The Living Daylights

Best Bond?

15th movie and the first with Timothy Dalton as Bond. This was my favourite 007-movie as a kid (well mostly due to being from 1987, the best year of them all) and now we shall see if it still holds up. Begins in Gibraltar when three 00-agents are sent in by parachute to test the security of Gibraltars military. Doesn't go that well when one is taken by the Gibraltar military and the other is killed by an intruder. 007 spots him and starts to chase him in an amazing chase scene down the serpentine roads and then see it flying over the edge and Bond escapes by opening his parachute and landing on some girls yacht. And then we're hit with the best Bond-song of them all, the living daylights by A-ha. Amazingly enough the overall soundtrack is amazing. The horns and synths work in fantastic combination for every action scene. And of course it's the sound of the blu ray-menu.

Following this we end up in Czechoslovakia where Bond is to aid the defection of General Koskov from the Soviet army. Apparently he is watched over by a female sniper that played the cello in the orchestra Koskov was watching. 007 guts feeling tells him that she doesn't appear as a Soviet assassin and just wounds her. After he gets away they send Koskov over the border in the natural gas tubes and back to England with a fighter jet that takes off from a roof. Koskov defects due to the new KGB-chief Pushkin that seems to have restarted a Stalin program called Smiert Spionem that was behind the death of the 00-agent in Gibraltar. Pushkin is supposed to be in Tanger for a conference and 007 gets the order to kill him since he is a threat to the west. 

Bond accepts the mission, but takes a detour back to Czechoslovakia in order to find out who the sniper is. Turns out it's Koskov's girlfriend and she followed Koskov's order. They escape to Austria where another agent is killed in Smiert Spionem so Bond and the girl goes too Tanger. Koskov have also been taken by what appears to be a KGB-agent but turns out works for an American arms dealer named Whitaker. The plot is that Koskov and Whitaker worked together and as Pushkin took over began looking into the affairs as embezzlement. So Whitaker wants Pushkin dead and Koskov try to get the British to do it. 007 meets up with Pushkin and he agrees to act dead to let the bad guys show their hands. And after escaping, meeting Felix Leiter again for the first time since Live and Let Die as they have been looking into Whitaker, he meets with Kara (the girl) and is put to sleep as the alleged KGB-agent and Koskov takes them to an airport and a plane en route to Afghanistan. With a case of diamonds.... are we in a diamond smuggling operation again? That's a bad omen.

Apparently they are using the diamonds to buy opium from the mujahideen and then sell it, for around half a billion dollars and then get more weapons. Bond gets some plastic explosives and intends to blow the plane up. He gets recognised and a shoot out happens, and then Kara with a group of mujahideen who's leader Bond saved from the Soviet army prison. After Kara and Bond escapes on the plane, and dropping the assassin Whitaker hired off the plane... and the plane crashed due to running out of fuel, they had back to Tanger to take in Koskov that returned to Whitaker. But Whitaker fights Bond with the latest technologies, but in the end the little gadgets from Q wins the day, and then Pushkin arrives taking Koskov to Moscow for defection. 

Maybe it's nostalgia but I still like it. It doesn't get boring, the music is great. The plot might not be the most dangerous for the world. Just some arms dealer that smuggles diamonds and opium and embezzles the Soviet Union. I really like Dalton as Bond in this and you get the Aston Martin and some other gadgets from Q. Today maybe the mujahideen is a bit bad after 9/11. It was also translated as Mission Ice Cold... not much ice here beyond the escape from Czechoslovakia. I also always thought living daylight meant some thing akin to living target, that wasn't apparently true.

A View To A Kill

Last Moore-movie, might need more cowbells.

14th film, last Moore-film, and the last movie with the original Miss Moneypenny. Starts up in Iceland (it was filmed on Iceland, but I assume they are somewhere in Russia) where 007 finds the corpse of 003 with a locket containing a microchip. He escapes Russian soldiers on skis, scoters and helicopter and we have the music back. A step up really. He blows the helicopter up and escapes on a mini-submarine. And then the title theme. One of the best one yet, A View to a Kill with Duran Duran. Great start.

So the actual story is that the microchip is a copy of one of a microchip the British government contracted a defence contractor to create to be able to withstand an electric impulse from a nuke or something like that. The contractor was bought by Zorin Industries and therefore Bond is sent in to investigate the businessman Max Zorin. Suspicion arise as he constantly wins horse races so Bond meets a french investigator that gets killed in the Eiffel Tower so 007 goes undercover with another agent (which I learnt in the documentary was the voice for all the documentaries on the movies). Turns out that the horses are operated with microchips that with a remote control can add natural steroids to the horses so that they can win the race... and the audience learns that Zorin is a KGB-agent that supplies microchips to the Soviets, but he intends to break off since he intends to stand on his own by taking control of the microchip market.

Apparently he intends to cause an explosion on the San Andres fault and flood the whole Sillicon Valley which stands for 80 % of the worlds production of microchips. And apparently he is genetically engineered human from East Germany that seems to have made him into a psychopath... and now it's just Bond catching up to the plot. He spots a woman that was given a check and after looking into one of Zorins oil platforms that pumps salt water into the pipelines he visits San Francisco City Hall where he meets the woman again that was at Zorins home in France. She works as a geologist there while processing against Zorin for stealing her father's oil company. They team up and follow him to the fault and stops the explosion after Zorin kills all the workers. He tries to escape on a zeppelin and kidnapp the girl, Bond follows and they have a fight on the Golden Gate Bridge where Zorin falls off and the Zeppelin explodes after a stick of dynamite gets lost in a shuffle.

I've had memories of this being the worst Bond-movie, might have been since it was the one I've seen least. Probably due to all the deaths. Sir Godfrey and the CIA-agent got strangled while a Soviet KGB-agent gets dropped into an underwater propeller. I can stomach it now, but as a kid it was probably the right decision by my parents not show it for a long time. The biggest crime the movie has is that it feels a bit disjointed. First the introduction, then horse races followed by oil rigs that ends up in mining facilities and talks about a psychopathic villain (what differs Zorin from anyone else? He's practically reenacting Goldfinger but with Microchips). And maybe that Moore isn't that nimble anymore. The music though is great, every action scene has a sound. Compare that to Octopussy and the tiger hunt. I can't recall a sound beyond the people and elephants. 

And the plot at its core isn't that interesting. Microchips that doesn't contain any information isn't that interesting, but at least it was something that would be important for the computer industries. Also, this one was titled Living Target.

Octopussy

 

We're entering the bad Moore-era

13th movie and we start in... Cuba? I think it's Cuba, looks like Fidel Castro look-alikes all over the place. And 007 destroys some hanger with a plane and then leaves... That's it? Title roll and then we appear in Berlin as a clown is chased by some dagger throwing people in red. The clown gets a knife in the back, but is able to get to the British embassy and delivers a Faberge egg. Turns out it's a double 0 agent and as we return to London it's shown that the egg is a fake and meanwhile the real one is being auctioned away. Bond attends and switches out the fake with the real one, getting the sights on Kamal Khan, an exiled Afghan prince that payed for the Egg.

Apparently he acts as a seller of stolen Russian treasures that a Soviet General Orlov uses to fund... whatever he funds. They uses the smuggler Octopussy who have a palace in India to get the treasures across the Iron Curtain. But Kamal Khan and Orlov sets her up since Orlov plans to, instead of the jewelry, plant an atomic bomb that will go off on an American Air base in West Berlin, triggering protest of unilateral disarmament in the West, enabling the Soviet military to take Western Europe without the American Nuclear umbrella.

Now that's an interesting plot. The movie was made in 1983 and it was not until after the cold war ended that it was understood that the leaders of Soviet Russia was as paranoid as General Orlov and slightest believed aggression would have caused the Soviet Union to launch their nuclear arsenal. We also know that the peace protest was in some cases financed by the Soviet Union to try to disarm the West. So all this is really interesting and is on point with history... then why is this one of the most boring movies in the franchise? Well, I would assume the fact that instead of focusing of the internal power struggle of the Soviet Union, we get another diamond smuggling operation. I begin to see a pattern here.

After 007 stops the bomb, dressed in a clown suit I might add, Octopussy (who was gonna be collateral damage) travels back to India where Kamal Khans palace is and tries to catch him, but she fails so Bond arriving with Q in a hot air balloon. After getting on an airplane he rescues Octopussy and gets out. As stated it didn't do anything for me. It had exotic locals in India, but the music is terrible, there's hardly any in it. As mentioned, the politics of the movies are interesting, but it's hidden behind the boring main plot. Orlov should have been the main bad guy, I don't even get what Khan gets out of this besides money. And I assume they tried to make Octopussy appear as a female Blofeld with the not showing her face and the images of the octopus looking like SPECTRAS emblem. Why not go for that angle full time? Damn, why not have a female main antagonist? 

For Your Eyes Only

 

Snow and water, must be one of the good Bonds.

12th movie and we start off at the cemetery with Tracy Bonds grave. Used to watch this movie and eating some licorice candy as a kid. 007 gets called in to London and a helicopter arrives, but as he flies in it is hijacked by a man in a wheelchair and a neck bracer with a white cat in his lap. Obviously a reference to Blofeld. After getting in the front of the helicopter and taking over the controls the music pumps up and Bond picks up Blofeld and drops him in a smoke stack. Awesome beginning and then the title sequence with the song For Your Eyes Only. I really like this song, probably one of the better Bond-ballads. 

In the mediterranean a British spy ship is blown up by a mine and the computer that gives orders to the British Polaris fleet isn't self-destructed. Moscow gets the news and contact a specialist in Greece. Afterwards a woman arrives to her parents research boat, but the parents are killed by her pilot since they where tasked by the Secret Service to try to locate the sunken ship and get the computer. Bond is called in and sent after the killer in Spain. Arriving he is quickly captured, but is able to escape as the woman from before kills her parents murderer. They escape and Bond goes to London. There he research the one paying the assassin and that leads him to an olympic village in Italy where his contact introduces him to Kristatos, a greek smuggler that pinpoints a man named Columbo as the man behind the assassination. Meanwhile he avoids several murder attempts from an East German athlete, a hockey team and some bikers.

Back in Greece Bond tries to get info on Columbo by his mistress, but she is killed by the same person paying the assassin. Bond meanwhile is saved by Columbo who reveals that Kristatos is the man he really is looking for.

Look at this face, does this not look like a trustworthy guy?

They attack an opium fabric and kills the man who was Kristatos delivery man. Afterwards Bond meets up with the girl from before and locate the ship to get up the computer (or whatever it is). Intense action underwater and as they emerge Kristatos have taken their ship and prepares to keelhaul them or whatever the term for dragging someone in water. They escape and track Kristatos to a mountain monestary and together with Columbo and three of his men they scale the mountain and get the better of Kristatos, but not before the KGB arrives. The only option is destroying the computer so Bond throws it of the mountain. The Soviets just laughs and leave... somehow I have a hard time seeing that option. But they did.

The computer thing gets some From Russia With Love-vibes with the Lektor, but it works. Not world shattering since it basically only effects Britain as I get it.  Bernard Lee as M doesn't appear anymore. I really like the music. No fun gadgets though. Overall still a good movie, would probably put this in the top 3 with Thunderball and The Spy Who Loved Me. This one had the title A View to a Kill... which will cause some problem in the near future. Took me a long time getting that Kristatos actor was Julian Glover who was both in Star Wars and Indiana Jones... where he also played a villain who posed as a good guy, and that movie even had Sean Connery!

Moonraker

 

The Last Frontier

11th movie and we're going to space. Someone steals a space shuttle that the British was transporting for the Americans and the Secret Service sends their best man, James Bond. The only lead they have is looking at the shuttles manufacturers, Hugo Drax i California. And the instant he arrives Drax tries to kill Bond and it gets so obvious that Drax is behind it all so I don't get why Bond just calls for support. Meanwhile CIA have their own operative and as they goes around Venice and Rio trying to uncover his grand plan the CIA girl gets kidnapped and the clues leads to the Amazon. Where Drax has a hideout in some Aztec... or is it Mayan ruins? They travel to a hidden space station in orbit around the world where Drax begins firing special globes containing a toxin that will kill humanity so that he can basically wipe it out and start a new race with the people he gathered in the space station... his master race... It's the damn plot from the last movie!!! With the toxin idea from OHMSS!!!

Yeah, basically is. 007 and CIA destroys the radio jammer, the Americans sends up a shuttle with a platoon of space marines, an epic space fight occurs, the whole station blows up and as 007 and the CIA girl chases after the 3 globes that was fired, blasting them with the laser on Drax own space shuttle.  They are destroyed and the world is saved.

I remember liking this as a kid, probably watched this one the most. I mean, it had lasers and astronauts!!! And it could also be that we had it on a taped VHS and afterwards there was a taped episode of the original Ducktales where Launchpad becomes agent 000. Which I think was the inspiration for making Darkwing Duck after that. I gathered people disliked this one and thought it to gimmicky with trying to be a Star Wars-movie because that was popular. I would see it just like You Only Live Twice, a movie that is fine on its own, but compared to the one before doesn't hold up. Moonraker more so since it basically was the same movie again. And the fact that the only reason the plot unfolds is that Drax promised the Americans a shuttle, but one of his owns have a manufacturing fault so he got to quickly get it back... why not just make a new one and postpone the operation a month or so? Is it really worth it getting the Americans and British looking into his business? 

Drax is also rather interesting, since it feels today as they nailed the industrialist space corporations based in California like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. But that's pretty much the most interesting bit.

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

Man With The Golden Gun

 

A bullet with your name on it

9th movie and this time we have Cristopher Lee as Scaramanga, the assassin that seems to be after 007 and trying to get his hand on some solar device (a Solex) that will make solar energy the most efficient energy source in the world and combat the energy crisis. The energy crisis which they never mentions is the founding of OPEC, the oil cartel, that after the Yom Kippur war between the Arab countries and Israel stopped the flow of oil to the west since US and UK supported Israel. The price hike that followed pretty much destroyed the cheap energy boom that probably helped the upward spiral of the economies of the west after World War II. It showed how reliant the western economies was on oil and therefore most countries tried to try to get out of that. So much of the alternative energy resources was spearheaded just for that reason. So here is one of the most forward looking plots of the Bond-movies so far. Sadly we don't explore that avenue but instead looks on Bonds dark shadow, Scaramanga.

Cause it's more a Scaramanga movie than a Bond movie. Who gets the awesome flying car? Scaramanga. Who gets the gadgets? Scaramanga. Who gets at least a competent Bond-girl (until she betrays him at least)? Scaramanga. So the plot kicks off a golden bullet being sent to MI6 where it pretty much points toward 007 as the next target of Scaramanga. Bond goes to Beirut to get the bullet that killed 002... why not use the bullet they got in the mail? Is it since they don't know what caliber gun was used? They still figured out where the bullet was from with the amount of nickel and gold so why not just use the bullet they got? It leads to Macao where 007 is able to tail Scaramangas girlfriend and get the info that Scaramanga is staking out this club. Before entering Scaramanga shoots a person leaving which turns out to be the solar specialist Bond was originally working to find, but was discharged from due to the Scaramanga situation. 

007 looks into the scientists boss who hired Scaramanga, but Scaramanga takes the solar device and kills the boss. His girlfriends betrays him, since she was the one arranging Bond to look for Scaramanga so that 007 could kill Scaramanga. Scaramanga kills her and after some complications kidnaps 007's assistant that happened to have the device on her. So Bond has to go to Scaramanga's secret island hideout, duel Scaramagna, get the Solex and escape after the assistant by mistake puts the whole island on a countdown to explosion. As well as almost frying Bond with the solar laser when she accidentally pushes a switch. I can't stand that girl. She caused more troubles and pushed the movie 30 more minutes.

Still, great music and there is an interesting conflict on the world stage behind the movie so I give it at least that. Best things about the Roger Moore movies is the rock music titles and the Lulu song is no exception. The biggest problem though with the Solex plot is that, it should have had some effects on the real world. All other we can believe that Bond stopped World War III before it began or something, upholding status quo and all that, but here he actually gets the one thing that would end the energy crisis and therefore put the Bond-universe to another trajectory than our own world. Where are the solar farms, why are there still oil being drilled for and whatnot?