Director: Lewis Gilbert
Cast: Roger Moore, Lois Chiles, Michael Lonsdale, Richard Kiel
Have I Seen It Before: Yes. Yes, I have. Must I say more?
I just checked with the proprietor of the site and yes, apparently, I must say more.
I must have first seen it during a TBS marathon of the films, which I dutifully recorded on VHS, and clearly didn’t think much of it even back in the far-flung 90s because my strongest recollection of the film is that I labeled that VHS tape (I think I used an LP tape) along with License to Kill (1989) “Moonwaker.” Thirty years later, I still think that’s a better title. All of eleven years old, and I’ve already got notes for improvements.
Did I Like It: Where to begin? Let’s start with the positive. Almost none of the Bond films have missed the mark with their pre-title sequence. And the skydiving duel between Bond (Moore, looking as if he’s just about ready to check out of the role, despite the fact that he’s going to do three more) and Jaws (Kiel, more on him later) is about as good as any of Moore’s openings.
Now that we have that out of the way. Bond is in space. Space. Spaaace. Fleming would rise from the grave and have a heart attack all over again. And the only reason Bond becomes Britain’s first man in space, is because Star Wars – Episode IV: A New Hope (1977) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)* made huge money and there are moments where Cubby Broccoli had all the creativity of a mimicking parrot.
Some might applaud the visuals during the film’s inexplicable third act, but aside from Ken Adam’s always delightful set design, all this film can offer is a barely warmed over riff on Star Wars. That film was a symphony of sounds that still dominates genre filmmaking, but the laser fire on display here is one step removed from someone dubbing in “Pew!” sounds.
And then there’s Jaws. One of the most menacing villains in the movies not only finds love (I’m not opposed to it) but it turns him into an ally because… well, the film has to have some kind of an ending, right?
The rest of the film is a humdrum Bond adventure, painted by largely by numbers. Where it isn’t baffling bad, it’s content to be middle-quality. I might be more mad about that than anything else.
But you want to know what really struck me on this viewing? I look at the sight of a megalomaniacal industrialist in love with rockets and space travel, bedraggled by what he sees as humanity’s twilight, which will only lead him to be the MC for the apocalypse. And then I start watching the movie. It’s not possible that old what’s his name saw this movie as a child and decided that was all he ever wanted to be… Right? It could be, though. What have we done?
*Urban legend insists that Spielberg himself campaigned hard to direct this one, only to get nowhere with EON. Could you imagine? They’d have reined him in and it would have been just as much of a disaster, but he might have been spared the indignity of 1941 (1979).