This is an entry in the franchise that is a little difficult to talk about. On one hand, it's honestly one of the more forgettable Bond films. The plot is somewhat hard to latch on to, the villain is horrendously bland, it's got what has to be in the running for the absolute worst Bond theme song ever, and there's a lack of iconic moments you can put on a poster to really stick out and make you remember the film. As bad as "Moonraker" was, there are scenes in it you won't forget once you see them. With this film you'll be struggling to remember many specific moments that you can think back on and say "That bit was cool."
On the other hand, I kind of liked it.
Hey, that's the name of the movie!
"For Your Eyes Only" finds Bond (Roger Moore) hunting down an encryption device that is capable of completely controlling all of the British fleet's missiles, which was lost when the ship it was on hit a mine and sank. And now they have to get it before the Russians do, since if they got it they could easily blow up the entire fleet or England or all of Russia's enemies or all of the above. That device seems like an entirely silly thing to create for reasons exactly like this, especially when apparently there's no way to reprogram the British missiles so that they can't be controlled by it. I wouldn't have personally made something like that, but then again I'm not a professional, so what do I know?
When a marine archeologist the British hired to find the ship is assassinated, the trail of the hitman leads Bond to Spain where the assassin is assassinated by Melina (Carole Bouguet), the daughter of the archeologist and Bond girl for this outing. Bond then follows the trail of another hitman to Italy. After that the plot gets a little convoluted as a lot of double crosses are revealed, making it so that it's just a little bit difficult to follow who is working for who. In fact, the main villain of the film isn't even revealed to be the main villain until about halfway through, due to the movie being deliberately misleading.
The guy holding Bond at gunpoint is one of the good guys. Who knew, right?
That's not to say that's necessarily a bad thing, however. Not every action movie needs their villain cackling behind steepled fingers, but it does tend to downplay the threat somewhat because we don't have as much time to build them up. When the villain, Kristatos (Julian Glover) is finally revealed it's a little difficult to be afraid of him because up to that point, all we've seen him do is have polite conversation over dinner and be generally normal. And little changes once the mask is lifted, as Glover doesn't exactly channel Vincent Price or anything in terms of wickedness. He just kind of looks overly annoyed when things don't go his way, makes threats he doesn't follow up on, and acts nonchalant if people die. Yeah, it may be a little more realistic, but it doesn't make for a fun or memorable villain. And I like Julian Glover as an actor a lot but here he's really not trying very hard to be a decent bad guy, particularly for a Bond movie. As silly as it may come across, you kind of want the mustache twirling at some point.
True, he didn't twirl his mustache in "The Last Crusade" either, but at least there he was evil in a Nazi sympathizer capacity.
Rescuing us from the unfortunate dullness of the Big Bad are two things the film does have going for it: An effectively intimidating secondary villain, Locque (Michael Gothard), and a handful of respectably fun action scenes which are pretty impressive in their stunts. A silent assassin, Locque doesn't say much if anything, but Gothard has this great intense stare combined with a detached coldness in his eyes that really sells the 'remorseless killer' angle, and I found myself wishing on more than one occasion that he was the main bad guy instead of Kristatos. After Bond takes him out in a surprisingly cold blooded manner by Sparta-Kicking his precariously dangling car off of a cliff, the film does tend to go downhill from that point on.
Personally I thought this was one of the better Roger Moore outings in the action department. In particular is a pretty good car chase through a jungle road, an effectively nerve-wrecking climb up a cliff, a few large scale shootouts, and what is probably the highlight of the film, a scene were Bond is chased down a mountain while on skis by a bunch guys on motorcycles. All of this is pleasantly well done, and I must give the Bond franchise tremendous credit for having not one, but two films which feature a fight on a bobsled track. I wouldn't have thought that possible.
Seriously. How did you manage to get into this situation twice?
While I'd noticed it from his debut, it was at this point that people started calling Roger Moore too old to be Bond. Some of it had to do with Carole Bouquet being some 30 years younger than him and looking like it, and another had to do with the character of Bibi, a young professional ice skater played by actual young professional ice skater Lynn-Holly Johnson. While Johnson was only a couple of years younger than Bouquet, she looked closer to sixteen, which made the scenes where she's trying to seduce Roger Moore, who looks like he subscribes to AARP magazine, exceedingly uncomfortable. It was played for laughs, and James flat out refuses her advances, but he's been such a pig throughout the series that by this point I'm not putting anything past him.
"Yes, well, put your clothes on and I'll get you some ice cream." = CREEPIEST. LINE. EVER.
I think this movie needs an adult.
I've praised the action and relative down-to-earth nature of "For Your Eyes Only," but that's not to say it got gritty and serious all of a sudden. As much as the tone may have been evened out, there's still scenes of Moore mugging to the camera, fighting hockey players like The Mighty Ducks went evil and at long last killing off a wheelchair-bound Blofeld by picking him up with a helicopter and dumping him down an industrial smokestack. Also, Marget Thatcher talks to a parrot while thinking it's James. This same parrot also helped save the day. I wish I were joking.
But the silly stuff is still to a far lesser degree than we'd seen in the past. Overall, this one gets a pass from me. As strange as it is to say I enjoyed a Roger Moore Bond outing, this is one of the better ones, despite it being rather forgettable. I guess in the end, not suffering throughout the proceedings at the expense of it being memorable is an acceptable tradeoff. At least when it comes to Roger Moore.
For anyone still complaining about movie trailers sucking today...I give you 1981. Ball's in your court.
THE BOTTOM LINE - It's one of the most forgettable Bond films, but it's actually not that bad. Despite his distracting advancing age and continued hamming it up, this is probably one of Roger Moore's better outings. At least it didn't hurt me while watching it.
JAMES BOND
WILL RETURN IN
OCTOPUSSY
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