thomas-williamson-ga

FYI: Roger Moore was scheduled to have ended his career as James Bond after Octopussy and Timothy Dalton was going to start his take as the 00 Agent in View To a Kill. Well, for whatever reason unbeknowest to me this didn't happen for Dalton until Living Daylights. Regardless, View To a Kill is a definite disappointment to the 007 series and I disliked it as much as I did Thunderball but that is an entirely different review altogether. Moving on, I have heard it said that Tanya Roberts who played the bond girl in this film "couldn't act her way out of a paper bag". Well, I seriously have to agree. She was one of the worst bond girls in the entire series of 007. In fairness to Tanya she is (or was) very good looking at the time. As for the other female lead, Grace Jones was labeled by a lot of viewers as being too masculine for her role and I also must agree with that. As for the villain, Christopher Walkin is one of my favorite actors of all time but not even his character could do much to save this film from ultimately being a stinker. Overall, the story is weak and so is the acting even on Roger Moore's part. Seriously.. it looked as if Moore was ready to throw in the towel before completion of this movie. Very seldomly do I agree with so-called professional critics but in the case of View To a Kill I have to make an exception. To be a bit fair, this might entertain viewers on the first watch yet I am very positive most will not want to see it a second time. I've sat through this movie three times and it was twice too many. While it would have been interesting to see what Timothy Dalton might have brought to View To a Kill in terms of Bond's character, I doubt very highly it would have made much difference to the overall production. One positive comment I will make is that View To a Kill has a good theme song by one of the great euro bands of the 80's Duran Duran.

As I have mentioned in previous reviews, Roger Moore might be my least favorite version of James Bond though some of his 007 films have chalked up with the best of them. Octopussy would be included in that category. This is probably Moore's final enjoyable outing in the series but not his final outing total (I will cover that in my next review). This time Bond makes a unique journey to India with unique gadgets and a very suave Indian agent named BJ(?). The villain Kamal Kahn and his brutal turban-wearing sidekick make for entertaining and semi-believable threats to the 00 Agent. Plus, we have the return of actress Maud Adams who plays the central woman though not necessarily the bond girl of this title. As I've mentioned before, the Roger Moore Bond films have brought back returning characters for the sequels though in this case Octopussy brings back the actress (Maud Adams) versus the character she previously played in Man with the Golden Gun. I must add that her character is quite a welcomed change which added greatly to the main plot of this film. There is one very minor turn of events that I wasn't too fond of in Octopussy relating to a particular character's death though I won't spoil that for anyone and I can almost assure it hardly takes away from the overall film. Roger Moore could have gone out with a bang so to say had he ended his contract with Octopussy. This, however, was not the case as he went on to appear as 007 one more time in View To a Kill. On a final note, the theme song 'All Time High' is a good tune worthy of mention. Oh, just a bit of a trivia question: Did anyone notice the matching circus tent in Octopussy in which the character of JAWS might have "dropped on top of" during Moonraker before it? I really wonder about that...