For Your Eyes Only is unquestionably the best film in the Roger Moore Bond series.  It has just about everything I want in a Bond movie.  Despite a few missteps here and there, the film is totally engaging, featuring Mr. Moore’s best performance, plenty of great characters and locations, the most classically beautiful Bond girl ever, and an outstanding script.  The film also contains numerous recalls of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

His Name Is…

We begin as we always do, with the performance of Roger Moore as James Bond, 007.  All the different aspects of Bond’s character are on display here, although because it’s Mr. Moore as opposed to Sean Connery, the range is not as broad.  It’s great to see him place flowers at Tracy’s grave, although I’d like to have seen a bit more emotion at that moment.  There’s plenty of Mr. Moore’s trademark charm, but it comes off as more organic this time around (due in no small part to the writing and directing).  Mr. Moore’s Bond is much more physical in this film – skiing, ski jumping, climbing a mountain, leading an assault on a shipyard, engaging in an ice hockey fight, and dangling from a helicopter.  And of course, there is a moment of unrepentant brutality as he kicks Locque’s car off the cliff.  Apparently, there was some serious discussion as to whether Mr. Moore’s Bond would do such a thing, that it was more suited to Sean Connery’s Bond.  I think this choice was a good one, as it reminded audiences that Bond wasn’t all just fun and games, and that he still could have an edge.

The film also has the most romantic feel of any of Mr. Moore’s films.  He is protective of Melina, there is obviously an attraction, they assault St. Cyril’s together, they fight to recover the ATAC underwater together, and end up skinny-dipping amidst beautiful undersea ruins over the credits.  It certainly helps that the film has the most beautiful and exotic locations thus far in the series, that they spend a lot of screen time together, that Ms. Bouquet is beautiful, and that there is the subtext of Tracy’s death running through it.  Of all the women Mr. Moore’s Bond has encountered thus far, Melina is the closest  and warmest relationship he’s had.   It truly is a romantic adventure, and yet another reason why I so admire the film.

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Looking back at The Karate Kid (1984), which turned twenty-five years old this week, a thought keeps recurring.

Wow. . . Avildsen made it work twice.

John G. Avildsen is, in some ways, a director of little distinction when compared with well-known marquee names like Spielberg, Scorsese, Nolan, and Tarantino. The vast majority of his movies are utterly forgotten by the average filmgoer — indeed, he’s been nominated for Worst Director at The Razzies three times. And yet, like Victor Fleming decades earlier with his twin successes The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind (both 1939 — read a great recent article on Fleming here), Avildsen has twice punched way above his weight, netting himself an Oscar for Best Director and giving birth to some of the most memorable moments in motion picture history. (more…)