The Spy Who Loved Me is easily the best Roger Moore Bond outing. It evokes From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, and Thunderball — my favorite of the Sean Connery Bond adventures, but adds new elements that keep things varied, entertaining, and in a few spots, surpasses the earlier Bonds.
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.
Moving through the James Bond films, Octopussy is the second-to-last one starring Roger Moore (the last being A View To A Kill. In this oddly named adventure, he’s older and looks more than a bit tired. Overall, the film is decent with a fair number of definite thrills, but a few minor organizational gripes harm it, and frankly, I found myself pretty bored during the first half. Maybe I’ve just seen too many Bond movies (no surprise).
After the over the top, outer space location of Moonraker, the twelfth James Bond adventure is contrastingly low-key and sublime. It seems to be an intended return to the basics, and as a result For Your Eyes Only is reminiscent of the sixties’ Sean Connery films. Most notably, the crazy sets and at times overbearing cartoony humor (which plagues some of the early Roger Moore Bonds) is pretty much eliminated here — save for a few Bond quips and the odd finalies to chase scenes. I enjoyed this film.
Moonraker features James Bond (Roger Moore) investigating Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale), an evil genius who wants to destroy the world and rule over a new one of his making. He’s developing a nerve gas through his company Drax Industries. The investigation of “why” takes Bond to Venice and Brazil, and eventually into outer space, where Drax has built a space station, from which he plans to deploy his lethal gas onto Earth, killing everyone, and then colonizing the planet anew with his loyal people.