A VIEW TO A KILL (1985)
A film review by Andrew Hicks
Copyright 1996 Andrew Hicks / Fatboy Productions
A VIEW TO A KILL (1985) **
This is one of the weaker James Bond movies out there, but it's still not that bad, if you don't mind a movie with a running time of over 130 minutes. It would have been better with about thirty minutes of boredom cut out and if, perhaps, the director had coaxed a better performance out of Christopher Walken. I like the guy and think he's a decent actor and definitely one of the strangest individuals on the planet (good to know I'm not alone), but as villain Zorin he's way too bland.
Roger Moore makes his seventh and final appearance as James Bond, and I think it was about time for the guy to step down. In this one, he just doesn't seem too enthusiastic about being the single most indestructible babe magnet on the planet. Of course, I wouldn't be able to manfacture much enthusiasm either if I had to sleep with Grace Jones. That's a nasty-looking woman right there.
The plot this time has Walken as an ambitious microchip manufacturer who plans to create an earthquake that will destroy Silicon Valley, eliminating his competition. Maybe that's where Bill Gates got the idea to send the CEO's of Atari and Commodore 64 to sleep with the fishes. Grace Jones, the least feminine woman out there (Sandra Bernhard being the runner-up in that competition) is his musclebound assistant, May Day. Her name, of course, comes from the phrase shouted by every man who's ever seen her topless. And as usual, it's up to James Bond to stop everything.
A VIEW TO A KILL moves slowly and is acted without much eagerness or excitement, yet has some merit as a Bond movie. It's got all the violence and chase scenes, some that are fun, some absurd. The sequence with Bond hanging from a fire truck ladder falls into the latter category (Latter. Ladder. Get it?), as does the entire last twenty minutes of the movie, which I'll just say involves a dirigible and the Golden Gate bridge. Still, nearly every James Bond movie is better than this one, which should be watched only by true fans of the series.
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