Oh dear. And I thought Octopussy was bad. A View To A Kill is the Bond franchise at absolute rock bottom, no matter how much I might whinge about Die Another Day, Licence To Kill or The Man With The Golden Gun.
Moore looks fricking ancient in this. I mean, where the hell did his eyebrows go in the intervening 2 years since the last Bond film? Sure, he's still charming, funny and charismatic, but he dresses like a pensioner and looks frail, unlike Harrison Ford in Indy 4, Stallone in The Expendables or Connery in LXG, who all looked like they could kick Statham's arse, even in their advancing years.
Apart from the massive San Andreas mine set at the finale, the whole production looks cheap, uninspired and small in scale. The locations this time look like an exercise in budget cuts, being mainly shot in dull, unexotic locales like the English countryside and Southern California. Of course the story doesn't help with Bond blandly investigating the world of horse breeding and mining. What fun! The stunt work is impressive as ever, especially the pre-credits snow sequence, the Paris car chase and a fire engine smash-em-up through San Fransisco...but there's very little that gels into a coherent, exciting action sequence for anything more than five seconds. Oh and let's not forget the trademark Bond rear-screen projection which ruins every action sequence the technique appears in...which is most of them.
It's not all bad. Christopher Walken is a great, OTT baddie, it's always nice to see Patrick Macnee on the big screen, Last Crusade's Alison Doody is cute, cute, cute and I've always liked the Duran Duran theme song. Also, the Bond girls, Tanya Roberts and Grace Jones, might be terrible, terrible actresses, but at least they have what most of Roger Moore's leading ladies do not. Spunk (or in Jones's cases, balls too).
A View To A Kill can be summed up by Lois Maxwell; she should be led slowly to her wheelchair and rolled quietly into a soundproofed cupboard to retire. Moore should have retired in '81 and the production team replaced, in front and behind the camera at that time too...just as they did with Goldeneye in '95.
1 comment:
I can't disagree with any of your comments in this review. A View To A Kill sucks major balls. Yes, Moore should have retired after For Your Eyes Only, his last great Bond. He just looks ridiculous in this.
I like the pre-credit sequence (Beach Boys and all), the Duran Duran song, the Paris chase, Tanya Roberts' body and Christopher Walken being mad. Everything else is just shit. Thank God they got the Welsh nutter in next. Shame he only managed one good movie.
Post a Comment