NO ONE COMES CLOSE TO JAMES BOND 007.
A spy ship containing a communications device critical to British intelligence sinks off the coast of Albania; James Bond (Roger Moore) must retrieve it before the KGB do.
The twelfth Bond flick abandons the madness of Moonraker (1979) and returns to the simpler, more exciting concept of the first films in the series. One novel twist is that we’re never quite sure of who the bad guy is, Topol or Julian Glover.
Plenty of good action (love that car chase) and attractive locations, a lovely performance from Carole Bouquet and a charming one from Moore. There’s also an outstanding opening sequence where old nemesis Blofeld meets a fiery end.
1981-U.K. 127 min. Color. Widescreen. Directed by John Glen. Screenplay: Richard Maibaum, Michael G. Wilson. Song: “For Your Eyes Only” (performed by Sheena Easton). Cast: Roger Moore (James Bond), Carole Bouquet (Melina Havelock), Topol (Milos Columbo), Lynn-Holly Johnson, Julian Glover, Jill Bennett, Desmond Llewellyn, Lois Maxwell.
Trivia: Charles Dance can be spotted in an early part as a gunman. Followed by Octopussy (1983).
Last word: “It is true that Roger did not like heights and who could blame him! The climbing scenes shot in the Meteora region of Greece were scary to say the least. Roger overcame his fears and performed admirably. Rick Sylvester, who doubled for Roger in the ski/parachute jump in The Spy Who Loved Me did similar work here, particularly the rope drop. Carole Bouquet had a different problem. Whereas Roger was terrific in the water she unfortunately had an inner ear problem which prohibited her to dive. We overcame the problem of filming the extensive underwater sequences by shooting them dry. Derek Meddings, a very talented visual effects director, came in to his own in achieving this. No CGI in those days! By shooting at 90 frames a second and using a wind machine we were able to simulate the underwater movements. A graph paper was put on the view finder of the Mitchell camera and the positions of their mouths were notated. The undeveloped film was then passed to Derek for superimposing bubbles.” (Glen, JamesBond007.se)
