Nobody Reviews It Better: For Your Eyes Only (1981)

Chicken Man, our resident Roger Moore scholar, is taking short break from covering Sir Sleeze in order to give Thrasher a crack at it. Now broadcasting from our new Montreal office!

James Bond may get serious once again with For Your Eyes Only, especially after the absurd weightlessness of Moonraker, but it's a schizophrenic seriousness at best. Witness the traditional pre-credits sequence: in an uncharacteristically sober moment, Bond convalesces at the grave of his short-lived wife, Teresa, and then, with nothing more than a wry smile, off he goes to chuck Blofeld (and his poor cat) into a factory's chimney. It's a breathlessly stupid, farcical sequence, and I would be willing to praise it if the rest of the film fell more or less in line. It doesn't. There's a bit of a throwback narrative here to the Cold War concerns of Sean Connery's 007, as a British spy boat is sunk in the Ionian Sea and Bond is asked to recover its missile targeting computer before the Reds can do the same. Bond also has to contend with Melina Havelock, seeking revenge for the murder of her parents. Naturally, they up working toward the same goal, and they get along famously, that is after Roger Moore pushes her around for a while. It's a workable concept for a spy film, but it gets confused by too many characters, too many betrayals, and some sensationally slow going expository scenes. Often it feels like little more than a travelogue, as Bond and Melina stop to gab about the philosophical weight of vengeance in front of alternating, but always beatific, Spanish and Italian vistas. Thankfully, Moore's upper-crusty peevishness had yet to really reach full bloom, and even his own special brand of sleaze is noticeably absent. This is probably the most sincere Moore would ever be, and for a Moore film, For Your Eyes Only has some exceptionally well-designed action sequences, including an extended car chase in the Spanish countryside, where Bond's usually well-equipped car is swapped for a nimble yellow bug, and an even more prolonged chase in which Bond runs the winter sports gambit through the Olympic village in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy. These scenes amusing, no doubt, as well as properly filmed and fantastically edited, but they are poorly integrated into the overall film, and they happen so early on that bland story has to carry things until the fairly enjoyable finale. For Your Eyes Only is fine for an afternoon's entertainment, but it's only a middling, mild-mannered Bond.

A James Bond Thanksgiving

Hopefully you're celebrating Thanksgiving like I am by watching the customary James Bond marathon on the SyFy network (or perhaps on some other network, depending upon your region or country). Unfortunately, they are presently playing one of my least favorite entries in the series, Diamonds Are Forever. Sean Connery seems very bored indeed; maybe he should take up writing so he can help out the inner-city youth. Thankfully, though, I'm lucky enough to own DVD copies of my favorite 007 films, and this is a perfect opportunity to talk about the Ultimate Edition box sets put out in 2006.

These box sets, and the DVDs within them, are not ordered chronologically but they are rather shrewedly haphazard, in the sense that most of the sets contain equal measures of the best Bonds, and a few stinkers thrown in as well. But for the James afficionado, your best bet is the wonderful Ultimate Edition Vol. 3. You get three absolute classics, From Russia With Love, GoldenEye (you may recall that Goldeneye won the Code Redd Net Award for Best Bond Film a few weeks ago), and On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and even the requisite Roger Moore sleeze-fests, Live and Let Die and For Your Eyes Only, aren't too bad.

Amazon has it for pretty decent bargain, so get on it.