Right so its blog post revisitation time (yep an attempt you could say to reach my quota for seven posts by the end of the year! ;-)) and this one is an extended version of my original review of the Roger Moore Bond film: For Your Eyes Only.
In fact the more I look at my older reviews I realise that quite alot of them were written in big chunky sections when I should really have split these sections into smaller paragraphs as the paragraphs were too long, but I digress.
So with that being said let's dive back in and give this one a closer look, oh and the usual obligatory warning is coming....
SPOILERS ARE AHEAD!!!
STORY
So the film begins with a British spy boat being sunk after its strikes a mine, the boat itself contained a specialised communications system used by the ministry of defence to communite with its fleet of Polaris submarines, named ATAC. Bond (Moore again) as a result of the incident is order by his superiors to retrieve the ATAC before the Soviets can as they could use it for their own means.
Meanwhile a British marine archaeologist who was hired by the British to locate the sunk spy boat is murdered by a hitman named Hector Gonzalez (Stefan Kalipha). Bond follows up the lead and travels to Spain where he sneaks around Gonzalez's villa but he is captured, however Gonzalez himself is killed by an arrow, which allows Bond to escape. Bond soon finds out Gonzalez's assassin is the daughter of the murdered archaeologist, Melina Havelock (Carole Bouquet) and the two of them escape together.
Bond later on with the help of Q (Desmond Lewellyn) discovers the identity of one of the men that was present at Gonzalez's villa was Emile Leopold Locque (Michael Gothard) another hired killer. Bond then travels to Cortina in Italy to track Locque and he meets with his Italian contact, Luigi Ferrara (John Moreno) and a Greek businessman and informant named, Aris Kristatos (Julian Glover) who tells Bond that Locque is employed by a smuggler named Milos Columbo (Topol) who was one time a former business partner of his.
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.
So after this Bond then teams up with Columbo and reunites with Melina to take down Kristatos and end his schemes....
THOUGHTS
After the somewhat ridiculously 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 a more gritty feel to it than Moore'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 begun in 1981, so instead of replacing the actor, they re-wrote his character to include a new one, 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.
PERFORMANCES AND NOTABLE SCENES (Warning: this section may contain spoilers!)
Performance wise, the film is actually quite good and features a largely fine cast.
And to start off of course we have 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 goes up to Locque and shows him the killer's pin that he left with Luigi Ferrara's body (Bond's associate) and Bond says to Locque "You left this with Ferrera, I believe". And as the cars starts to give way to the crumbling rock, 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 it remains a standout moment in Moore's era.
Then there are the scenes where Bond is stuck with taking care of Bibi, the annoying horny teenage skater and one such example is where Bibi lies in bed naked and 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 we have 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 although his villain isn't the most memorable or menacing it has to be said.
But Glover has some good moments that include the one where Kristatos has Bond and Melina tied up on his boat and they have been tied to a speedboat which will drag them through the water to attract the sharks for dinner! And in the scene just before Bond and Melina are to be dropped into the water, Kristatos says to his men of Bond's wound on his arm "Bind that wound. We don't wany any blood in the water. Not yet!". Melina then looks disgusted at Kristatos and she spits at him "Murderer!" and Kristatos says to her, as a way of a pun as she uses her crossbow as a weapon in the film: "You've shot your last bolt, Miss Havelock!".
Then there is the scene where Kristatos near the end readies his departure with the Atac machine but he is met with by an angry Bibi, who tells him "You can go to hell!" and he smacks her roughly. Now I never condone violence against women, although in this case Bibi's character is pretty annoying so she kind of asked for a slap.
Topol however provides the film's standout role as Milos Columbo who is a really colourful character, who loves eating pestachio nuts and Bond is wary of him at first but he later becomes allies with him. And when Columbo meets with Bond he tells him that he has got him all wrong and that Kristatos is the real villian. So Columbo tells Bond "I'm here, Mr. Bond of the British Secret Service. But I'll tell you it is Kristatos you want, NOT me. He told you about himself. He's the one with the powerful connections. Locque works for him, not me. I smuggle, yes. I smuggle gold, diamonds, cigarettes, pistachio nuts... but no heroin".
And then Columbo goes on to say to Bond "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".
Carole Bouquet 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.
Regardless of that though, Bouquet does what she can with her role and to the credit of her character, she does have more of a motivation and backstory to deal with than most of the Bond girls we usually see. Bouquet, a French actress, reportedly had her voice dubbed over by another actress for the film, which given that she can speak English herself seems a bit daft although its not entirely certain that she was dubbed.
Bouquet still has some good moments here and there and the one that springs to mind is when Melina tells Bond she is out for revenge for the murder of her family. However Bond warns her with the Chinese saying of being prepared to "dig two graves" if you plan for revenge and Melina says to him "I don't expect you to understand, you're English, but I'm half Greek and Greek women like Elektra always avenge their loved ones!".
Then there is the scene where Bond, Columbo and Melina arrive at the scene of a monastery where Kirstatos is located and Bond starts to make his way up a steep mountain to get to the top where it is. And during the scene, Columbo looks up concerned saying "We are just five men!" and then Melina produces her crossbow and says "And a woman!".
Bouquet also gets the dubious pleasure of delivering the film's title line, which is one of the naffest as well "For your eyes only, darling!" just as 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!" although the parrot is kind of funny.
As for the other cast members, Lynn-Holly Johnson 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!
However it is worth mentioning Johnson's most notable scene where she attempts to try and seduce Bond as get's into bed naked but Bond is reluctant to oblige her. And in the scene Bibi asks Bond "Don't you like me?" and Bond wearily says to her "Why, I think you're wonderful, Bibi... But I don't think your uncle Aris would approve" and Bibi says to Bond "Him? He thinks I'm still a virgin!".
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. Gothard himself has no dialogue at all in the film, which would suggest that his character was a mute. Sadly Gothard later took his own life in 1992 after years of struggling with depression.
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!".
And later there is the amusing scene where Bond goes into a church in St Cyrils and goes into a confession booth and he says to the priest on the other side "Forgive me father, I have sinned" and the priest turns out to be non other than Q who says to him "That's putting it mildly, 007!".
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 as she is (SPOILER!!) ran over by Locque.
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! In fact it has to be said that this film seems to have a thing for not so very talkative henchmen!
DIRECTOR AND MUSIC
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 very good score by Bill Conti, who provides a nice change in pace from John Barry's usual but excellent scores although it has to be said that the title theme sung by Sheena Easton remains for me, one of the weakest in the series.
Despite this though Conti's score is still a strong one and definitely one of the highlights of the film itself, particularly in the sequences where Bond, Melina and Columbo attempt to climb up the mountain at St Cyrils to stop Kristatos.
FLAWS
As for flaws...... well For Your Eyes Only isn't perfect and it has to be said that again the film lacks 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 to an extent for its leading lady and Bond girl character, Melina Havelock, as her character doesn't really come across as well as she could have, given that Melina's character had the potential to be really good as she had a motivation for revenge in the story. This however could also even have come down to the possibility of Boquet's voice being dubbed over and if it was then it would certainly attribute to her performance being not as strong as it might have been, which if it is the case then that's probably more to do with the director's decisions than the actress.
Then there is that stupid albeit entertaining opening scene where a bald-headed man, who is presumably Blofeld, takes remote control of a helicopter that Bond is flying in, however Bond manages to severe the cable that was remotely controlling it. So then Bond turns the table and he scoops up the bald-headed villain's wheelchair, which leaves the villain pleasing "Mr Bond, I'll give you anything! A delicatessen in stainless steel!!". A WHAT???!! A delicastessen in stainless steel???!! Now that is a bizzare one even by any Bond villain's standards! Its just an example of very cheesy, lazy writing if you ask me and it marrs the opening scene.
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 then Lee's contribution to the series was very memorable so his successor would have had some tough shoes to fill.
SUM UP
So to sum up, For Your Eyes Only remains one of Moore's stronger Bond films and definitely one of the more underrated Bond films of the era as it has plenty of good solid action, a likeable performance from Moore himself and a good supporting cast particularly from Topol and Glover.
And yes it does have its problems and its not one of the most memorable Bond films but its still got alot going for it and it saw the series come down to Earth after the outlandish (literally) Moonraker. Although the following film, Octopussy, would see the series become perhaps the most ridiculous its ever been up to this point!
Right well that's it for now and I will be back soon with another post before Crimbo.
Till the next one its bye for now!
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