Review of A View to a Kill (1985) by John P — 27 May 2011

Meet James Bond the dinosaur. Seriously, Roger Moore was 57 in this film. My dad just turned 58. Have you seen my dad? Back before Casino Royale came out, he wanted to try out for the role. I showed him this film, and he decided against it. For good reason, too.

This movie is (accurate grammar, this is your stop):

1. A complete ripoff of Goldfinger. Octopussy had some sequences lifted, but the entire fucking plot is the same!!!

2. Most of the John Glen-directed Bonds (all from the 80s) suffered from a lack of energy and visual flair. Alan Hume sucks at cinematography. He makes everything overlit and cold-looking. And for a town as unspectacular as San Francisco, it doesn't do the film any favours.

3. The acting. Roger Moore is 400 years old, Tanya Roberts is the worst Bond girl ever (all she can do is scream, but even that's unconvincing), Grace Jones is the most frightening "woman" I've ever seen (Bond also humps her mere minutes after she was engaging in sweaty tonsil hockey with Christopher Walken), and then there's Christopher Walken, who is either underused, but when he's onscreen, he's overacting as all hell. His best moments are at the end when he just goes completely batshit.

So, we have a Bond film that isn't silly like some of the other bad entries, it's just stale. Seriously, the franchise as a whole was hurting from this one. Granted, it's satisfying at parts, Duran Duran's song kicks ass, it's John Barry's best score since On Her Majesty's Secret Service and no Bond movie is truly awful, but this one comes the closest. Roger Moore, you deserved a better swan song than this piece of poop.