Film Review: A View To A Kill - 40th Anniversary

"A View To A Kill"

*** (out of ****)

There is a scene early in the James Bond action / adventure film, "A View To A Kill" (1985) - which is celebrating its 40th anniversary - where Bond (Roger Moore) is trying to escape the threat of the Soviet bad guys in Siberia. He jumps on a snow board when the film's soundtrack switches from the familiar Bond theme to California Girls by the Beach Boys, offering a visual gag as if to imply Bond is surfing.

Its because of  scenes like this some movie fans criticized Roger Moore's Bond movies and some "movie critics" (sheep) didn't approve of this era either. In her New York Times review the great critic Janet Maslin started off her review of the film stating, "As lavishly escapist as they are, the latest James Bond films have become strenuous to watch, now that the business of maintaining Bond's casual savoir-faire looks like such a monumental choir." But for many of these "critics" "A View To A Kill" was a disappointment even by Roger Moore standards. In her New Yorker review, critic Pauline Kael wrote of  "A View To A Kill", "The James Bond series has had its bummers, but nothing before in the class of A View to a Kill."  Neal Gabler, co-host of the post Siskel & Ebert Sneak Previews show declared this the worst Bond movie, up to that time.

These forty years later, the question to ask is, is "A View To A Kill" as bad as the "critics" argued? Of course it isn't. As is always the case with the American public, they over do it in their assessment on the quality of well...anything. "A View To A Kill" isn't the worst Bond movie or a terrible movie in general and Roger Moore wasn't the worst actor to play James Bond. In fact, contrary to popular opinion, Moore was my favorite Bond, although I freely admit, the Sean Connery Bond movies had better plots. 

One of the most interesting things about "A View To A Kill" is the movie's politics. All Bond movies released at this point in time dealt with the realities of a Cold War world. In many Bond films, especially Moore's, Russians were the villains setting up an East versus West mentality. While there are  Russian characters in "A View To A Kill" it is Silicon Valley that is under threat (In Gene Siskel's Chicago Tribune review he refers to it as the "so-called Silicon Valley". Perhaps the term wasn't quite mainstream yet). We were entering a new world in the 80s. No longer was the villain merely an egomaniac hell bent on world domination by using missiles. Now we are dealing with the tech industry, computers and microchips. Remember it was only a year prior that the Macintosh personal computer was introduced by Apple. Computers were still relatively new to John and Jane Doe.

The villain here is Max Zorin (Christopher Walken), a wealthy industrialist, whose company has created a microchip made to withstand an electromagnetic pulse. He wants to destroy Silicon Valley so he can have a monopoly on the microchip market. Seemingly just for the hell of it, Zorin is also a racehorse owner and the film's writers - Richard Maibaum (who wrote a majority of the pre-Daniel Craig Bond films) and Michael G. Wilson (also the film's producer) - have created a needless background story involving Nazis. Zorin was born as the result of  Nazi experiments (!).  

Just as Goldfinger (Gert Frobe) had a deadly servant - Oddjob (Harold Sakata) - so too is Zorin given a menacing partner, May Day (Grace Jones). While she is something of Zorin's "muscle man", it is inferred they are lovers as well. Something Zorin's Nazi creators surely wouldn't have approved of!

Bond on the other hand is paired with Stacey Sutton (Tanya Roberts), perhaps the most boring Bond girl name ever. What happened to names like Pussy Galore? Holly Goodhead? Plenty O' Toole? Zorin has been trying to buy Stacey out of her family's oil business. Stacey may be able to possibly provide Bond with information concerning the location of an oil mine Zorin is expected to cause an explosion at.

The biggest problem with "A View To A Kill" is not the actors but the screenplay and John Glen's directing. Glen has directed the most films in the Bond franchise with a total of five. His first directing effort was "For Your Eyes Only" (1981) and his last was "License to Kill" (1989) which featured Timothy Dalton as Bond. As evident by "License to Kill" and "Octopussy" (1983), Glen could be a good director and bring out some excitement in this material. "A View To A Kill" is on autopilot. There's no fluctuation in tone. The action scenes aren't displayed as thrilling. There's nothing here to really jolt the audience. Something is off key.

The script feels too jumbled. There is a lot much going on and yet nothing seems developed. There is no real sense of who these characters are. Christopher Walken is a beloved actor and a tremendous talent but the script here doesn't give him much to do. Walken doesn't make a splash in any of his scenes. Grace Jones actually becomes the more memorable villain and that's largely due to her physical appearance.

All that leaves audiences left to enjoy is Roger Moore's performance. For me Moore is doing what he had done in his six previous movies. He always remained a suave and witty figure with a terrific screen presence. To me he looked like what I imagined a James Bond should have looked like. However the majority of  "critics" at the time complained Moore was too old at this point to play the character. Dave Kehr, writing for the Chicago Reader  wrote of Moore, he's "all but checked into a nursing home". Don't you just love the depth of American film criticism? Leonard Maltin in his Entertainment Tonight review also commented on Moore's age as well.

As for complaints about Roger Moore and humor, gosh, I wish there was more of it. Maybe it would have liven up the movie but I didn't find anything humorous about "A View To A Kill". Comedy wise two things stand out. One involves a sequence at the race track which absolutely must have been a reference to "My Fair Lady" (1964) as there is a moment when Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell, in her final performance playing the character), caught in the excitement of the race, stops herself from yelling for a horse to move his ass. It is similar to a famous scene from "My Fair Lady" with Audrey Hepburn's character. The next sequence has Bond dangling from a fire engine ladder as Stacey is driving away from police in a chase scene. It recalls a scene from the Bob Hope comedy "My Favorite Spy" (1951) with Hope in a similar situation.

Despite some "humorous" moments however "A View To A Kill" is played for action and does have some good action set pieces including an earlier car chase, where Bond's vehicle is destroyed and another sequence inside the oil mining tunnel near the end of the movie. I never came away feeling the movie was being weighed down by comedy as others have stated.

What is lacking in the movie is any chemistry between Bond and Stacey. She is not a strong female character in the sense she is not resourceful and is often placed in damsel in distress situations. In one scene involving a burning elevator she and Bond are stuck in, she repeatedly screams for Bond not to leave her as he tries to find a way to escape. And she was one of Charlie's Angels?! To try and spice things up a useless KGB character is introduced (Fiona Fullerton) only to disappear after two scenes.

This all makes it seem as if I don't like "A View To A Kill". I do enjoy moments of it and feel of all the Roger Moore Bond movies, this one relies the most on his charm to succeed. It is though the weakest of all the Moore Bond movies. But I would rather watch this movie over all the Daniel Craig Bond movies with the exception of  "Spectre" (2015). At least "A View To A Kill" somewhat follows the Bond formula I recognize unlike those Craig movies which tried to pierce into the soul of Bond.

Another positive for "A View To A Kill" is I like some of the supporting characters in particular Tibbett (Patrick Macnee, best known to American audiences for his role on 1960s TV show "The Avengers"). I don't know if audiences were supposed to make this connection but I got a kick seeing Moore and Macnee together. Two of the most famous British TV spies of the 60s - Simon Templar from "The Saint" and John Steed.

The story goes Roger Moore was ready to walk away from the Bond franchise after starring in "For Your Eyes Only"  but eventually agreed to appear in Octopussy, which some honestly believed would be Moore's final outing as the character. Moore was aware of the grumblings about his age and being too old to play the character. However Moore would return one more time in "A View To A Kill" before making his official announcement that he was retiring from playing the role. Could this have contributed to a mood on set? Did everyone know this was the end?

Looking back 40 years later "A View To A Kill" does feel like an end. With Timothy Dalton cast in the role, the Bond persona changed a bit. In "License to Kill", Dalton's interpretation was a precursor to Craig's rough around the edges Bond. Bond is a killer not a suave lady's name. After a six year hiatus and Pierce Brosnan being brought into the role, he wasn't involved in sequences that recalled Bob Hope movies. 

"A View To A Kill" also seems to have had a finger on the changes coming to the spy genre and how technology would play a new role. All spy villains nowadays seem to want to control the world through cyber warfare. This wasn't the case in 1985 as Gene Siskel wrote in his review, "It's one thing to try and control the planet by setting the Russians against the United States, or by owning all of its precious metals, but microchips? Yes, they're important, but in movie terms they're so visually boring." Who would offer that criticism today? "A View To A Kill" was on to something.

Roger Moore's Bond swan-song doesn't end with the bang it should have. All these years later I hope audiences are able to appreciate the impact Moore had on the spy genre and our expectations of what a secret agent character should be in a movie. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Moore's interpretation of a secret agent has seeped into pop culture more so than Connery's. Who do you think Mike Myers was channeling for   Austin Powers? "A View To A Kill" isn't the best Bond movie but it does signify the end of an era and for that it deserves a special place in the cannon of Bond movies.