For Your Eyes Only

I watched this film twice recently, so let's talk about it.

But first let's talk about two things that were going on behind the scenes, because they inform a lot regarding this movie's tone.

First, For Your Eyes Only was originally promised after The Spy Who Loved Me. But that film came out in 1977, and the success of Star Wars that year changed everything. 1979 gave us Alien, Star Trek: The Motion(less) Picture, and the original Battlestar Galactica, all of which owed something to Star Wars. (This is neither the time nor the place to get into a discussion of Star Trek: Phase II. I am aware of it, I don't need the lecture. This is me making a generalization.)  The James Bond franchise decided to follow suit and make Moonraker that year. And as awesome as James Bond In Space With Lasers could be, Moonraker was pretty awful. So the producers made the (correct) decision to go (relatively) down-to-Earth for the follow-up film.

Second, Roger Moore's original three-film contract expired with The Spy Who Loved Me, and after that he renewed it one film at a time. He took his sweet time renewing it... and here's where apocrypha sets in. Supposedly, the producers were actually in talks with Timothy Dalton to take over the role here (it's not quite as ludicrous as it sounds; they'd been sounding him out ever since Connery quit), and they even went as far as talking about how his James Bond would be different than Moore's. (For completion's sake, another name I've seen tossed around as a possible replacement for Moore was Sean Bean. I'll have a GoldenEye review up eventually and probably touch on this a bit more there.) Anyway, it's undeniable that the Bond of For Your Eyes Only is a lot closer to the Bond of License to Kill than the Bond of Moonraker.

With this in mind, let's dive in.


The film starts in a graveyard. Specifically, the graveyard Tracy is buried in. (Remember, the other side effect of writing a script with Maybe-Dalton in mind is that you're writing the script with someone other than Roger Moore in mind, and it wouldn't be a bad thing to remind people about things that happened before he took over, just like, say, Peter Davison's first Doctor Who serial saw him impersonating the actors who came before Tom Baker.) But there's another reason to start here. See, this is a film about revenge, just like The Spy Who Loved Me, License to Kill, GoldenEye, and The World is Not Enough. And just like all of those other post-OHMSS, pre-Casino Royale films, this one has to somehow allude to Tracy. It's like some unwritten rule of James Bond Films About Revenge. And I love it, partly because it means that the writers are actually paying attention and crafting a theme for the movie, but also because it's a great piece of trivia: every film about revenge before Craig takes over alludes to Bond's dead wife in some way.

In fact, this film follows on from the events of On Her Majesty's Secret Service much better than Diamonds Are Forever does, which is why my Preferred Viewing Order for the Bond Films skips Diamonds altogether (you are not missing much), leaps forward to For Your Eyes Only, and then backtracks for Spy and any other early Moore films you want to pick up. That film ends with Tracy dead and Blofeld in a neck brace; this film begins at Tracy's grave and sees some-not-copyrighted-guy-with-a-bald-head,-white-cat,-Nehru-jacket-and-neck-brace disposed of before the credits begin. (This was done because of a long-standing lawsuit about the rights to the Blofeld character. By not naming him and dumping him down a chimney at the beginning of the film, the producers were saying they could make a damn good film without him - like they hadn't already done so with Spy.)

After the credits we get the Second Opening, where the spy ship St. Georges hits a mine and sinks. A marine explorer and his wife are gunned down before their daughter's eyes. No guesses whose bed she'll end up in. Apparently at one point the credits were going to begin right after the closeup on Melina's eyes. Cuz, you know, "For Your Eyes Only" doesn't refer to secrets or naughty bits, but to the massacre of your loved ones. I am a little bit torn about which opening I like better. The Bond-and-not-Blofeld-Honest opening is cheesetastic, but it anchors the series to its pre-Moore days and sets up the theme of revenge. The Havelock opening actually has something to do with the plot of the film, and is more in line with the tone of the film, but Bond's not in it. And there's only one Bond film in history that has a pre-credits sequence that doesn't have Bond in it. (It's actually one of the really good ones. No, you figure it out.)

Bond is called in because Papa Havelock was trying to find the wreck of the St. Georges for the British government. (Obligatory trivia: Bernard Lee - M - died after Moonraker, and out of respect they didn't re-cast him immediately, so M's "on leave" here.) They already know he was killed by a hitman named Gonzales, so Bond tracks him down, but before he can interrogate him, Gonzales is killed by Melina. Bond stupidity #1: the best intelligence the British government has is no better than Melina's private detective. As Bond tries to escape, a thug activates his car's security system and it self-destructs. Bond stupidity #2: overzealous vehicular protection plan. The backup plan is Melina's car, and really the first positive sign in this film.  Up to this point, with the exception of the brutal (by this era's standards) massacre of the Havelocks, the general tone of this film has been the usual lighthearted, unable-to-take-anything-seriously fare that all of Moore's films have. Earlier in the scene Bond uses a large umbrella as a parachute, for crying out loud.

Anyway, Melina's car. It's... it's the sort of thing Giles from Buffy would drive. It's basically the last car in the world Boring Invincible Comic-Book Superagent James Bond would ever be seen in. Bond gives it a little "are you kidding me?" look that sells the entire scene. It's funny, but in a good way. It's like the writer is mocking the franchise itself. I don't want to use the term deconstruction, because both On Her Majesty's Secret Service and Casino Royale are much better examples...

But anyway, unlike pretty much every car James Bond has ever driven, this is the one that's basically indestructible. I love how the car has no fancy gadgets, and yet it's basically the only car that Bond's managed to keep driving after it flips over. The only other one is the one in Die Another Day, and that's a Boring Invincible Comic-Book Superagent's car. That can freaking turn invisible. But I digress.

Once the bad guys are dispatched, because their cars are more stylish but less sturdy, Bond sends Melina away because he thinks she's too close to the case. Yeah, and dumping not-Blofeld down the chimney shaft, that was nothing personal, was it? (Okay actually it's because she's a woman, and Bond is not allowed to have a woman be his equal, ever, but the writer does paper over this with some proverb about revenge - see? the movie's theme!)

Conveniently, there was another guy at Gonzales' little hideaway, and Bond is able to identify him with the help of Q and the best technology 1981 can invent. Note that the musical key to Q's lab is the first seven notes to "Nobody Does It Better," the theme song to the previous Bond film about revenge and skiing.

Speaking of skiing, the other guy, Locque, is a bit muscleman in the Greek smuggling underground. So it's off to... Italy. Or at least the Alps, in the company of a guy named Luigi, so I'm going to assume it's Italy. Luigi has Bond meet him at the top of a mountain so they can go back down the mountain and meet Luigi's contact, Aris Kristatos.

Now, look, nothing against the casting director, because Julian Glover does a great job as Kristatos. The problem is, Julian Glover is also known for: bad guy on Doctor Who, bad guy in The Empire Strikes Back, bad guy in Indiana Jones, and now bad guy on Game of Thrones (and he's not the only GoT face to show up here, by the way). There's this whole hour-long subplot about Kristatos trying to manipulate Bond into killing Kristatos's rival, Columbo, when Kristatos is the real bad guy, when if you've seen Julian Glover in just about anything else, you know that plot twist is coming. But as I said, it's not a dealbreaker, and Glover sells both sides of the role (in fact, personally, I think he's better as fake-good-guy Kristatos. Once he turns out to be evil he becomes a fairly stereotypical Bond villain, albeit still a rather dry one). You do actually believe him when he says the day Bibi wins a gold medal will be the happiest of his life.

Sigh.

Now I have to talk about Bibi.


Okay, here goes: Bibi is Kristatos' ward, a teenage skating protege. The fact that she has a crush on Bond could have been played in the same tongue-in-cheek manner as Melina's car earlier in the film; see, not only does Bond have to drive uncool cars, he gets hit on by girls who are obviously too young for him (and Roger's past 50 by now, and the average Bond Girl is half that, so that point is not unwelcome).

But that's not what happens. Instead Bibi tries to seduce Bond, and it's awkward and uncomfortable for everyone, Bond too. He spends way too much time with this pouting teenager basically for no purpose other than to get in Kristatos' good graces, but at this point in the film he doesn't even suspect Kristatos is really the bad guy.

Okay so he takes Bibi skiing right past an Olympic triathalon. Because there is absolutely no security there. This is why one of the contenders, Eric Kriegler, is able to abruptly stop participating and start taking potshots at Bond with his rifle. Amazingly, he can hit whatever he's aiming for, so long as he's not aiming for Bond himself. He's pretty flawless at shooting both Bond's gun and Bond's ski pole. But of course he can't hit the man himself, because Boring Invincible Superagent 007 can't ever bleed. Unless he's played by Dalton or Craig (does Connery bleed in either of his first two films? I'll have to check). Where was I?

 Bond tries to evade his pursuers - which by the way, include Lord Tywin Lannister in an early role - by blending in with a crowd going up to do a big ski-jump. Locque has Tywin - okay, he's credited as "Claude," but it's Charles Dance so I'm going to continue to call him Tywin - attack Bond on the slope. Meanwhile, Kriegler has set up his sniper rifle at the base of the ramp. These two plans cancel each other out, because Tywin doesn't think to shoot Bond at point-blank range, and then Kriegler doesn't know which skier to shoot. Then there's another chase as guys on motorcycles chase Bond on his skis, but then Bond ends up on a bobsled course chasing a bobsled. In the wide shots you can see the bobsled outpacing Bond. Again, this is a direct call-back to OHMSS.  The ski-bobsled thing, not the obvious differences in speed.

That chase ends and later Locque liquidates Luigi. I'm skipping over some inconsequential stuff with both Bibi and Melina, which honestly feels like it was only included to break up the sequences of dudes trying to kill each other.  Anyway now Bond has incentive to go kill Columbo, because "his" people shooting at him apparently wasn't incentive enough. Anyway, Bond's plan is, as always, seduce the enemy's mistress. For extra irony points, in this case the mistress is played by Pierce Brosnan's wife. Well there are now three women in the film, so Unwritten Rule #2 is obeyed and one of them is killed off. Alas it's not Bibi, but rather Columbo's mistress, offed by Locque and Tywin. Tywin suffers a fatal case of harpoon-through-the-chest from one of Columbo's real men, but Locque gets away. (On a side note, it's odd to me that they had Charles Dance in two completely separate locations when he had exactly zero lines in the first one. Flying actors around the globe can't be cheap. And it's not like you'd recognize him as the same guy unless he just happened to go on to bigger and better things. I have to assume he had lines in the skiing sequence at one point. For completeness's sake, Glover did an interview for Game of Thrones where he remembered working with Dance on this film, and they don't have any scenes together in the final cut...)

Columbo sways Bond to his side by taking him to one of Kristatos's hideaways, where opium is being smuggled/stored. Kristatos himself never shows up, but Locque does. Whoops, end of the road, Locque. Bond kicks his car over a cliff. Roger Moore thought this was too brutal for his Bond, but they left it in anyway. Also visible in this scene: a deep-sea diving suit. Foreshadowing!

Then Bond reunites with Melina. They find the St. Georges and recover the MacGuffin from its vault, and they blow up a guy in a pressure suit, but Kristatos ambushes them when they return. A keelhauling sequence from the novel Live and Let Die follows. Bond and Melina eventually escape, having left an oxygen tank down below earlier on just in case. Kristatos very helpfully told his henchmen where they were going right in front of Melina's parrot, so now Bond knows where to go too. Or at least he does once Q helps narrow it down a bit in a wonderful extra scene for Q.

So Kristatos is hiding out on this mountaintop. Now we get to the thrilling climax. Bond, Columbo, Melina, and about four of Columbo's smuggler friends must assault the hideout. Bond has to climb the cliff and then send a motorized basket down for the others. This sequence is nice and tense and includes what will become director John Glen's trademark (a bird flying out of nowhere and spooking someone during a tense sequence). Remember that two years ago there was a big-budget zero-gravity assault on a frickin' space station complete with frickin' laser beams. This is much more satisfying.

Much less satisfying is the fact that Bibi is still around. Grr. Argh. Her coach tries to get her to leave (and I would not complain if Bibi took the express route off the mountaintop), but Kristatos catches her in the act. He promises her that he will deal with her the same way he deals with everyone who crosses him. Then he leaves her alone in the room while he goes back into another room with his muscular German bullyboy. There's a shot of an expensive-looking stained-glass window, so you just know somebody's going through it. Sure enough, someone does. Bond and Kriegler fight, Bond wins. Kristatos is taken down, and Bond throws the MacGuffin over a cliff rather than surrender it to the Russians.

Then the brain trust at MI6 decide to have a Margaret Thatcher impersonator call Bond while he's trying to enjoy some alone time with Melina, so Bond gives the "phone" to the parrot. Roll credits.

I mentioned way back at the beginning that this film has the theme of revenge, so I thought I'd finish up by talking a little about Melina's character and how she fits in here. Carol Bouquet does a great job, and that's without me making the usual allowance for the fact that Bond girls are cast for their looks first and their acting ability second. (Incidentally, my favorite bit of trivia for this film: she had a serious sinus problem that prevented her from doing underwater scenes. I have no idea how they faked those closeups.) Yeah, a bit of her revenge stick is trite, but you're making a Bond film, not a Christopher Nolan film. The audience isn't supposed to think too hard about this stuff.  She's ultimately persuaded not to kill Kristatos, but he dies a moment later anyway because let's face it, bad guys don't get to live in Bond films unless their name is Blofeld. I don't know why Bond didn't let her kill him. Because then she'd have to stick around for the next film for more character development? Or because he wanted to keep her innocent (in terms of killing, obviously)? I'm pretty sure she killed other people over the course of the film. I mean the logical explanation is that Bond is a psychologically damaged man who doesn't want to see anyone else go through that sort of personal confrontation, but this is a Roger Moore film fer cryin' out loud. I guess for its time, this was about as far you could go with a Bond film actually having a theme without alienating some of the popcorn-munchers.

Overall grade: A-. You are not going to find a Bond film that is absolutely flawless. This comes really damn close. Bibi, the Maggie Thatcher impersonator, and the music are the only three problems, and the rest of the film more than makes up for it. For the full effect, I'd almost recommend watching it after Moonraker, so you can see exactly what mistakes they didn't repeat here, but then I'd have to recommend watching Moonraker, and f*ck that.