Posted 08 August 2008 - 07:06 PM
#19 A VIEW TO A KILL
There's a huge gap from Licence To Kill to the second worst Bond movie, and in fact A View To A Kill is not an especially bad film. It's certainly recognisably a Bond film. It features all the things you expect from a Bond film. The trouble is, it's a Bond movie on autopilot. It feels incredibly tired, as it everyone just wanted to get the film out of the way. It seems to continually rehash bits and pieces from other Bond films, but very weakly. It often feels like a pale echo of several proceeding ones.
The basic aim was the continue the feel and formula that, that for the most part had worked for Octopussy. A combination of For Your Eyes Only seriousness and Moonraker silliness which resulted in Octopussy being a very schizophrenic Bond film, but a very entertaining one. In A View To A Kill, the tone is weighted towards the 'realistic' end, but in a way that all glamour and much of the feel of escapism just goes out of the window. A View To A Kill is one of the several Bond fiilms that suffered from having a lower budget than normal, and suffers from it most. The title sequence has bits from The Spy Who Loved Me's title sequence plastered on it for goodness sake! The film had a drab look and can't even make Paris and San Francisco look good. It lingers in tourist cliche-the first sight of Paris is of two holiday makers photographing it- and never attempts to go into actuall local colour.
When A View To A Kill does put in the odd 'silly' moment, such as Bond driving the front half of his car after the back half has been removed, they just seem out of place with the general style and feel of the film. And as for Snooper, the most pointless, idiotic gadget ever, words fail me. The basic plot is Goldfinger rehashed, down to even having several parellel scenes, but some elements are really clumsy-watching this film you could be forgiven that microchips are dug out of the ground. There's also no sense of urgency or growing tension. There is actually plenty of action, but the bits in between are often quite boring due to the dull and disinterested feel. Bond making a quiche might well be the character's low point in the entire series.
As for the action scenes, the pre credits ski chase is pretty good until the Beach Boys come on, the Eiffel Tower chase is okay while it lasts but afterwards has a feeling of being a bit wasted despite May Day's jump, the steeple chase sequence is quite clever but rarely looks convincing, the two brief underwater bits unexciting, the burning lift IS genuinely exciting, the jokey chase in San Francisco with Bond hanging on a fire engine ladder is a fun bit of nonsense but badly needs Sherriff JW Pepper in place of the police captain lacking in personality here, the mine stuff in most of the final quarter just bores, and the climax-well, never has Roger Moore's stuntman seemed more obvious as when he's hanging on the airship, and never has the series had as abysmal back projection as when Bond is fighting Max Zorin atop the Golden Gate Bridge. The fight itself is basic and really quite poor. All this is evidence that A View To A Kill has tons of action, but still feels slow and lazy.
Roger Moore just goes through the motions here and he really seems to have aged drastically in the two years since Octopussy. Tanya Roberts as Stacy Sutton is as forgettable and badly acted as Pam Bouvier and a great deal more annoying. Grace Jones as May Day does have a striking presence but is wasted as the film seems to be building up to a fight between her and Bond which doesn't happen. Her change of sides seems like a hurried script rewrite [of course we can't have Moore fighting womnen can we?]. Christopher Walken as Max Zorin is monotonous despite his character's intriguing history. Davil Yip's Chuck Lee must be Bond's dullest ally. The two best cast members are Patrick Macnee as Tibbett, who has some great banter with Bond as an agent posing as his chauffeur, and Fiona Fullerton's Pola Ivanova, whose dalliance with Bond ends with a great gag involving tape swapping.
Other good points? Aubergine's death is one of the most inventive and surreal of the Moore era. Duran Duran's theme song is great, not that 'Bondian' but catchy and John Barry's fairly low key score, which includes an action theme that is reminiscent of the great On Her Majesty's Secret Service theme, is solid and is a great improvement on his lazy Octopussy score although it's still not that interesting. Most aspects of the film are professionally done,there's just no spark to any of it.
A View To A Kill is a poor and very lacklustre Bond film but all said and done it's still quite fun in places and as a whole isn't a total disgrace! I still quite enjoy watching it, but than it's still a Bond film, isn't it?
