You can find the James Bond Watch Party Page Here. I think this week and weekend we’ll finally delve into the Dalton Bond’s but for now, let us enter the final Moore installment. Long form play by play on this final Roger Moore entry. The Seventh and final Bond movie with Moore at the helm came out in 1985, I was the ripe old age of 3. Were right back into the canon Bond films and smack dab in the middle of the 1980s. Duran Duran sings the title song and there is a cool and trippy neon intro set piece that is so 1980s, it hurts my soul.
Cast of Characters:
Bond, James Bond: Roger Moore (x7)
Big Bad: Max Zorin played by Christopher Walken, his main henchman is May Day played by Grace Jones, and there’s a secondary henchman Scarpine played by Patrick Bauchau.
Femme Fatale/Bond Girl(s): Stacey Sutton played by Tanya Roberts
Ladies who had the pleasure of being James Boned: 4 (Kimberly Jones, May Day, Pola Ivanova, Stacey Sutton)
Moneypenny: Lois Maxwell (x14) Her last go as Moneypenny, you will be missed Lois.
M: Robert Brown (x2)
Q: Desmond Llewelyn (x12)
Foreign Agent/Spy/Helpful Scoundrel: Chuck Lee (CIA) played by David Yip
Theme Song: A View to A Kill, composed by John Barry and Duran Duran and performed by Duran Duran
Director: John Glen (x3)
The Movie –
We’re in some sort of snowy place, which we later find out is Siberia. There are a butt load of Russians flying around and scouring the ground as well. Bond happens to be there as well, looking for a dead agent which we also later find out is 003. He has some sort of a micro-chip hidden behind a locket with a picture of his lady love in it and he is very dead and frozen. As soon as Bond gets the locket and chip the Russians find out he is there and the chase is on. Bond does some fancy skiing and dodging of bullets and then even some snowboarding to get away from the Russians. He even manages to crash a Russian helicopter with a flare. He then escapes into a submarine disguised as an iceberg and meets a very pretty secret agent. He busts out the beluga caviar and Smirnoff vodka and totally gets his James Bone on with the pretty girl.
Moore looks quite old in this film and I can see why it is his last. We are then back in London for some flirting with Moneypenny and then Q and the Prime Minister get an explanation from Q on computer chips and how they are susceptible to attack. This new chip that Bond found on the dead 003 is exactly like the new chips the British have created that are not susceptible to electronic attacks. The microchip that was recovered is the exact same as made by a Zorin Industries, who the Brits think is leaking intelligence to the Russians.
After that they are off to the horse races in Paris France to check out Max Zorin who is none other than a super young looking Christopher Walken, he has a striking lady with him who the Brits don’t know much about called May Day. Zorins horse wins the race in an upset and everyone is convinced that he is cheating. Bond meets up with a local detective who is also investigating the cheating. They are in the middle of lunch, which includes a weird show, when the local detective is assassinated. The assassin jumps out a window and parachutes away. Bond pursues, ruining a wedding in the process, but the assassin gets away. The assassin is of course May Day who speeds away with Zorin on a boat.
Bond then poses as a horse dealer to infiltrate a horse auction where Zorin is selling his amazing horses. Bond meets up with Sir Godfrey and they search the stables for clues about if the horses are being drugged. They find a secret laboratory under the horse stalls, because of course there’s a secret laboratory. Bond and Godfrey find out that they are using the microchips to put drugs in the horses after they are tested. They are interrupted by some mob looking dudes with guns but they fight them and kick their asses, well bond does, Sir Goddfrey got owned. Ohhh so Punny Bond, “don’t worry, it’s all wrapped up.”
Zorin and May Day are fighting and then making out, May Day doesn’t seem to enjoy it very much. Zorin is alerted to a break in and Bond is trying to get back to his room. Zorin and May Day check Bonds room and he just misses being in it before they arrive. He hides in May Day’s room and they have really awkward sex, it was pretty damn cringy. Bond is balls deep into pretending to be a horse dude and he sends Sir Godfrey back to town to contact M, but Sir Godfrey gets killed. Bond gets put on a horse called Inferno and then they do some jumping on a steeplechase course. Bond is getting beat up by the other jockeys, but of course beats all of Zorin’s tricks and beats the ass of all the dudes trying to beat him up. Bond gets to the end of the course and his horse takes the hell off through the woods with Zorin and his thugs in pursuit. Bond sees the car he sent on the road and tries to hop in but sees that May Day is driving and Sir Godfrey is dead or at least passed out. Zorin captures him and knocks him out, dumping the car in a lake. Bond breathes through air in a tire to make them think he’s dead, but you can’t kill James Bond that easily.
Zorin is now at the racetrack and meets up with the Russian General Gogol. The Russians want Zorin back in the KGB but he says he aint down for that shit anymore. Now Zorin is going through his master plan with a bunch of other criminal dbags. It’s all about the microchips. Oh there’s a map miniature of silicon valley in San Francisco. Zorin’s plan is to make Silicon Valley null and void and take over computer chip manufacturing. One of the dudes wants out, so he is thrown from the blimp the meeting is taking place on lol. They are now in San Francisco marveling over the Golden Gate Bridge and we get the title of the movie from May Day and Zorin.
Hey look it’s the totally not dead 007 also in San Francisco. He meets up with Chuck Lee from the CIA where we learn that Zorin is actually part of an old experiment that made super intelligent and strong kids from steroids and drugs created by Dr. Mortner, who was at the horse farm and juicing the horses. The side effect of the super kids is that they are psychotic. Zorin and his crew of thugs are going full steam ahead with their plan and Bond infiltrates their scheme. James gets away from Zorin and his crew and runs smack dab into another agent Pola Ivanova who whisks him away to a hot tub for some sweet James boning. Bond and Pola were of course followed and after their bone session she runs off and drives away with General Gogol. She thought she stole some tape that he had recorded of Zorin that goes over his plan to destroy Silicon Valley, but Bond had her played the whole time.
Bond is now pretending to be a journalist and interviewing some San Francisco big wig, he leaves and sees none other Stacey Sutton (Donna’s mom from that 70’s show) working for this San Fran dude. Stacey lives in a seriously giant house outside San Fran and Bond followers her. Oh someone is following Bond too of course, and they have a gun! James sneaks up on Stacey who he thinks is in the shower and she instead has a shotgun on James. A ton of dudes now attack James who starts doing work with the pump shot gun he takes from Stacey. The gun is loaded with rock salt though, so James has to do some karate ass kicking to finish the thugs off. The thugs run off and Stacey and James have some food and feed her cat lol.
Now James and Stacey have a night cap of several bottles of wine. Roger Moore sure is getting frisky with the ladies in this movie. I read one of the reasons he stopped playing Bond is all the women he was bedding and making out with were his daughters age so he knew it was time to hang up the PPK. James puts Stacey to bed and they don’t bone though it seems like Stacey wants to. James stayed up all night guarding the house with the ol shotgun. Stacey serves James breakfat where they use a hilariously old computer to see where a small earthquake originated. Right near Zorin’s oil fields of course. Stacey gets fired for some reason and now the CIA dude, James, and Stacey are plotting on what to do about Zorin at Stacey’s badass house. Chuck Lee goes out to his car to call in more CIA and gets murdered instead, that sucks I liked him.
James and Stacey head back to her old job at City Hall for her security badge I think and they rifle through some files to get info on Zorin. Oh Zorin and May Day shows up right when they find out what Main Strike is. It’s an old Silver Mine. Christopher Walken is not very good as the villain in this movie. Zorin kills Stacey’s old boss and then lights the place on fire. James and Stacey are trapped in an elevator that’s about to snap and barely escape right before it breaks. James devises a way to save Stacey as she screams at him not to leave her. This is James mofo Bond here, he isn’t leaving you! James makes his way to the roof and heads down the convenient fire ladder as the crowd watches and gasps and cheers. They now steal a fire truck to get away from being arrested lol and the police are in hot pursuit. James keeps causing all the cops to crash as they get away and he climbs on the back of the fire truck to lock the ladder which is loose, oh and there goes the ladder and Bond is hanging around knocking cowboy hats off dudes in convertibles. James takes control of the ladder portion and they escape through two street trolleys. They have had some awesome locations in this movie, the Eifel Tower, San Francisco streets. The cops try to have the bridge raise and trap Bond, but of course it doesn’t work and just stops all the cops instead. Crazy coppers, you’ll never stop Bond!
Bond and Stacey head to the Zorin mine and commandeer an explosives truck and James has one of the best punches I’ve ever seen in a movie. Somehow James and Stacy just fit in with everyone and change into some mining clothes to get a closer look at what exactly is going on. They hitch a ride on a mining cart and head in. They find Zorin and May Day perusing the mine, they follow them and see Zorin arming something. Stacey finds a map that lays out the plan. They are planning on blowing up Crystal Lake that’s going to create a giant earthquake. Destroying Silicon Valley. Zorin and May Day find them in his office and try to kill em, they run off into the mines. Zorin sends May Day and some other henchwomen in after them and then proceeds to go straight crazy. He blows up part of the mine, draining crystal lake (and causing a very confused fisherman when he no longer has water, but where are all the fish at lol) and starts just murdering everyone. May Day realizes he doesn’t give two shits about her because he left her for dead in the mines. So naturally she teams up with James, who helped Stacey get out of the mines before he was swept away in the water with May Day. May Day and James head back to where the bomb is located on the fault that’s scheduled to detonate in a few minutes. They work together to get the bomb back up and they put it on a mine cart to get it the hell out of the mines. But wait there’s a faulty brake and May Day has to ride the bomb out of the mines and totally pulls an IG-11 and gets blown the hell up saving everyone down in silicon valley.
James makes his way outside and sees Zorin cruising around in a blimb that he had magically blown up to full size a few minutes earlier. Stacey sees James and runs and screams while trying to get to him. She is really great at screaming and unfortunately the blimp catches her and whisks her away. But your dealing with Bond, James Bond up in this piece and he hitches a ride on a rope. Naturally Zorin and his weird genetics doctor and other henchman head for the Golden Gate Bridge and try to knock Bond off the rope. Surprise surprise he wraps the rope around the bridge and then there’s an epic fight on top of the Golden Gate freaking bridge. Zorin loses the fight and Bond tosses him from the bridge, then the crazy genetics doctor gets a stick of dynamite and tries to throw it at Bond, but he cuts the blimp loose and the dynamite blows the fuck up and kills the doctor and the last Zorin henchman. Bond finishes saving Stacey and has a great quip about there never being a cab when you need one. We then end with Q trying to make sure Bond is still alive while James is in the shower with Stacey getting his bone on. Credits role and were done with Roger Moore and on to a brief two movie stint with Timothy Dalton before we get into the more Modern Bond and the movie that made me love the franchise.
So I actually liked this one, it’s still pretty middle of the road as far as Bond’s overall though for me. I’m pretty sure I had never seen this one before, Stacey the main Bond Girl is VERY attractive but lord does she have a set of pipes on her and loves to scream. My biggest disappointment was Christopher Walken as the villain, he just wasn’t that great. He finally went full psycho at the end but it was pretty meh overall, his plot was pretty interesting though. I didn’t think this one ran too long either, there was not a point where I was like okay its over but then there was 45 more minutes of movie. It’s a very solid finish for Roger Moore. I give this one 6.5 out of 10 PPKs.
My First to worst my rankings after A View to a Kill:
Goldfinger
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
Moonraker
The Man with the Golden Gun
The Spy Who Loved Me
Dr. No
Thunderball
A View to A Kill
Octopussy
You Only Live Twice
Diamonds are Forever
For Your Eyes Only
Live and Let Die
Never Say Never Again
From Russia with Love
Ellie’s Thoughts: I loved this one. It grabbed me from the opening title sequence, with the Duran Duran-sung theme song and cool 80’s vibes. While Roger Moore looks terribly old, and Christopher Walken was not the most compelling villain, the plot was overall cohesive, action exciting, and had one of the most beautiful Bond girls yet. I’d watch it again…. It’s probably in my top 3 so far.
I give A View to a Kill 8 out of 10 martinis shaken, not stirred.
Up next, up a new Bond! The first of two Timothy Dalton installments with The Living Daylights…
Cuppa 