{"id":3914,"date":"2024-09-09T18:06:50","date_gmt":"2024-09-09T18:06:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=3914"},"modified":"2024-10-13T19:14:14","modified_gmt":"2024-10-13T23:14:14","slug":"a-view-to-a-kill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/09\/09\/a-view-to-a-kill\/","title":{"rendered":"A View to a Kill"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"A View to a Kill<\/strong> (1985)\u00a0 \u00a0 MGM-UA\/Action-Adventure\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 131 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (violence, sexual innuendo\/content, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: John Glen\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Michael G. Wilson and Richard Maibaum\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: John Barry\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Alan Hume\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: May 24, 1985 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Roger Moore, Christopher Walken, Tanya Roberts, Grace Jones, Patrick Macnee, Patrick Bauchau, David Yip, Fiona Fullerton, Manning Redwood, Alison Doody, Willoughby Gray, Desmond Llewelyn, Robert Brown, Lois Maxwell, Walter Gotell, Manning Redwood, Geoffrey Keen, Jean Rougerie, Daniel Benzali, Bogdan Kominowski, Dolph Lundgren.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $50.3M (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Opening Song: \u201cA View to a Kill\u201d by Duran Duran<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

The 14th<\/sup> James Bond movie A View to a Kill<\/strong> gets a lot of undeserved hate. Granted, it\u2019s not the highest of notes for Roger Moore to go out on. It\u2019s lacking in a few areas to be sure. However, it\u2019s not as bad as some people say. I think it\u2019s fun.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Moore returns one last time as Agent 007 of the British Secret Service in A View to a Kill<\/strong>. It opens with Bond retrieving a computer microchip from the frozen body of a fellow agent buried in the snow-covered mountains of Siberia. He\u2019s then chased by Russian agents he adroitly evades on skis, a snowmobile and improvised snowboard before making his getaway in a submarine disguised as an iceberg. What\u2019s so special about this microchip? It\u2019s designed to withstand the resulting electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear explosion. It\u2019s a product of Zorin Industries, a large tech-based company founded by ex-KGB agent Max Zorin (Walken, The Dogs of War). The chip Bond finds is a Soviet-made copy implying that somebody in the company leaked information to the Russians. 007 is sent to investigate with Sir Geoffrey Tibbett (Macnee, The Avengers), a colleague and expert horse trainer.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Max Zorin, supervillain or psychopath? I vote for the latter although his evil plan to monopolize the microchip industry is definitely that of the former. Let\u2019s talk about him for a moment. The wealthy industrialist is the product of medical experiments (involving steroids) performed on pregnant women in Nazi concentration camps during WWII. The surviving children are highly intelligent and extremely psychotic. Formerly with the KGB, he defected from East Germany and started Zorin Industries. He never goes anywhere without his bodyguard May Day (Jones, Conan the Destroyer), a skilled assassin with abnormal strength. His evil plan involves the complete destruction of Silicon Valley by earthquake in order to rid himself of his chief competitor. How he intends to go about it is far-fetched even for a Bond flick.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Bond girls have always been one of the main attractions of the franchise. It\u2019s in this area that A View to a Kill<\/strong> falls short. Her name is Stacey Sutton and she\u2019s played by Tanya Roberts. I had the privilege of being FaceBook friends with the former Charlie\u2019s Angel before she passed away. I found her to be sweet in my communications with her. Unfortunately, she\u2019s not a good actress. She\u2019s especially terrible in A View to a Kill<\/strong> playing a geologist (?!) being pressured by Zorin to sell him her family\u2019s oil business. I\u2019m sorry, but I have a difficult time believing she\u2019s any kind of scientist. Her character is a total airhead! She\u2019s the worst Bond girl in the series. She\u2019s incredibly annoying and can\u2019t even scream convincingly much less deliver lines. Here\u2019s what I really want to know. How does she do all that she does in high heels? She climbs out of a burning elevator shaft, drives a fire engine, maneuvers around a silver mine and walks precariously on the beams of the Golden Gate Bridge, all while wearing heels that miraculously never fall off. Wouldn\u2019t it make more sense to take them off at some point? Given the nature of James Bond movies, I probably shouldn\u2019t waste my time asking such questions. On the upside, Tanya is very easy on the eyes.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Directed by John Glen (Octopussy), A View to a Kill<\/strong> has some cool action scenes. My personal favorite has to be an early scene where Bond pursues May Day on the Eiffel Tower in Paris after she offs a private investigator providing 007 with information about her boss\/lover. She escapes by parachuting off the Tower. I also like the scene where the inept San Francisco police chase Bond and Stacey in a stolen fire truck. She drives while the agent hangs on for dear life on the unsecured ladder. The climax features Bond hanging onto the mooring rope as Zorin attempts to make his getaway in the company blimp. Their final showdown literally takes place on the Golden Gate Bridge.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As much as I love Moore as James Bond, he\u2019s looking pretty old here. At 57, it\u2019s safe to say he\u2019s finally aged out of the role. I could say he\u2019s too old to do some of the spectacular stunts his character does, but it never stopped Charles Bronson. However, it\u2019s weird (and a little bit creepy) seeing him in bed with women young enough to be his daughter. Jones makes a great secondary villain even if we get next to no background on her character. She\u2019s a fierce warrior type; I like that. Walken is simply AWESOME as Zorin. I stop short of calling him one of the greatest Bond villains. He\u2019s more vicious than the typical Bond baddie, but you can tell he\u2019s not taking any of it seriously. He\u2019s just being Christopher Walken.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Overall, A View to a Kill<\/strong> is a reasonably entertaining action flick and a decent James Bond movie. I\u2019m disappointed that John Barry\u2019s trademark theme is hardly used at all. It still has a pretty good score. It shows a sense of humor by scoring the snowboard scene with a cover of The Beach Boys\u2019 tune \u201cCalifornia Girls\u201d. It\u2019s a little slow between action set-pieces, but it doesn\u2019t kill the movie. It\u2019s sad to see Moore go, but it\u2019s time. Thanks for all the great Bond memories, Sir Roger. It\u2019s been a blast.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A View to a Kill (1985)\u00a0 \u00a0 MGM-UA\/Action-Adventure\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 131 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (violence, sexual innuendo\/content, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: John Glen\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Michael G. Wilson and Richard Maibaum\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: John Barry\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Alan Hume\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: May 24, 1985 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Roger Moore, Christopher Walken, Tanya Roberts, Grace Jones, Patrick Macnee, Patrick Bauchau, David Yip, Fiona […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4412,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-james-bond-movies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/A-View-to-a-Kill-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3914"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4413,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3914\/revisions\/4413"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}