Heavy Bondage: A View To a Kill

Basic problem is on the script level, with the intricate plot never offering the mindless menace necessary to propel [itself] ....
- Variety, May 1985

A View To a Kill
Film: 1985
Book: n/a

Irreverent Synopsis: Max Zorin, lunatic industrialist, wants to flood Silicon Valley in order to remove competitors for his own computer-chip making cartel. Or ....

Max Zorin, Nazi genetics experiment, contrives to rig horse races by embedding drug-injecting computer chips into his racehorses. Or ....

Max Zorin, former KGB agent, endangers world security by making and selling knockoffs of a line of EMP-resistant computer chips.

Take your pick. Take them all. It won't matter anyway.

Major Observations: Welcome to the worst Bond film ever to date. We're glad you could join us. Let's start by recapping the good points (and they are few indeed).

Moneypenny's glee at Ascot. It's entirely possible Lois Maxwell was enjoying her outing so much because she had already said "no more Bond films." In fact she wanted the character to be killed upon her departure, but Broccoli said no. (Rumors vary on how Maxwell felt about the role that essentially ruined her career. At various points she had to be talked back into the role, but other stories say that by the end of the run, she really didn't want to leave. There's also a persistent story that Maxwell tried to talk Broccoli into casting her as M and was told that a female M would not be believable. The world would have to wait for Judi Dench.)

All scenes involving the inimitable Patrick Macnee as Sir Godfrey, especially the whole night burglary sequence where Bond proves he can open a safe the hard way, and Macnee proves he can still throw a punch. Sir Godfrey's death in this film hits hard, and we completely believe Bond's cold anger when he tells Zorin that was a mistake.

All scenes involving Grace Jones as May Day. To my vast and continued surprise, this is Jones' finest hour; she plays her part perfectly, what there is of it, and is by far the most interesting thing on the bad guys' side of the roster.

Willoughby Gray as Dr. Carl Mortner, there to show Christopher Walken the proper way to play a raving mad scientist.

And that's it.

Even when this movie is not actively bad or actively stupid, it is generally dull. I don't loathe the gimmicky snowboard sequence at the beginning, for example. I can even swallow the use of "California Girls" (a low-rent cover, I might add, not The Beach Boys). But the scene should be more interesting! It's like all the life is sucked out of it. And then any momentum that has been built up is stepped on by that stupid submarine.

Most of the other sequences are like this. The steeplechase setup is far less than it should be (which is a shame when you consider that the first 45 minutes of the film basically have no purpose except to lead to it). The fire engine chase is marred by slapstick and bad gags. Everywhere you look, there are either dumb jokes, tedium, or wretched excess. Even the titles are the worst ever.

Christopher Walken is phoning it in, and a day when Walken can't even make a psychopath character interesting is a sad day indeed. Tanya Roberts - well, she's not grating to watch (others disagree), and sometimes she delivers her lines reasonably well, but the best thing I can say for her is that she could be a lot worse, which is faint praise. She tends to react to all emotional calls with the same expression - stunned. Other characters are either given nothing to work with, or they come in and out so fast for the demands of the bizarre plot that you can't really tell anything about them. Even Walter Gotell is not up to his usual standard in this film.

The script is the sort of thing where we are thrown Pola Ivanova for five minutes with no prior introduction just because they decided it had been far too long without Bond taking anyone to bed. Then she vanishes, never to be referred to again. CIA agent Chuck Lee gets a similar fate.

Much has been made of Roger Moore outstaying his welcome, but Moore is hardly the worst thing about this film; in fact, he holds to his more sedate, older-Bond style and keeps his end of the bargain extremely well for a 58-year-old man. The problem is the script, the script, Christopher Walken, the script, and the script.

Minor Observations: Lest you think I'm being too harsh on Walken, I will credit him with two good moments. He is obviously having a lot of fun in the Main Strike briefing sequence on the blimp (witness his arm motions as the Silicon Valley model rises out of the table), up to and including "So - does anyone else want to drop out?" And his whole betrayal sequence in the mine - the flooding, the machinegunning glee, and then the calm "Good. Right on schedule" is the sort of nutcase we were expecting from the rest of his performance. (Moore reportedly had reservations about the machine-gunning sequence, which just proves that he is sometimes far too gentle to be Bond.)

As already noted, the title of this film is swiped from a Fleming story, but none of the rest is, so I have not listed a book credit. See For Your Eyes Only for more.

In the minor cast watch, the blonde Jenny Flex is played by Allison Doody, who would later play another cold and dangerous blonde, one with decent lines this time, in the third Indiana Jones movie. Dolph Lundgren is reportedly somewhere in this film, and he's listed in the crawl, but I'm damned if I care enough to look for him.

You can't have it both ways. One of my books lists the banter between Bond and Sir Godfrey as "the highlight of the film," and another lists it under "Patronizing Lines" and wonders that we are meant to find it humorous. I favor the former.

You may also disagree with me (everyone else does) about the title song. Most people seem to feel it is one of the film's few good points. I say it's just as below-par as everything else here. Yes, I recognize that it won a Golden Globe and was the only number one hit in the UK ever to come from a Bond film. Nonetheless I don't think it is anywhere near Duran Duran's best work and I don't find it particularly appropriate for a Bond film. Everyone's got to have a few irrational beliefs.

I admit to a certain fondness for the chase scene in Paris despite its silliness (May Day's leap, of course, is fabulous). Good thing that car has front-wheel drive, eh? But the best part is M's chewing Bond out about "breaking most of the Napoleonic Code" at the end.

God save us from directors with signature gimmicks. John Glen's is a bird (generally a pigeon or dove) being disturbed and fluttering away. In For Your Eyes Only it's during the St. Cyril's assault; in Octopussy it's on the ledge as Bond escapes his room in the Monsoon Palace. Here he is forced to resort to using one of Stacey Sutton's pet birds. Let that be indicative of this film as a whole.

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