A View to a Kill (1985)

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Apologies, I had to get Duran Duran's classic theme song in the title sentence somehow! Needless to say this entry is one of the weakest, yet it's garnered a small following claiming it to be a guilty pleasure. I'll be the first to say, I belong in that group. There's something about how campy and nonsensical the plot is that just makes for silly entertainment. Bond has been assigned a mission where we must investigate a microchip manufacturer run by Max Zorin, a psychopath wanting to flood Silicon Valley. Don't ask me why, something to do with the KGB and microchips and...yeah...admittedly the story is weaker than a cup of watery tea. It's not the most engaging narrative either, action sequences are infrequent and the noticeable stunt doubles do take you out of the film. But come on, when a spy film contains the line "the bubbles tickle my...Tchaikovsky!!" you just have to roll over and give into the sheer stupidity that is onscreen. Roger Moore was past his sell by date so it was only right that this was his last entry. He couldn't do any of the easier stunts, like hand-to-hand combat, let alone the driving scenes. His womanising talents are still supreme though...not sure if that's a good thing. Christopher Walken laughs like a maniac and Grace Jones is the manliest beast as she portrays May Day, a villainous sidekick that would give Jaws a run for his money. No special gadgety from Q Branch except a robot dog that acts as a gag in the final minute. A blimp that flies around which leads to an underwhelming yet badass showdown atop of the Golden Gate Bridge. Horses injected with steroids, base jumping from the Eiffel Tower, a mine in Sili...wait a blimp!? What use is a blimp!? The most impractical use of transportation ever! You know what? I don't even care, this film is a good time. The soundtrack is great, Glen's direction is perfectly solid and the story is well paced. Weak? Sure. The worst? Probably. Entertaining? You betcha. "What a view..." "...to a kill!", that line cracks me up every time.

A View To A Kill was released in 1985. I personally never cared for the James Bond series after Moonraker. I think the series really lost originality, this is proved to me by the simple fact that Roger Moore still played the character reaching 60. There are impressive stunts in this movie for sure, best of all the chase through Paris. Unfortunately I just don't buy Roger Moore as Bond at this point, he was just too old. Seeing him flirt with women that are the age to be his daughter is just disturbing. The film could've been different if Timothy Dalton was Bond. Overall 'A View To A Kill' is a big let down with a few memorable stunts.

I'm not sure any other film depicts the excesses of the 80s quite like this one does. EVERYTHING, it seems, was thrown at this film in an attempt to make it bigger and bolder and better than what came before. As any sensible moviegoer knows, the moment one attempts to make a good movie by doing it that way the worse the result will be. The only redeeming feature of this film is the kitschy time-capsule quality it offers the viewer and even that doesn't sustain it for long. The plot is thin as a cup of tea, Roger tries to pull it off but he's given nothing to work with, it's just a silly mess. I laughed out loud at the scene where the Renault runs with it's rear end missing - IF ONLY Renault cars were that reliable! I've always been a Roger Moore fan. His "Bond" is the debonnaire gentleman and he's charming to watch. In this outing he was turned not into an action character but a cartoon one and it's disappointing. Lastly the direction is abominable. Watch the scene midway through at a gas station when the camera pans from left to right and ends up focused on the Rolls. It's literally out of focus during the panning - the words on the gas station are literally blurred and illegible. One big unhappy mess.

I usually rank my James Bond movies based on the level of evil of the main villain… Therefore my favorite James Bond movies include "You Only Live Twice" (with Donald Pleasance as Ernst Stavro Blofeld), "Goldfinger" (with Gert Fröbe in the titular role), "The Man with the Golden Gun" (with Christopher Lee as Scaramanga) and "License to Kill" (with Robert Davi as Sanchez). However, this "A View to a Kill" made me realize that a fantastic main villain isn't enough in order to guarantee a great James Bond flick. Christopher Walken also depicts a terrific Bond villain in this movie, but the film as a whole nevertheless remains one of weaker and least memorable entries in the entire franchise. The plot is largely uninteresting, the supportive cast is wooden and many of the traditional James Bond ingredients are missing, like a nice variety of Q's hi-tech gadgets and obligatory quotes. That being said, "A View to a Kill" still provides nearly two full hours of campy entertainment and a handful of impressively staged stunt sequences, including a grotesque chase on skis at the beginning, a crazy parachute pursuit through the crowded streets of Paris and a climax high on top of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Oh, and of course this particular film also features one of the catchiest and recognizable title songs, courtesy of Duran Duran. The plot deals with microchips-technology. The deranged industrialist Max Zorin implants chips in his racing horses in order to give them electrical impulses when reaching the finish line and win the races. But that is just the least disturbing part of his fiendish activities, as he also plots to neutralize California's Silicon Valley – the heart of American technology – through an immense flood caused by a self- inflicted mining disaster. The sub plot that I personally found the most fascinating sadly isn't elaborated properly, namely that Max Zorin himself is, in fact, the psychopathic result of controversial genetic experiments on pregnant women by a Nazi-scientist during World War II. It becomes quite clear in this film that the regular players are getting pathetically too old for their roles, not just Roger Moore as Bond but also Miss Moneypenny and even Q, and this has a noticeably negative impact on the chemistry between them and the supportive cast members. For instance, there isn't any plausible chemistry between James Bond and the four women that he sleeps with in "A View to a Kill" and most of the time he actually just resembles a sad old playboy. The most remarkable character, next to Max Zorin, is undoubtedly his eerie and super-flexible black female accomplice May Day, depicted by the natural born frightening Grace Jones. She's as evil and relentless as her master, although I personally really didn't like the plot- twist regarding her persona at the end of the movie.