We're on the back half of the Moore Era now, this time in
FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, in which Bond must navigate the treacherous waters between rival smugglers as he seeks to reclaim a vital piece of lost British naval technology.
This is one of those Bond films that paints by the numbers, stays within the lines, but lacks any overarching spark or magic. It's not a bad movie. It's got a little more serious tone and it hits most of the marks it feels it should. We are getting to the point where some of the set pieces feel reused - ah, okay, another chase on skis, ah and here we're doing another tense underwater scene. There are only so many types of locale in the world, I guess. The cold open is thoroughly meh after the last two bangers (featuring a non-specified Blofeld type character, as the named Blofeld was tied up in copyright disputes behind the scenes apparently). We go to Greece, which is fun, and somewhere with snow again, etc etc etc. The music is new - we enter the 80s with a significantly more synth-pop score than we've seen before, a little jarring at times.
There are a couple new features that stand out. This may be the first time we're introduced to a significant male character we think is an ally but turns out to be the villain (and corresponding one we think is villain is actually ally). The cliff-face climbing scene in Act 3 is good simply because it's fresh and we haven't seen this kind of set piece before, some nice tension and stunt work there. The early car chase in that dinky little yellow car is fun too, we're back to some more dynamic cinematography to keep it visually interesting. The device behind the plot is a real McGuffin here, very few real emotional stakes to keep me engaged throughout.
Observations
- Great to see Topol in the only film role I think I've ever seen him in outside Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. He gives a nice performance and will probably be the element I remember most from this one.
- Anytime Q makes a cameo in the movie it's a bright spot. Here he meets Bond in the field while cosplaying as a confessional priest, elicited a real chuckle out of me.
- The parrot talking to Margaret Thatcher in the last scene is a delightful grace note of an ending scene. Sometimes these movies can be cheese, but they've also earned some real laughs out of me in spots, and I'm always glad to see well-done humor injected in.
- Two BONKS with 2 women here, so our total is now 35 with 27. Lindsay has requested I do a calculation at some point on how many of the women Bond sleeps with end up dying by the end of the film, so at some point I'm going to have to go back and figure that out. Maybe we'll just include that at the end.
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