Right its now March and time sure is flying so I thought I would do another post and this one is on another Bond film so this will cover For your eyes only, Roger Moore's 5th in the role. So let's give this one a look....
Bond later meets up with Kristatos's protege figure skater, Bibi Dahl (Lynn Holly Johnson) and while they ski together, Bibi points out to Bond an East German biathlete, Eric Kriegler (John Wyman) who later tries to kill Bond, who manages to escape. Later on Bond fends off another attempt on his life at an ice rink and soon finds his contact, Luigi dead, with the symbol of a "dove" in his hands, the nickname for Locque. Bond then travels to Corfu to follow Columbo and he meets with Columbo's mistress, Countess Lisl van Schaff (Cassandra Harris) and they spend the night together. The next morning while walking a beach, Bond and Lisl are attacked by Locque who kills Lisl but Locque flees just as Columbo's men show up and capture Bond and take him to Columbo. Columbo later explains to Bond that Kristatos is the man Bond should be after as he was the one who hired Locque and Kristatos is working with the KGB to retrieve the ATAC and he persuades Bond to go along on a raid of Kristato's opium processing warehouse in Albania. During the raid, Bond discovers naval mines similar to the one that sunk the British spy boat, later Bond chases after Locque, shooting him in the shoulder, causes Locque's car to crash on the edge of a cliff and Bond kicks the car over, which sees Locque plummet to his death. After this Bond then teams up with Columbo and reunites with Melina to take down Kristatos and end his schemes.
After the somewhat fantastical Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only saw the Bond series come back down to Earth (literally!) and with the change of director, John Glen, FYEO has more gritty feel to it that Bond's previous films did, which in itself is no bad thing. The film also saw a change in the cast as sadly Bernard Lee, who played M, died shortly just after filming had began in 1981, so instead of replacing the actor, they re-wrote his character to include a new character, Bill Tanner, to take over as the chief of staff at MI6 and Bond's superior. Roger Moore also apparently was set to make this his last Bond film but later of course did come back to play the part in two more films, Octopussy and View to a kill.
Performance wise, FYEO is actually quite good and features a largely fine cast, starting with Roger Moore who provides another solid turn in the part and this time he plays Bond with a bit more sensitivty and with less chauvanism and it actually stands as one of his most likeable performances in the role. Although it does have to be said that Roger is starting to look a bit old for the part by this time! Moore has some good scenes and naturally some good one-liners and even his opening scene is quite funny where Bond is attacked by a bald headed villain (unidentified but clearly based on Blofeld) who remote controls a helicopter that Bond is in. And in the scene Bond eventually manages to take control of the helicopter and picks up the villains' wheelchair by one of the copter's landing skids and as the villain pleads with him and Bond pats his head and says "Alright keep your hair on!" and the villain continues "Please Mr Bond, put me down!" Bond teases him saying "Oh you want to get off???" and he drops the villain down a large chimney stack! Then there is one of the film's best scenes where Bond chases after Locque, who crashes his car up the top of a cliff and Bond kicks Locque's car off the cliff and later he quips "He never did have a head for heights!". Moore was reportedly uneasy about the idea of filming the scene but eventually agreed to go ahead with filming it, which is just as well as its a standout moment in the film. Then there are the scenes where Bond is stuck with Bibi such as the scene where Bibi lies in bed naked, Bond for once looks uncomfortable given that she is just a teenager and says "Well Bibi, if you put on your clothes, I'll buy you an ice cream!". Then there is the scene at the ski slopes where Bond bids her farewell and says "Well if I don't see you again, Bibi, I'll just say don't grow up anymore. The opposite sex would never survive it!". Another really good scene for Roger which is quite suspenseful is when Bond makes his long climb up the mountain to Kristatos's hideout, which is in a mountain-top monastery and one of Kristato's men tries to kick him off the cliff and knock out the climbing bolts he has placed one by one, but Bond manages to pull himself up just in time before the last one is knocked out and he kills the henchman. Roger also has one or two good serious moments as well such as in the scene where he warns Melina about taking revenge for the death of her parents and he says "The Chinese have a saying "before setting off on revenge, you first dig twice two graves" and later on as she is about to kill Kristatos he reminds her again "Just be prepared to dig those two graves!" before (PLOT SPOILER!!) Columbo saves her the trouble. And in the second last scene of the film Bond throws away and thereby destroys the ATAC machine, just as General Gogol arrives (Walter Gotell) and he says to him "That's detente, general, you don't have it and I don't have it!".
Julian Glover is excellent in his part as the main villain, Kristatos and he seems to enjoy playing the part of the double dealing businessman and intelligence informant. But Topol provides the film's standout role as Milos Columbo who is a really good and colourful character (who loves eating pestachio nuts!) who Bond is wary of at first but later becomes allies with. And when Columbo meets with Bond he tells him "I'm a good judge of man. You have what the Greeks calls "thrausos". Guts!". and he goes to reassure Bond that "By tomorrow we will be good friends. Let's drink to that".
However Carole Boquet is one of the weak links in the cast as she is pretty wooden in her part as Bond's love interest (or one of them!) Melina Havelock. And Bouquet delivers the film's title line, which is one of the naffest as well "For your eyes only, darling!" just before Bond and Melina strip off and go for a swim. This is of course then following by the annoying parrot who speaks to Margaret Thatcher (played by June Brown) on the phone and keeps saying "Give us a kiss!".
The supporting cast are mostly good with one or two exceptions Lynn-Holly Johnson is one of them as she is rather annoying as the horny teenage ice skater, Bibi Dahl who has a thing for Bond even though he is three times her age! Michael Gothard is quite effective in his role as the creepy silent assassin, Locque aka "The Dove" who Bond kicks Locque's car off a cliff with him in it. Desmond Lewellyn also nicely reprises his role as Q and has a good scene where Q and Bond try to identify Locque by using specialised data tracking equipment and Q at one point even messes up Locque nose and Bond tells him off "A nose not a banana Q!". Cassandra Harris also adds a bit of sexy charm to the film aswell in her role as the Countess, Columbo's mistress, whom Bond spends the night with just before she meets her fate the next day. And last of all John Wyman while he doesn't have much to say does OK as Eric Kriegler, Kristatos's henchman, who has an amusing scene after chasing Bond in the mountains and Bond escapes, Kriegler out of rage angrily hoists his bike above his head and throws toward Bond's general direction!
Moving onto the director, John Glen does a fine job here in his directorial debut and he confidently handles the action of the film very well as he would continue to in his next four Bond films that he directed. Glen also contributed well towards changing the tone and style of Bond quite a bit and he radically changed it when Timothy Dalton came onboard as Bond. Music wise the film also has a good score by Bill Conti, who provides a nice change in pace from John Barry's albeit excellent scores although it has to be said that the title theme sung by Sheena Easton remains one of the weakest in the series.
As for flaws...... well For Your Eyes Only really isn't perfect and it has to be said that again the film lack's a strong central villain as Kristatos isn't very menacing even though Julian Glover's performance is very good his character is not an effective villain, certainly not in comparison to the likes of Goldfinger, Scaramanga or Kananga and next to them he is quite forgettable. The same can also be said for its leading lady and Bond girl character, Melina Havelock who is actually quite insipid and again its a reminder by then the series was struggling to try and create interesting characters and its up to the supporting roles such as Columbo and the Countess to prove the film with a bit of colour. In fact that is a general criticism that can be levelled at the film is half the characters are pretty faceless. I also felt that the film's underwater scenes were a bit tedious where Bond and Melina locate the ATAC and get attacked by a man in a metallic suit with pincers (yep really daft!). Then there is the scene where Bond and Melina are tied to the back of Kristatos's speedboat and he has them dragged through the water in an effort to attracts nearby sharks in the water. Its a pretty laboured drawn out sequence which ultimately of course results in Bond and Melina escaping anyway. And lastly Bernard Lee's presence is somewhat missed from the film as his character M was written out to allow for the new character Bill Tanner to be written in who makes a rather bland replacement.
But that all put aside For Your Eyes Only is still one of Roger Moore's strongest Bond films and even though it looks a bit dated it still holds up well after nearly 35 years.
And with that I shall bye for now and will be back soon with another review.
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