Nobody Reviews It Better: A View to a Kill (1985)

Thrasher returns to Mooreville one last time for Roger's seventh (!) sordid mission as 007. Happy trails, old boy. MGM would wisely bring in Timothy Dalton as the relief pitcher in The Living Daylights, something which Chicken Man will detail in the next installment of Nobody Reviews It Better.

We've come to the end of Roger Moore's tenure as 007, and A View to a Kill is certainly more of a whimper than a bang. After seven tepid, uninspired and uninterrupted entries, Moore's ridiculously agile, and somehow, still virile, seemingly septuagenarian Bond goes out with one of the most pedestrian films in the series. Christopher Walken is a fantastic choice for the classically maniacal Bond villain Max Zorin; unfortunately, he doesn't get to be the kind of Napoleon he should be until the last act, and by then it's too late. Though he gets to rattle off some wonderful Walken-isms ("More! More power! More! Do it!"), he spends most of his time on screen as a quietly menacing richboy who bets on horses. His fantastic schemes only take form at the end; he plans to trigger a catechism that would inundate Silicon Valley, thus giving him a virtual monopoly in microchip technology. When the film finally yields to his over-the-top-ness, he really shines, cackling as he shoots his own men with a submachine gun and flying his blimp into the Golden Gate Bridge. His enthusiasm in these scenes stands in stark contrast with Moore's wearying temper. Moore looks like the tired old man he probably was, and this is particularly noticeable when he seduces his much younger co-stars, or when he "snowboards" down a mountain momentarily to the tune of "California Girls." The problem isn't the action sports segue, or the song, both of which could be amusing in a different context. Moore is the problem. It's simply not believable, even in the fictional world of 007, that a man who looks so old could do so much. There's a fun sequence or two, especially the rigged horse race through Zorin's estate, or the vertiginous finale in San Francisco, but it's all been done before by other Bonds, and it's all been done better. And for those few spirited moments of action, there's that many more scenes of banal dialogue. Unlike, say, Diamonds Are Forever, which is at least interesting because it marks a time of tension and transition for the series, A View to a Kill in no way indicates future directions. This is about as mediocre as Bond would ever be.