Cue 2:30
The song was also the best part of that sketch.
The sliding down the bannister then shooting the end bit off to avoid groin injury is in Octopussy I’m afraid, so this terrible film can’t claim that one!
Will have to agree to disagree on this one. It’s my least favourite of Moore’s, even below TMWTGG, and second worst of all in my view, only beating Die Another Day as that is just cheesy beyond compare. The fact that Moore is only onscreen for about 3 minutes and is replaced by various stunt men who look nothing like him is actually hilarious though. Stacey Sutton’s screeching is like nails down a blackboard and discount JW Pepper Police Chief is bloody awful. Only Walken comes out with any credit really. I do love that theme song though, still rocks.
I believe Bond goes along the crane part of the fire engine in order to get to the back bit where he can steer it independently of the main cab, to run the cops off the road, but then the ladder is unsecured and hilarity ensues.
On Octopussy, it could have been so good if they’d cut out the ‘comedy’ and pushed the cold war stuff more. As it is, the former just detracts from the latter and we get something a bit ‘meh’ as a whole.
Things I remember from A View to a Kill:
- Grandpa Bond and Grandpa Steed wheezing around a horse farm
- May Day killing a guy at the Eiffel Tower with a fishing pole
- Christopher Walken laughing evilly in a blimp
- “What a view!” “…to a KILL!” (ugh)
- Grandpa Bond and Granddaughter Bond Girl wandering around in a mine
That’s about it.
Even worse than Moonraker?
[does pigeon double take]!
The Incredible Suit blog has a fantastic series of reviews of all 25 of the Bond films, for anyone interested. Made me laugh a lot reading through all this lot.
Yep, Moonraker for all its flaws including said double-taking pigeon, is a good laugh, until he goes to space (spoiler alert!!), at which point I always lose interest. And the freefall parachute opening sequence is utterly brilliant (except the Jaws falls into a circus big top part at the end. I close my eyes, put my fingers in my ears and ignore that bit).
What, not even “More POWAAAR” from Walken, or the (not actually the original) Beach Boys’ classic playing as Bond snowboards?
I couldn’t not think of “More Cowbell!” during that line.
I could never figure out just how he got such air on the makeshift snowboard. Like, he literally launches himself like thirty feet straight up a sharp incline. I hope I’ve got that much leg strength when I’m 58 years old.
Bond also managed to have about 8 different faces in that film, talk about a master of disguise.
The Beach Boys scene rings a bell. I vaguely remember Christopher Walken hamming it up, but nothing specific.
I stand corrected.
The Living Daylights (1987)
The Timothy Dalton era begins - and is already half over.
I really didn’t have a problem with Dalton, though as soon I as realized how much he looks like Jerry O’Connell, I couldn’t unsee it. The knock on him at the time was that he played Bond too seriously. I don’t know if that’s true; he was just as smug as Connery and Moore were, and just as aware of his own plot armor. The difference may be that while all the Bonds acted above it all, his predecessors seemed somewhat amused by this. Dalton’s Bond seemed kind of annoyed at having to deal with all these lesser colleagues and adversaries.
Aside from Dalton, though, The Living Daylights feels a bit different from the previous Bond films in plot and pacing. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, just different. I thought the pre-credits sequence at Gibraltar was fantastic. And the cargo net fight scene was great as well. In between, there wasn’t a ton of action. Well, there was the chase scene with the frozen lake and riding the cello case down the hill, which could have been terribly exciting, but somehow it all kind of fell flat. Also, after it felt like the movie was over, Bond still had to go back and deal with Koskov and Whitaker, which felt superfluous. They could have tightened things up and dispatched with those two earlier, I thought.
Still, the strength of this one was in the plot, which hit the sweet spot of being interesting with a few fun twists and turns, but without being too convoluted. It didn’t need non-stop action to keep me interested; every scene moved the story forward. A well-written and well-filmed story, that maybe would have actually worked better as a non-007 movie.
Maryam d’Abo was gorgeous, and played her part well. Jeroen Krabbe (Koskov), Joe Don Baker (Whitaker), and especially John Rhys-Davies (Pushkin) all turned in fine supporting performances. Andreas Wisniewski was fine as Necros, I suppose, but in the Bond villain enforcer role, somewhat underwhelming.
Desmond Llewelyn is still plugging along doing his Q thing. Robert Brown as M was… there.
The new Moneypenny was a miss for me. Moneypenny’s whole bit was that she pined for James, but he was out of her league. Caroline Bliss (and this is not a knock on Lois Maxwell) was hot. Bond would have been all over that.
John Terry was not my favorite Felix Leiter, either. Too much of an ‘80s dude; I didn’t buy him as a top CIA agent.
The Pretenders got credited in the opening sequence for two songs that were barely heard. I wish they’d gotten a crack at the theme song instead of the quite dull a-ha effort we got.
In summation, a bit of a mixed bag, and possibly a turning point tonally for the franchise, but overall I quite enjoyed it.
Next up: License To Kill
Timothy Dalton was probably the best actor to play Bond, although he perhaps wasn’t the best fit for the role. He deserved better films.
the thing is in the 80s we had too many action movies … back in the 60s and 70s we didn’t have Arnie and bruce and steven and sly their imitators etc so a bond movie was special in later years not so much …
By the time Dalton got the role bond wasn’t all that special and his two movies could have been any action hero …
I remember liking this one. As you noted, there are some good supporting actors in there.
Too bad Licence to Kill was such a stinker.