A View To A Kill: Fisherman’s Wharf.

= 3 stars

Starring Roger Moore, Christopher Walken, Grace Jones
Directed by John Glen

I still found the decidedly eighties entry in the James Bond Franchise, A View To A Kill enjoyable, despite its cheesy, made for television vibe. I also must plead guilty to some personal bias - the setting is Silicon Valley, with some scenes occurring in San Francisco proper (Fisherman’s Wharf, the Civic Center, and a hatchet-battle atop the Golden Gate Bridge). I work right across the street from Pier 39, so seeing some parts of The City I’ve walked through, held my interest during some admittedly lame plot turns. The Duran Duran theme song is also cool.

Another bonus is Christopher Walken as a better-than-usual nemesis, entrepreneur Max Zorin, with an evil doomsday plot to create a gigantic Bay Area earthquake and destroy Silicon Valley’s microchip manufacturing, therefore boosting the worth of technology company, Zorin Industries. James Bond (Roger Moore) is dispatched to stop him.

Despite the neat locales and a decent adversary, many other stock Bond elements aren’t in such great form. Moore is so old (this was his final outing as Bond) that he may have been better off playing M, Q, or even Miss Moneypenny. The Bond girls aren’t so fine either, with the bizarre May Day (Grace Jones) dying in an almost laughable manner, and a rather unimpressive Stacey Sutton (Tanya Roberts) and her rock-salt packed shotgun. Meanwhile, Jenny Flex (Allison Doody) is sadly wasted.

The plot also plays out in a simple, linear fashion, essentially no different from an average action flick. It also contains an unusually high level of gratuitous violence. Two people are killed in the back of a car, a bunch of cop vehicles pile up trying to jump a drawbridge, someone is chopped up by an underwater fan, and Christopher Walken guns down his underlings at the bottom of a mine, chuckling like a mafioso - this film is certainly in the “kill and ask questions later” mode. It’s about as far from the espionage, secretive Sean Connery era James Bond yet (well, except for Moonraker).

So because I was entertained by aspects of A View To A Kill film that had nothing to do with Bond, I have to place this movie in that middle ground (once again) among Roger Moore Bond films - better than Moonraker but not as good as For Your Eyes Only. It’s on the same level as Octopussy.

IMDB: A View To A Kill
Wikipedia: A View To A Kill

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