A View to a Kill (1985) | Music

The story goes that John Taylor from Duran Duran (with a few drinks in him) approached Cubby Broccoli at a party and asked when they were going to get someone "decent" to do a Bond song. Taylor's a Bond fan (he talks about it a bit in this 1985 interview for the movie) and I can imagine that his asking that was as much out of frustration over the blandness of the last few theme songs as it was out of ambition. At any rate, Broccoli listened and Duran Duran worked with John Barry to create one of greatest Bond songs of all time.

I kind of dread writing about Skyfall and having to pick between that song and this one, but I'm a huge Duran Duran fan and "View to a Kill" pushes all my buttons. From the pounding drums and synth to the nonsensically poetic lyrics and the delightfully whiney way that Simon LeBon sings them, it's a perfect Duran Duran song and it makes me so happy to have it in a Bond movie. I remember being ecstatic at the time, hoping that this was a herald for better times for Bond music.

To go with it, Maurice Binder created a very '80s opening credits sequence with blacklight effects and girls literally dancing into the fire. There's a lot of dancing in the credits, but also pointing guns and skiing. Binder's been using more photography in his last few sequences, with silhouettes just popping in now and then. At some point he'll work in a unique image like in A View to a Kill where he has Bond shoot at a woman to turn her into ice for some reason. It's been a while since I've felt any real inspiration from his titles. He's mostly just picking a gimmick and then doing his usual thing with it and I admit that I'm getting weary of the formula. Maybe that's because I'm watching these so close together.

Barry barely uses the Bond Theme in A View to a Kill. It shows up clearly as Bond chases the parachuting May Day through Paris, but other than that it's only just noticeable as part of another action theme that Barry uses during the ski chase, the fight at Stacey's house, and the fight on top of the Golden Gate bridge.

Top Ten Theme Songs

1. A View to a Kill
2. The Spy Who Loved Me ("Nobody Does It Better")
3. On Her Majesty's Secret Service instrumental theme
4. Diamonds Are Forever
5. You Only Live Twice
6. From Russia With Love (John Barry instrumental version)
7. Live and Let Die
8. Dr No
9. Thunderball
10. Goldfinger

Top Ten Title Sequences

1. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
2. Dr No
3. Thunderball
4. Goldfinger
5. From Russia with Love
6. The Spy Who Loved Me
7. Diamonds Are Forever
8. Live and Let Die
9. Moonraker
10. Octopussy

A View to a Kill (1985) | Villains

I know this is the point, but May Day is so weird. Grace Jones, man. I never know what she's doing, but I always end up sort of liking it. You always know exactly how she's feeling, whether she's glowering or laughing maniacally for no reason. And those emotions flip so quickly. She's all into sparring and wrestling with Zorin until he starts winning and then she turns feral, snapping and biting at him. When he exerts his power even more by trying to make out with her, she resists at first, but becomes totally okay with it as long as she's on top and in control.

It's fascinating to me that her defining characteristics - he need for control and having zero masks on her emotions - are huge weaknesses. She's such a strong and imposing woman, but there's a desperation about her that makes her endlessly compelling to me. I don't even know if I'm talking about May Day or Grace Jones now, because it's the same situation in Conan the Destroyer (though I like her character a lot better in that movie). It's probably a moot point, because I always get the feeling that she's more or less playing herself anyway.

I love that she switches sides at the end. Some folks have a problem with it because behind the scenes it was probably due to '80s sexual politics about Bond's not being able to kill a woman. I don't care about that as long as it works in-story and it totally does. It doesn't make May Day a weaker character; it makes her stronger by tragically letting her find her humanity moments before giving her an heroic death. Up to that point, she was basically a bizarre, flamboyant substitute for Oddjob, but turning against Zorin makes her into a character that I care about.



Speaking of May Day's transformation, let's talk about Jenny Flex. She introduces herself and her weird name to Bond like she's going to be important, but does nothing the rest of the movie. Her ultimate, best purpose in the film is to die, betrayed by Zorin, and motivate May Day to change.

Which, actually, I'm okay with. That's her role in the movie, to be the object of May Day's grief. It's the first sign of humanity we get from May Day when she sees Jenny's body and cries out her name. We have no clue what their relationship was, but whether they were close or Jenny was just a trusted underling, her death affects May Day and makes May Day see that Zorin is more monster than even May Day can take.

What threw me was Jenny's name. I'm used to women with punny names having more to do than Jenny does. But her name gets my attention and keeps it whenever Jenny's on screen, even if she's not really doing anything. That way, when she dies, I remember who she is and understand why May Day is upset.



Zorin's head of security is Scarpine (who has a scar, what are the odds?). He's one of the two people in Zorin's inner circle; the other being Dr. Mortner. I should maybe say a quick word about Mortner, partly because he also plays the king in Princess Bride and that's awesome, but also because his role in the story suggests something about Scarpine.

Mortner was a Nazi scientist who experimented with steroids on pregnant women in order to create super soldiers. Zorin was one of those babies and it's clear that he sees Mortner as a father figure. My theory - and I'm sure that others have had it before me - is that Scarpine was another of the steroid babies. That not only explains why Zorin doesn't betray him, it also explains why Scarpine seems to be just as psychotic as Zorin, ruthlessly and brutally helping Zorin to murder his own men.

My favorite thing about Scarpine is that he's played by Patrick Bauchau, whom I think I first noticed as the vampiric prince Archon in Kindred: The Embraced and also enjoyed on Carnivàle, Alias, and anywhere else I see him pop up.



Finally, I love Christopher Walken and Max Zorin is a very Walkeny performance. It's impossible for me to not enjoy him in this movie. The original intent was to have Zorin played by David Bowie or Sting, who were both doing a lot of acting in the '80s. I love both of those guys too, but they would have played the role straight and I'm glad we got Walken. Zorin is a miserably written character and desperately needs Walken's energy to keep him watchable.

Zorin is clearly insane and that's fine for a Bond villain, but we're also supposed to believe that he's been able to fool the whole world into thinking he's respectable. Watching him at his party, I can buy into that. He's super charismatic. But his plans are ridiculous and he goes to very little effort to conceal his involvement in them. There's a French detective who's looking into Zorin's horse racing activities and even though the guy has literally nothing on Zorin, Zorin has him murdered in a public place, in a spectacular way, and even drives the getaway boat himself. I can easily believe that Zorin's psychosis makes him want to be as closely involved with the killing as possible. I just don't accept that no one's noticed his activities before now and that he's got this perfect reputation the Minister of Defense refers to.

Then there's the fact that his plan rips off Goldfinger's and we even get a repeat of Mr. Solo's fate from that movie. And there's also Zorin's trying to drown Bond in a lake without killing him first. Zorin's a cliché, nothing villain and the movie is damn lucky that it has Walken to bring him to life.

Top Ten Villains

1. Auric Goldfinger (Goldfinger)
2. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Never Say Never Again)
3. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (From Russia With Love and Thunderball)
4. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)
5. Maximilian Largo (Never Say Never Again)
6. Francisco Scaramanga (The Man with the Golden Gun)
7. Dr. Kananga (Live and Let Die)
8. Doctor No (Dr. No)
9. General Gogol (For Your Eyes Only)
10. Karl Stromberg (The Spy Who Loved Me)

Top Ten Henchmen

1. Baron Samedi (Live and Let Die)
2. Fiona Volpe (Thunderball)
3. Grant (From Russia with Love)
4. Nick Nack (The Man with the Golden Gun)
5. Gobinda (Octopussy)
6. May Day (A View to a Kill)
7. Jaws (The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker)
8. Naomi (The Spy Who Loved Me)
9. Oddjob (Goldfinger)
10. Irma Bunt (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)

A View to a Kill (1985) | Women

I'm kind of surprised that Kimberly Jones even gets a name. All she does is pilot the iceberg boat and "keep Bond company" on the way out of Siberia, but I like her. She seems to enjoy her job and why wouldn't she? She gets to drive that cool, swanky ride and hang out with super spies. I sort of want a whole TV show about her and her iceberg boat.



May Day is way more interesting as a villain than a romantic partner for Bond, so I'll save most of my thoughts for that post. I don't have a good idea about why she gets into bed with Bond; it's not like he's going to spill any important information because of it. I guess the one thing it does is shows us that she's not monogamous with Zorin. She and Zorin have a strange relationship that seems to be partly a battle for control and power, so maybe having sex with Bond is a way for her to show Zorin the limits of his control over her.

Not that Zorin seems to care, which means either a) that I'm way off the mark or b) his not being bothered is his own way of maintaining control. Walken plays Zorin so nonchalantly that it's hard to get a read on what he's thinking.



Pola Ivanova is a fun character. She's not in the movie much and is only there to give Bond information that he hasn't been able to pick up on his own, but I love the idea that he sometimes runs into former flings in his line of work. Rumor has it that Ivanova was originally intended to be Anya Amasova from The Spy Who Loved Me, but Barbara Bach wasn't interested in reprising her role. If that's true, it's too bad it didn't work out. That would have been even more fun.



And then there's Stacey Sutton, California State Geologist and daughter of an oilman whom Zorin put out of business. She's played by Tanya Roberts, who had replaced Shelley Hack (who'd in turn replaced Kate Jackson) on Charlie's Angels in 1980. That led to her roles in The Beastmaster and Sheena, which is where the Bond producers found out about her. She's not great in the part, but I like the post on Hill Place that defends her against her most aggressive critics. The author argues (successfully, I think) that the role of Stacey doesn't play to whatever strengths Roberts had as an actor, and that director John Glen seems to have done little to help her improve.

It's not that Roberts is unconvincing as a scientist, it's that the character is just bland and kind of dumb. She's only as necessary to the story as Pola Ivanova is: solely there to give Bond a crucial clue. The problem is that she sticks around well after she's done what the story needs from her. As far as Roberts' acting goes, she does just fine as a companion for Bond. Like I said earlier, their relationship is pretty innocent up until the last shot of the movie. The shower scene ruins it, because if that had been left out, Bond's relationship with Stacey is almost paternal. He very clearly notices that she's an attractive woman, but as I quoted yesterday for the Best Quip, he's "trying not to think about it." That's a cool relationship and Roberts holds up her end of it just fine.

My Favorite Bond Women

1. Tracy Bond (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)
2. Melina Havelock (For Your Eyes Only)
3. Paula Caplan (Thunderball)
4. Tatiana Romanova (From Russia With Love)
5. Fiona Volpe (Thunderball)
6. Domino Derval (Thunderball)
7. Holly Goodhead (Moonraker)
8. Mary Goodnight (The Man with the Golden Gun)
9. Andrea Anders (The Man with the Golden Gun)
10. Honey Rider (Dr. No)

A View to a Kill (1985) | Bond

Actors and Allies



As mentioned many times by many people - including the man himself - Roger Moore was too old to be playing Bond anymore. But let's not lie by saying that his age is the problem with this movie. He's still as charming as ever and his age is only an issue when he's climbing into bed with much younger women. For the most part though, those trysts make sense. The one that doesn't is Stacey Sutton, but except for a tacked-on, last minute dalliance in the shower, their relationship is mostly chaste, so even that's not distractingly creepy for most of the movie.

The problem with A View to a Kill is the story, as we looked at yesterday. Since there is no one, central mystery to solve, Bond's not able to succeed through detective work. The script forces him to rely entirely on hunches. He looks into the horse steroids on a hunch. Then, when that leads nowhere, he goes to San Francisco on a hunch. While there, he hears about problems with some missing crabs, so he investigates Zorin's oil wells on another hunch. He has to get his details about Zorin's most sinister scheme from the Soviets, and he meets Stacey - the final piece of his puzzle - quite by accident at City Hall when he goes to visit the Department of Oils and Mines for some reason. Probably a hunch.

It's sad that Bond can't do his job through honest problem-solving, because it's not for lack of trying. He goes undercover twice in the movie, which has to be hard for him, because that never works out well for Bond. I mean, one of his aliases is James Stock. I had to chuckle when he tells Sir Godfrey that "a successful cover becomes almost second nature." Like he would know.

Speaking of Sir Godrey, it's a pleasure seeing Patrick Macnee in this movie. I've never seen The Avengers (something I have plans to fix soon), so I mostly know him from View to a Kill and guest appearances on '70s TV shows like Battlestar Galactica. But even if you don't get the spy reference, he's still a fun character and a pleasant companion for Bond during the rambling horse investigation. That part of the movie is always better when he's on screen.

Once Bond gets to San Francisco, his main ally becomes Jack Lee of the CIA. Rumor has it that the screenwriters considered using Felix Leiter for that role, but opted for a Chinese American agent since Chinatown is such a well-known part of San Francisco. Good for them. The character probably wouldn't have been as memorable had he been yet another Felix.

General Gogol is back. He's sort of an adversary in that the initial microchip that got Bond involved had been stolen from the British and ended up with the Soviets. But Zorin refuses to play nice with the KGB and gets on Gogol's bad side, so there's another alliance between the KGB and MI6 as they both work against Zorin.

Speaking of MI6, everyone's very professional during Bond's briefing. Except maybe for Q, who will keep playing with that robot. Bond is attentive and serious, so M and the Minister of Defense don't have anything to get upset about. I guess that Robert Brown's M is having a positive effect on Bond in that regard. He seems neither easily riled nor willing to put up with any crap from Bond. I imagine that if Bond played the fool, this M wouldn't just gripe. Discipline would probably be swift and stern.

I wish I had a good, in-story explanation for why M sends in Q's robot to check on Bond at the end of the movie. They make a big deal of not knowing if Bond is dead or alive, but instead of sending an agent around to Stacey's house, they sneak that robot in. It makes no more sense than Stacey's wanting to take a shower with Bond.

Finally, we need to talk about Moneypenny, especially since this is Lois Maxwell's last performance in the role. She's also the last remaining cast member who'd been around since Dr. No. There's no flirting this time, just some friendly ribbing, but we're used to that by this point. I enjoyed her relationship with Bond, which wasn't nearly as one-sided (most of the time) as legend has it. That more-or-less platonic relationship with a woman is something that I miss about the rest of the series. At least until Skyfall anyway.

Best Quip



"I'm trying not to think about it," in answer to Stacey's question, "Do you know what I'm sitting on?"

Worst Quip



"There's a fly in his soup," after his dinner companion is murdered with a butterfly-shaped fishing lure.

Gadgets



The best piece of tech in the movie is the iceberg boat that extracts Bond from Siberia. I love its camouflage, I love it's Union Jack hatch cover, and I love its swanky interior.

But while Bond doesn't have anything else that cool in the movie, he certainly makes up for it in quantity. View has to hold the record for most gadgets in a film so far, especially the personal kind. He uses a bug-sweeping device disguised as an electric razor, polarizing sunglasses, a reader that makes impressions of the last check someone wrote, a camera ring, and a credit card (from Sharper Image, naturally) that opens locks electronically.

Looking at how my Top Ten list is shaping up for gadgets, I wonder if I shouldn't have made two separate lists to differentiate between vehicles and personal items, because the vehicles are definitely taking over. But nah. The vehicles are just way cooler. It's still a fair list.

Top Ten Gadgets

1. Lotus Esprit (The Spy Who Loved Me)
2. Aston Martin DB V (Goldfinger and Thunderball)
3. Jet pack (Thunderball)
4. Iceberg boat (A View to a Kill)
5. Glastron CV23HT speed boat (Moonraker)
6. Acrostar Mini Jet (Octopussy)
7. Crocodile submarine (Octopussy)
8. Little Nellie (You Only Live Twice)
9. Rocket cigarettes (You Only Live Twice)
10. Ski pole rocket (The Spy Who Loved Me)

Bond's Best Outfit



Love a leather jacket.

Bond's Worst Outfit



Still don't like brown suits.

A View to a Kill (1985) | Story

Plot Summary

Christopher Walken watches Goldfinger; thinks, "Hey! I should do that, but with computers!"

Influences

After the relatively down-to-earth Cold War stories of For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy, Cubby Broccoli and step-son Michael G Wilson (now listed as a full co-producer on the series) decided to go back to an over-the-top villainous plot. They also talked Roger Moore into one last movie, which confused me, because I was under the impression that everyone knew Moore was getting to be too old even for Octopussy, but they brought him back for that movie specifically to compete with Sean Connery in Never Say Never Again.

But it's the NSNA threat that best explains Moore's presence in View to a Kill too. The day before NSNA's release, Broccoli attempted to steal some of its wind by announcing that Moore would return for one last film. Without the benefit of hindsight, it must have seemed like a smart move. Everyone loved Roger Moore as Bond and no one really wanted to see him go. But if he was at his expiration date for Octopussy, he was long past it for View.

I wish I knew the thinking behind the movie's title. It was announced at the end of Octopussy as From a View to a Kill in keeping with the short story, but at some point it was shortened to the more wieldy version. The shorter version is better, but neither has anything to do with the movie. Even The Spy Who Loved Me at least has a plot suggested by its title. View just tries to force a reference with an extremely clumsy line of dialogue. It's true that they were running low on cool Fleming titles, but that's not even trying. What a cool challenge it would have been to improve on Fleming by creating a story that actually fits that title. Sadly, View isn't interested in doing anything challenging.

How Is the Book Different?

The one thing that the Fleming story has in common with the movie is Bond in Paris, but the circumstances are totally different and there's not a shred of Fleming's plot left. "From a View to a Kill" is one of the weaker Fleming stories, but it still has some set pieces that could have been put to good use. Instead, Wilson and veteran Bond screenwriter Richard Maibaum drew inspiration from the microchip boom and just laid that over the plot from Goldfinger.

Moment That's Most Like Fleming



Max Zorin is a mediocre villain because of his goals. With something else to do, he could have been great. Walken is pretty awesome in the role, but also, Zorin's origins feel very Fleming-esque. Like many of Fleming's bad guys, Zorin has his roots in WWII. And the evil program that created him is totally something that Fleming would have been interested in.

Moment That's Least Like Fleming



Sloppy diversionary tactics. The main problem with View is that it doesn't have enough plot to sustain a movie. Instead, it introduces a couple of extraneous plots to try to fool us into thinking there's more story than there actually is.

It starts the same way Moonraker did, with some technology going missing and Britain's only clue being the tech's manufacturer. In View's case, it's a special microchip that Zorin Industries was developing for Britain, but has now turned up in the Soviet Union. Because Zorin's organization has an obvious leak that needs looking into, MI6's lead is stronger in View than in Moonraker, but beyond that, the only thing Bond has to go on is an unsupported hunch that Zorin himself might be involved.

For some reason, this leads everyone to investigate Zorin's horse-breeding operation. The Minister of Defense urges caution because of Zorin's spotless record, but it's not even Bond who suggests the horses as a first line of inquiry. Moneypenny is all dressed for the races before Bond even shows up for his briefing, so this is apparently the approach to the case that M wants to take.

And it has nothing to do with the mysterious microchip that's supposed to be the purpose of the investigation. Man does it ever take a lot of time to look into though. Worse than that, despite the horse plot's including a microchip element and introducing Bond to the big players in Zorin's organization, uncovering Zorin's cheating in that area turns into a big, fat dead-end. All it does is confirm that Zorin is a bad guy, which - contrary to his reputation - everyone already suspected anyway.

Bond's second tactic then is to go to San Francisco where Zorin has other operations, and it's there that he uncovers Zorin's plan to profit from the deaths of millions of people. That's enough engine to drive the rest of the movie, but notice that it still has nothing to do with the initial microchip that started this whole thing off. What we have are three, different schemes of Zorin's that all involve microchips, but are otherwise unrelated.

Cold Open



I do like that the cold open at least appears to have something to do with the main movie this time. It takes place in Siberia where Bond finds 003 frozen with a locket containing a microchip. This is the second movie in a row where Bond picks up an investigation from a less-successful Double-O. The series never treats the rest of Bond's department very well and that won't end with this movie.

Once Bond has the microchip, he's chased by Soviets in another exciting ski chase (I honestly never get tired of these) until someone shoots his ski off and he has to steal a snowmobile from one of his pursuers. But than that gets blown up, so he turns the front ski into a snowboard and the chase becomes even more awesome.

Well, almost. As happens too often in Bond movies, the fantastic stunt-work is ruined by the soundtrack. This time it's the Beach Boys' "California Girls" playing, because snowboarding kind of looks like surfing, I guess?

After an otherwise thrilling chase, Bond escapes via a boat shaped like an iceberg, which is also pretty great. Without the Beach Boys, it would have made one of the best of the cold opens. Heck. It still does.

Top 10 Cold Opens

1. The Spy Who Loved Me
2. Moonraker
3. Thunderball
4. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
5. A View to a Kill
6. Goldfinger
7. The Man with the Golden Gun
8. For Your Eyes Only
9. Octopussy
10. Never Say Never Again

Movie Series Continuity



I already mentioned the presence of the Minister of Defense. He's outworn his welcome for me by this point. I'm ready to be done with his micro-managing and get back to M's running the show on his own.

Bond is sort of a show-off about wine during dinner at the Eiffel Tower, but he's eating with a French guy who appreciates Bond's knowledge, so it's not obnoxious.

The hat rack gag makes another appearance. This time, Bond is about to toss his hat, but notices a fancy, flowered hat already on the rack. That distracts Bond, so he just places his hat on the rack instead. It turns out that the flowery hat is Moneypenny's race-wear and he almost tosses it on the rack at the end of the scene, but Moneypenny stops him.

Proving once and for all that Bond's in-world fame can be used or discarded as the story demands, no one recognizes Bond in either of his aliases, even though he's wearing no disguise. He's in Zorin's database though, so Zorin's able to find Bond out when he needs to.

"From a View to a Kill": The Comic Strip

"From a View to a Kill" is another example of Fleming's short stories being well-suited for adaptation as comic strips. Henry Gammidge and John McLusky leave nothing out except for some of Bond's interior monologues. Because of that, Bond's introduction to Mary Ann Russell isn't nearly as sexy in the strip as Fleming writes it, but otherwise it's a fine adaptation of a rather mediocre story.

In fact, the way McLusky draws Bond's camouflage mask like the Unknown Soldier and his depiction of the entrance to the bad guys' lair are actually improvements on what I imagined while reading Fleming's version.

For Your Eyes Only | "From a View to a Kill"

"From a View to a Kill" was first printed in the Daily Express a few months after Goldfinger came out, making it the earliest of the For Your Eyes Only stories to be published. It starts well with the dramatic murder of a NATO motorcycle courier and Bond's being called in to help investigate.

Bond's involvement is purely political. NATO command already isn't happy with the security risk of Britain's having it's own offices outside of the main headquarters, so M sends them 007 as a way of showing that Britain is involved and taking the matter seriously. Bond was nearby anyway, relaxing in Paris after a failed mission to help a defector come over from Hungary.

I had a hard time connecting to the investigation itself. Bond's a capable detective, but in the end he solves the thing with intuition and being the only person to suspect a previously unnoticed lead, which is a tactic that M specifically instructed Bond to take. I'm not saying that Bond merely stumbles across the right clues, just that his investigative techniques aren't especially compelling. And I'm not sure how I feel about the rather outlandish revelation of who's behind the murder. On the one hand, it's more fantastical than its lead-up prepared me for. On the other hand, it's kind of cool and a taste of things to come in the Bond series.

The meaning of the title isn't explicit in the story, but one theory is that it's a hunting reference. "D'ye Ken John Peel?" was a popular song in the nineteenth century about a fox hunter and one version includes the line, "From a find to a check, from a check to a view, from a view to a kill in the morning." In other words, first you see the prey, then you kill it. It's not one of Fleming's stronger titles, but at least it makes me hear Duran Duran in my head when I read it.

There's one bit of character development for Bond in the story, though it's from a small throwaway line about Bond's drinking preferences. Fleming writes that Bond dislikes Pernod "because its liquorice taste reminded him of his childhood." He gives no more detail than that, but it's the first hint that Bond's childhood wasn't completely happy and full of golf and fancy tea parties. A curious piece of the puzzle as we try to reconstruct Bond's early life as Fleming imagined it.