'A View To A Kill' revisited

With 'Quantum of Solace' due to hit our screens soon, we take a daily look back at the 21 official Bond films. Day 14: ‘A View To A Kill’

A View To A Kill (1985, John Glen)

Villain: Max Zorin
At Stake: Annihilation of Northern California
Candy: Tanya Roberts as Stacey Sutton
Gizmo: Razor-sharp butterflies
Theme song: ‘A View To A Kill’ by Duran Duran
Quote: ‘There was a heck of a crowd on the piste!’

Roger’s last bow can’t come soon enough - he was closing in on sixty by the time this one rolled around – so it’s lucky for him he looks very much at home in the executive boxes and members’ paddocks of Royal Ascot to which the first hour of his seventh outing restricts itself.

After some endless tangential guff about technologically augmented racehorses we’re off to Paris for a round of Eiffel Tower-based high-jinks and eventually to San Francisco were psychotic boffin Max Zorin is scheming to blow up Silicon Valley and corner the world market in microchips.

An admittedly exciting opening salvo set in the Siberian snow is ruined by the frivolous decision to include a snippet of ‘California Girls’ and, Duran Duran’s awesome theme song aside, it’s pretty much downhill from there. The action is limited, the locations hackneyed and Moore is far too advanced in years to be in anyway believable when dangling from the Golden Gate bridge (or even a green-screen in Pinewood). It’s a good job the baddies are up to snuff or ‘A View To A Kill would’ be a complete and utter dud.

Grace Jones – not someone normally lacking in confidence – is clearly overwhelmed by the scale of the production but still makes for a memorably exotic henchperson after a run of faceless goons. And taking up a role that was initially offered to David Bowie and then Sting (!), Oscar winning oddball Christopher Walken chews up the scenery as Nazi poster boy Zorin, perhaps the zaniest nemesis 007 has ever faced.

James Bond will return in… ‘The Living Daylights’

Read our original review of 'A View to a Kill'

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