A View to a Kill (1985)

Budget 30.0 million. Opening Dates: UK June 13, 1985; US May 22, 1985

World Box Office $152.4 million

Originally Written
Sunday, November 31, 2006

A View To A Kill is the final stint for Roger Moore as James Bond, and the run of mostly campy films finally begins to come to a close. This final Moore installment actually surprised me as I half expected it to be one of the worst outings in the franchise. Thankfully, A View To A Kill isn't as bad as it appears to be and turns out to be more of a slow and silly Bond film rather than an extremely campy adventure.

Bond is sent to investigate Max Zorin (Christopher Walken) a famed breeder of prize horses, and also the man behind an extensive industrialized computer chip company. Bond soon discovers Zorin has been cheating on his horse racing by implanting a micro chip into the leg of his horse which at the opportune moment releases a small dose of steroids into the horse’s blood stream, increasing the horse's performance.

But a little horse race cheating is hardly the information Bond is searching for. Soon he learns of Zorin's real devastating plan, to destroy Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley in San Francisco is the worlds leading distributor of computer micro chips, with them out of the market Zorin Industries will then be able to move in a conquer. Zorin's plan is to submerge Silicon Valley under water by piping salt water into the nearby earthquake faults, therefore leading to a devastating "natural disaster" and putting him as the new number one distributor in the world!

After an extremely corny lead in to the film with Bond snowboarding down the side of a mountain to a Beach Boys song, and probably the worst introduction credits and theme song of any Bond film to date, I felt a little worried about what I was getting myself into. Luckily the film turned around a little, still the action scenes are completely unbelievable to a point of amusement, the acting is average, and the Bond girl horrible, but the film kept me entertained. Walken is always hard to take serious and usually becomes more amusing, but still a descent villain and the franchise finally has a different plot, in the sense that the villain isn't trying to take over the world.

In the end, there is no comparing this film to the Sean Connery greats, but at least this final outing for Roger Moore doesn't end up being his worst. If you want a fun and average Bond adventure this is for you. It's really close to one of those corny 70's action/adventure television programs, but if anything you'll definitely see quite a few things you haven't seen before, like Bond driving around France in only the front section of a car! Hopefully the franchise will now get back to a little more serious tone, although the Moore "clown years" were rather interesting!

6/10