. It is well-made and fans of the franchise can enjoy great cinematography by Alan Hume as well as series of great action scenes. The most memorable are those that use world’s landmarks, like Eiffel Tower where assassination leads to spectacular chase on the streets of Paris, and Golden Gate Bridge at the end. Made with extremely large budget, A View to a Kill allowed some interesting experimentation with action scenes, including those in which the protagonist’s life is threatened by various elements like earth, air, water and fire. There are some scenes that are partially weak, like completely needless chase involving Bond and San Francisco Police Department, unsuccessfully used as weak comic relief. Love scene featuring Bond’s and female KGB agent (played by Fiona Fullerton as replacement for Barbara Bach who refused to reappear as Anya Amasova from The Spy Who Loved Me) doesn’t add much to the film. On the other hand, music by John Barry is very good and effective and, to a degree, this could be said for title song performed by Duran Duran, which turned out to be a massive hit and had effective music video perfectly tying band members with the iconic scene from the film. Although it is below what the high standards set by previous James Bond films, A View to a Kill is still effective instalment that could be enjoyed by those who aren’t hard core fans of the franchise. Although, in retrospect, it could be argued that Moore made good decision to leave the role to someone younger, it is hard not to conclude that Moore’s Bond could have made better ride into sunset.

RATING: 5/10 (++)

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