The-Reviewer.net

Bond: 

Those are nice Khaki pants you have on there grandpa Bond. Why that is a nice cardigan sweater you have on there. Don't break a hip running away from hundreds of armed guards.  It is 1981, and Roger Moore has been James Bond for almost 10 years.  He is starting to look older, move slower and not have that James Bond swagger.  He still has some crazy moves and skills but it feels like it's a bit hard on Bond to traverse across the outside of a out of control helicopter, or have fist fights with bad guys.  Again I don't feel like he is smooth with the ladies and they are into him because a script told them to, not because James Bond is charismatic.  I think Roger Moore has just gotten a little too old. 

Bond Girls: 

Countess Lisl von Schlaf is a pawn in the bigger game, who brings James Bond along for a beach night tryst at the request of her keeper.  She quickly falls for Bond and meets the usual end for those type of Bond girls.  She was my choice of best looking girl of this movie.  However she didn't seem like she was going to be a major player and never did anything remarkable.  The other girl is Melina Havelock who I believe was cast because of her eyes and the title of the movie.  She was a pretty and plain girl with sleepy, dreamy eyes that peered into whomever she was looking at.  I found her overall to be a terrible actress and really sticking out as awkward and out of place in the Bond movie.  I didn't like her very much at all. 

Villain/Threat:

The movie opens with Ernst Blofeld, head of the terrorist organization SPECTRE, but Bond handles him quickly and he is never addressed again. Otherwise we move to global threats with a coding machine called the ATAC, that sank to the bottom of the ocean on a ship.  This machine could direct British subs under false orders to attack whatever or wherever.  Bond must get the machine before the Russians get it and destroy the world.  The villain is Aristotle Kristatos, who is well groomed and tricks Bond into believing he is the good guy, trying to help Bond find the lost machine.  The threat and villain feel very weak and too focused on the Cold War.  It is really interesting looking back at what we all thought could happen during the Cold War and the at least semi-plausible plots for movies that came from it. I just thought why don't they just change the coding from the machine and just let that one be lost or destroyed.  It seemed like a lot of work for something that I didn't see as useful, and Kristatos didn't seem like anything but a get more rich type of guy who wasn't in it for an ideal or belief.   I like it when they believe in something, this man believed in nothing. 

Gadgets: 

Very few gadgets in this movie.  There was a computer that you could enter in facial information and it would draw a face and find a match.  This allowed them to find a bad guy early on in the movie and is much like the type of software we have today.  Otherwise a second Lotus Esprit was in the movie that would blow up if someone tried to steal it, someone did.  There was also a radio watch, but that was it.  The computer was a good look to the future of facial recognition software we have everywhere now, but everything else wasn't very clever or interesting. 

Overall: 

Almost everything about this movie I did not like.  Everything seemed cheesy, overdone, or silly.  There were failed attempts at humor, there was horrible chase scene music, and Roger Moore just has gotten too old to be convincing.  This weakness of this movie seems like it could have really made for a horrible end to the Bond movies quickly, I do not know if it was received better in the 80's but I did not like this movie at all.  If I was picking out James Bond movies to see and not see, I would skip this one entirely.  

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