A View to a Kill

Zorin: “Intuitive improvisation is the secret of genius.”  Bond: “Brilliant, I am almost speechless with admiration”.

Roger Moore’s last Bond film is proof of how challenging it is for a longtime Bond actor to conclude with a strong entry.  Few Bond fans would claim Connery’s best is Never Say Never Again or that Brosnan’s is Die Another Day.  The tone shifts a lot, and there is both more violence and silliness than usual.  The villain, Max Zorin has a psychotic personality as a result of Nazi experiments on his pregnant mother when she was in a concentration camp.  The violence, nearly all of it initiated by Zorin, is effective, though I think a few scenes could have been implied rather than shown outright.  The silliness could have been dropped entirely.

As always there are spoilers below so please be forewarned before proceeding.

A View to a Kill was the first Bond film I saw in theatres.  I had seen a few others  (Octopussy, The Spy Who Loved Me, Never Say Never Again, Goldfinger for sure and perhaps one or two others).  I remember the TV ads with the tag lines “Has James Bond finally met his match?” with footage of the opening sequence in Siberia and the climax on the Golden Gate Bridge.  There was a one sheet with Bond in the tuxedo standing back to back with Mayday.  A few months earlier I had seen Grace Jones in Conan the Destroyer and I knew that could make for an interesting contrast.

When first watching the film I took comfort in Moore's presence but even at age 12 I could see he looked a little old.  Looking at it now, Moore’s performance has obvious strengths and weaknesses.  He actually looks more fit than in the previous two films and is strong in the dramatic moments, particularly two scenes in which he reacts with disgust to two of Zorin’s kills, outside the Rolls Royce and in Howe’s office.  Also the funniest moments in the film are when Bond and Tibbett are undercover at Chantilly and Bond is having a lot of fun mistreating Tibbett.  By working with Patrick MacNee in this setting Moore has in his seventh outing, a new angle with which to portray Bond which is refreshing. 

However, it is obvious that Moore’s stunt double is handling a lot of the action moments.  If Moore’s age (56-57 during filming) was factored in and the film was about an aging Bond who is a little slower than before a la Never Say Never Again it might work.  One of Moore’s biggest strengths as Bond is his quip delivery but here Moore makes big eyes at times during his some of his jokes, which undercuts the effect and indicates self-consciousness rather than trusting the material. 

The team that made the well-received previous Eon film, Octopussy, is reassembled here (director John Glen, screenwriters Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson, production designer Peter Lamont, and composer John Barry) and the final product works better if viewed as individual sequences instead of a cohesive whole. 

The cast is interesting with Christopher Walken as Max Zorin, portraying cleverness and vicious unpredictability effectively.  Zorin is shown almost entirely from a distance from Bond’s point of view until Bond actually meets him.  Grace Jones’  May Day is one of the more outrageous characters in the series, who is a superstrong henchwoman who seems like a cat, always stalking and then striking.  Like Pussy Galore in Goldfinger Mayday is in charge of heading a group of women who work for Zorin but eventually turns on him, though not because of Bond’s bizarre seduction of her.  Instead Mayday ultimately helps Bond because she realizes that Zorin was willing to let her die.  Tanya Roberts plays Stacey Sutton, a geologist and oil heiress who is trying to stop Zorin from taking control of her late father’s oil company. 

On paper Stacey has a good backstory.  Stacey’s solo stand against a powerful industrialist is admirable and it is she who identifies the danger of pumping seawater into an oil well.  Stacey represents a human character directly impacted by Zorin which helps the audience relate to his threat.  However in the last half of the film Stacey is often screaming for help and overdressed, particularly in the mine sequence.  Roberts also looks too young to be a love interest for Moore and does not have the presence of Maud Adams was in the previous film.  Fiona Fullerton, playing a sometime Russian lover of Bond, who appears in a few scenes, might have been better casting for Stacey.

Many viewers have noticed that Zorin’s scheme is reminiscent of Goldfinger’s.  Zorin wants to destroy Silicon Valley to increase the value of his own microchips as Goldinger wished to do the same for his gold by destroying Fort Knox.  Both films feature a strong female character who is initially aligned with the villain who then switches sides.  Each film also has a scene in which the villain explains the plan to a group of other people and kills a person who decides not to participate, (though Goldfinger eventually kills everyone else too).

I have noticed that A View to a Kill also copies several beats from Octopussy.  In both films:

·                   Bond steals a car from an obnoxious person who becomes an obstacle during a crisis.

·         John Barry introduces a new action theme and a very romantic version of the main theme (though Barry wrote romantic instrumental versions for most of his Bond scores).

·        There is a countdown to a ticking bomb (other Bond films have this too).

·        The villain kidnaps the leading lady and taking off in a flying vehicle which Bond climbs onto to and eventually manages to use to dispatch the bad guy.

·        The villain tells his primary underling to go outside the vehicle to finish Bond off and the henchman pauses, not entirely excited about the prospect.

·        There is a scene right after the climax with M, the Minister of Defence and Gogol in M’s office, then cuts to the final love scene.

From here I will note a few items throughout the body of the film.

The pretitle sequence shows Bond in Siberia, recovering a chip from a fallen agent.  It is a little sad to the see the body of 003 frozen, particularly when Bond opens his locket and we see a picture of a wife and child in front of the microchip.  The subsequent chase once Bond is discovered is exciting with some terrific stunts (especially the somersault with the skis on). Barry’s new action score propels the onscreen action as Bond tries to ski away from his Russian pursuers.  However the inclusion of “California Girls” removes any sense of danger.  Moore looks properly tense once he is facing off against the helicopter (foreshadowed right after the gunbarrel) and his use of the flare to dispatch it is ingenuous. 

The title sequence is ok but not Maurice Binder's most creative.  Duran Duran's song is a fantastic rock tune with a catchy melody.

The Ascot scene is notable for the rare opportunity to see the MI6 team dressed for a day at the races, and is a creative introduction of Zorin and Mayday to the audience.  Moneypenny is delightful in spoofing Eliza Doolittle from My Fair Lady.

In the Eiffel tower restaurant scene the French inspector seems a bit cartoonish, especially his closing line.  This contrasts oddly against Moore who is playing the scene more seriously, and the elegant setting.  Bond seems to notice that the person moving the butterflies is knocked out but he never warns the inspector of danger, instead politely allowing him to finish his sentence. 

When Bond is pursuing Mayday he flinches when firing his gun.  Compare this to how he handles the pistol shootout on the circus train in Octopussy when Bond is completely engaged.  Also it is clear that a lot of effort is covering up the fact that Moore is not actually moving up those stairs.  Imagine the same scene with any of Moore’s three successors and we can imagine a Bond running so hard after Mayday that she would be lucky to make it to the top in time. 

Mayday’s jump off the tower and parachuting down is impressively shot and scored.  Bond’s driving in pursuit is so bad in the service of trying to create cheap laughs it makes me wonder if this is the same character we have seen expertly drive in other situations.  I think the scene would have been much better if Bond had simply chased Mayday in the car without tearing the car apart by driving in opposing lanes. 

The Chantilly scenes are interesting mostly for the country estate.  Some critics of the film point out that Bond spends most of this section of the film trying to prove that Zorin is using steroids on Pegasus, rather than investigating the microchips.  I see it less literal, and is a way for Bond to see Zorin up front and in his element.  Although Bond and Tibbett are there for a horse auction, we never see it.

Although I enjoy the score to the film Barry’s use of the romantic theme during the Bond Mayday seduction scene seems out of place since Bond is just trying to cover up his snooping and Mayday just is using it as a chance to dominate him.

It is a bit surprising that, even though it is a cover, that Tibbett would take a Rolls Royce to a gas station car wash instead of one designed to take care of expensive cars, of which there should be plenty in a place like Chantilly.  I imagine that a BP sponsorship influenced the choice.

The attempt to kill Bond by drowning the Rolls Royce is inventive and Bond’s solution equally so.  It seems appropriate that Zorin and Mayday would want to watch their handiwork and the shots of Bond underwater looking up are interesting.

Zorin’s murder of the Russian agent by throwing him into the underwater fan is brutal and only hints at how depraved he is. 

I have read, though do not know how true the rumors are, that Pola was originally to be Anya Amasova from The Spy Who Loved Me.  If so the appearance would have been a seamless continuation of their relationship from that film (sexy and also trying to one-up each other).  Though a visit from Anya would have been welcome for Moore’s final film, Pola is an equally intriguing character.

The look at everyday life, with Stacy driving home from work listening to the radio, to Bond and Stacy eating a home-cooked meal is a refreshing change from the constant elegant restaurants. 

Although the City Hall fire sequence is visually impressive, Bond seems to get out of trouble easily.  Also how did the police find Howe’s body since no one was shown entering the building after the fire started?

The firetruck sequence is out of place and the actor playing the frustrated police chief is not given anything interesting to do.  At least JW Pepper, as played by Clifton James in Live and Let Die, who was also faced with pursuing Bond through his precinct, had colorful lines (offensive as many of them were).  There is one potential nod to the San Francisco gay life when Bond knocks the hats off two men sitting fairly close to each other in an open car when hanging from the ladder, though I am not sure if the filmmakers were trying to make a tasteless joke at their expense by staging it that way.

The mine sequence has one of the most reviled scenes in the series in which Zorin guns down several of the workers before drowning them.  I accept that Zorin is psychotic but the length of the scene and Zorin’s enjoyment of it is out of place in this type of film, although at least we don't see much blood.  There was a similar scene in Schindler’s List in which Ralph Fiennes character, Goth, is introduced randomly shooting innocent Jews and the horrifying effect of that scene is appropriate, given the subject matter. 

Scarpine, who just seems like a nasty henchman, albeit somewhat cultured, is next to Zorin also shooting down the workers so I wonder if his motivation is only money.

The long awaited fight between Bond and Mayday never materializes since just as Mayday catches Bond they are both thrown into the water.  This avoids either a scene of Bond getting beat up by a woman or finding a way to kill one who is much stronger than he is, either of which would have been pretty uncomfortable to watch, especially at the time.  Goldeneye was able to handle a similar challenge with the use of Xenia Onatopp ten years later.

The kidnapping of Stacy is a bit unlikely but I will forgive it since it allows for the fantastic visuals of the zeppelin going through San Francisco.  The slower score seems to match the more deliberate pace of the zeppelin.

The stuntwork and music editing of the Golden Gate fight is thrilling.  The cut after Stacy knocks out Scarpine to Zorin angrily unbuckling his seat belt creates a discomfort that now his blood boiling.  Zorin’s appearance with the ax in the small space creates a huge sense of danger since he doesn’t just want to kill Bond, he wants to cut him in half (which he tries on the first swing).  Bond’s wits, used throughout the sequence in tying the zeppelin to the bridge, alone allow him to overcome Zorin.  Walken’s decision to have Zorin cackle in response to Mortner’s anguished cry at seeing him in danger is curious.  Either Zorin wants to comfort Mortner or he is (as he has been throughout the film) bemused by Bond getting the better of him.  Stacy’s reaction to Bond’s quip about a cab seems more like the actress laughing at one of Moore’s jokes than an in character response.

The final scene, with Q’s dog like robot finding Bond in the shower with Stacy is enjoyable.  A lot of the finales of the Moore Bond films have the Mi6 team somehow intruding on Bond’s celebratory final love scene so it seems fitting. 

In summation, A View to a Kill cannot overcome its weaknesses but is worth a look for its positive traits. Although Roger Moore is not my favorite Bond his portrayal is always interesting and his tenure produced several memorable films. I wish he had concluded with a stronger entry but the next film in the series, The Living Daylights, compensates by far ** (out of five).