The Spy Who Loved Me

 

An underwater adventure again

10th movie and by many seen as the best Roger Moore Bond-movie. And yeah, it works. A British and a Soviet nuclear sub disappears so KGB sends their best, female agent XXX... bad code word today with the internet and all. Secret Service of course sends 007 who on his way kills another KGB that is the lover of XXX. They search for some microfilm in Cairo that contains the plan for a submarine tracking device that KGB and Secret Service believes are the one that made it possible to take the subs. As they search everyone getting in contact with the film is killed, most of them by the recognisable Jaws, the tall man with the silver teeth. He was scary in this I remember as a child and still is. 

007 and XXX is fighting over the microfilm until they meet up with their bosses, who finds a clue to a man named Stromberg who has a marine laboratory outside the coast of Italy. They meet him and get a lead to a gigantic tanker, They land on an American sub that is tracking Strombergs tanker, but they are taken in like the other subs by being swallowed by the tanker, reminiscent of You Only Live Twice and the shuttle rockets. Apparently Stromberg have taken the submarines in order to use their nuclear weapons to launch at New York and Moscow, kickstarting World War III and the total destruction of mankind. This is the MAD-doctrine, Mutual Assured Destruction. The terror balance of the world is that both sides of the iron curtain knows that if you fire a nuclear rocket, you will get the same in kind, so if one side fires it, you gotta answer. That was what the Star Wars program under the Reagan era tried to bypass. If you had Strategic Defence Initiative in place it would destroy any incoming nuclear missiles and give the US nuclear supremacy. Of course it never worked, but that's the idea.

Stromberg himself would survive in his underwater city Atlantis with the future of mankind, the übermenchen apparently. The übermenchen idea is a nazi idea that the aryan race was superior to everyone else and therefore you needed to commit genocide against all other. So he's pretty much a nazi. XXX is taken to Atlantis because... why do it? Still, Bond breaks out, releases the 3 kidnapped submarine crews (I think, I recognise the British crew from the start of the film and the American one, but I can't hear the Russian one) and we get the first mass action scene from Moore. There's guns, grenades and explosions. Awesome! They get control of the command centre and gives the submarines instruction to fire the missiles at each other. They escape on the American sub as the tanker explodes and then given orders to destroy Atlantis. Bond sets out alone to infiltrate and rescue XXX. Killing Stromberg and fighting off Jaws before escaping in the escape pod as the Americans fires their torpedos.

Yeah, it's probably the best movie since Thunderball. A great threat, awesome car that turns into a submarine, spectacular stunt in the alps, a competent Bond-girl and the music is good throughout the movie (although I'm not that into the title theme). Didn't get any gadget explanation from Q though, and that was to keep the submarine part of the Lotus Esprit part secret... although XXX looked surprised, yet she stole the schematics for the car 2 years ago? Ah, nit picks. And the Swedish translation was akin to The Loved Spy  or maybe The Beloved Spy