For Your Eyes Only (1981)
So we leave the 70’s behind and move into the 80’s with
For Your Eyes Only. After the more-is-more excess of
Moonraker, it’s time to see if the twice-announced
For Your Eyes Only doubles down on the ludicrousness of its predecessor or takes a rather more rational approach.
Pre-Existing Prejudices: None. Not a single one. I have no memory of having ever seen this, and if I have seen it before then absolutely none of it has stuck. Perhaps this will turn out to be a lost classic for me, or perhaps it will end up being another
Diamonds Are Forever. Who knows? It’s quite exciting diving into what amounts to a completely new Bond movie, so let’s see how it goes.
The Actual Movie:
We open on a graveyard. Well, that’s a first. Hey look, it’s Tracy Bond’s grave, and roses are being placed on it by Roger Moore! Rather sweetly, the tombstone states she died in 1969, the year
On her Majesty’s Secret Service was released. Why is this here? No explanation is forthcoming. But Moore is great here, before being collected by helicopter. Then we cut to
that white cat, and an anonymous bald guy shot from behind. It’s obviously meant to be Blofeld, though it’s quite obviously not. The pilot of the helicopter is taken out (electric shock to the headphones), and “Blofeld” takes control. There’s a lot of (impressive) stunt helicopter work which looks great but is completely undermined by “blofeld”’s stupid goading of Bond. Of course Bond eventually takes control of the helicopter, in a burst of terribly-timed disco music (note to producers – this is 1981 and disco is Not A Thing any more). He’s able to get “Blofeld” onto one of the helicopter’s skids, and drops him down a chimney. Like you do.
Ohh look Sheena Easton’s actually in the title sequence! That’s novel, I guess.
A fishing trawler is landing a catch. So far, so glamorous. One of the crew goes below decks and into a secret communications room that could in no way fit into the boat we’ve just seen. Our crewmember is handcuffed to a desk named A.T.A.C. (surely not something that’s very health and safety conscious on a boat). There’s lots of sweet early-80’s computers on site, but there’s no time to point and go “aww” as an unidentified object is closing fast. The fishermen pull a mine on board which detonates and sinks the trawler/communications platform. It’s a pretty good sequence, but before what has happened sinks in (ho ho) we move to London, and the Minister of Defence is informed of the sinking we’ve just witnessed. Then we’re off to Moscow, who are also aware of the sinking, and General Gogol from the last couple of movies wants to get his hands on the A.T.A.C. and has “contacted our usual friend in Greece”. So that’s where we are. A man with a chatty parrot is on a ship while a seaplane lands and drops off a passenger. The female passenger meets the man and says, “daddy”, and the fact he left Greece suddenly, so we know their relationship and who he is. But before any more can happen, the seaplane sweeps past the boat and opens fire. Daddy and, we must assume, mummy have been killed. Melina Havelock, for ‘tis she, has a mission for revenge now – well that’s what the score tells us anyway, she’s just blankly staring at a camera.
Anyway before that can go too far, we’re with Miss Moneypenny and a hat on a stand. He’s sent in to meet the minister as “M’s on leave” (a cover for the passing of Bernard Lee, who died before the film was shot). Moore is sporting a spectacularly unconvincing wig/combover/tribble. We get a quick description of what A.T.A.C. is (a way to securely communications with submarines) and what its loss might mean (the subs being ordered to attack “our own cities”). The minister informs Bond that an official investigation is impossible because of where the boat was sun, and that the person they wanted to investigate covertly has been killed (i.e. the sequence we’ve just watched – but that’s a bit odd because it’s implied that person was the one Gogol was referring to), as well as the assassin having been identified. Bond is finally dispatched to get the plot moving. So he chooses another discreet car – another flashy Lotus, though not quite as distinctive as the last one – and off he goes. He breaks into a villa filled with a bevvy of beauties and some of the worst party music ever, and observes some cash being delivered in a briefcase. He’s captured by Gonzalez and identified but before he can be killed Gonzalez is shot by an arrow! That’s different! There’s a not-great fight sequence, some even worse disco-chase music and Bond legs it, pursued by guards. Bond escapes because someone shoots another guard with an arrow and… it’s Melina. Bond’s Lotus is blown up in spectacular fashion, so they’re forced to flee in her car – a lemon-yellow Citroën 2CV whose on-screen presence lacks only a sad trombone to complete its entry. There’s then some comedy car-chase shenanigans, which is quite sweet but is all very basic and there’s no great sense of tension or threat (stopping the chase for some bus japes doesn’t exactly help). Wait, did the French auto industry sponsor this film? The pursuing cars are both Peugeots! It’s all done fairly well, but it’s a bit self-conscious, like there’s an admission that they can’t quite manage a proper car chase, so here’s a funny little French car careening down the hillside instead. At the end of the chase, Moore gets the “Bond. James Bond,” line, and the expression on Moore’s face is priceless – “why am I doing this?”
Off to a hotel, we get a little back story, then off to London. Bond gets chewed out for allowing Gonzalez to be killed, but is sent to try the Identigraph to find out who was paying off Gonzales when he was perforated. This involves a long sequence which is basically a photofit, apparently done by the people who did the graphics from the TV version of
The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy, but they identify their man, Locque. We’re off to a ski now, in the Italian Alps (in another Lotus, this one red). Bond gets a message written in his mirror, and has to meet someone at Tofana at 10-00am, so he does. Bond meets a contact, Luigi, and gets a bit of detail, and the contact sets up a meeting with Kristatos (and his daughter Bibi, a skater, who Bond is asked to take to the biathlon for some reason). We are told that Locque is known as “The Dove” as a sick joke, and that he and Kristatos were once friends, but no longer – and that Locque’s employer is a man called Colombo (though sadly not Peter Falk). It’s nice to see a bit of local colour being added, rather than everything revolving round Bond. In town, Bond spies Melina and saves her when two bikers attack her. She was in town because she received a false telegram and Moore comes across as very daddy rather than anything else when talking to her - the huge age gap doesn’t help. He admits the killer may be in the area, she grudgingly agrees to leave. There is then a deeply weird scene where Bibi tries to seduce Bond – someone a good three decades older than her, and for once Bond demurs (though she grabs a quick snog). It looks on screen like Bond is more likely to be troubled by Operation Yewtree than SPECTRE… Off to the biathlon, and a bit of watching people ski – Christ, Bibi is annoying. Still Bond ditches her in favour of being chased by some blonde guy and a couple of guys on bikes, but fair enough. There’s a bit more of a chase… you know, none of this is remotely exciting. It’s all very by-the-numbers. Back to the ski lodge and Locque is on the case (he’s been watching, but now is actively following Bond, and about bloody time too). There’s a bit of cat-and-mouse and Bond gets away because he can do an Olympic ski jump. More disco chase music, more bikers, more this-isn’t-Moore stunt work. The music is fucking awful, though the sequence is pretty well shot – though it’s all in service of very little. Some more stunt work… oh a luge. That didn’t end well last time. Again, some good stunt work here, but this chase is already too long. The chase itself all ends in something more Monty Python than James Bond, but at least it
does, eventually end. Bond drives back to a skating rink where fucking Bibi is waiting – he gets a little more information out of her, she leaves, and he’s attacked by some ice-hockey players.
This sequence has no music, is shot in semi-darkness, and way more effective, even though it serves no purpose whatsoever. Luigi is dead in the car – a small dove badge lets us know who was responsible for this.
Off to Corfu and Melina. Bit of back-story, then Bond is off to a casino to try and get a lead. Some pretty standard car table antics – including the frankly startling line “courage is no match for an unfriendly shoe” - and Bond meets Kristatos again. They discuss some details, but their conversation has been recorded. Colombo is on site, he and his mistress have a fight and she flounces off. Bond catches up with her, offers to drive her home, she accepts, and a night is inevitably spent together. In the morning they take a walk along the beach, but Locque is there and we get a bit of dune-buggy action. Locque runs the mistress over, and Bond is captured. He awakes aboard a yacht, and Colombo is there waiting for him. He plays back the conversation recorded between Bond and Kristatos and informs Bond that it was in fact Kristatos that hired Locque, not himself – Colombo points out that he smuggles a lot of things, but not heroin. He returns Bond’s gun, they share a drink, and a tentative working relationship is reached A great scene – why isn’t more of the film like this? Night-time, and Colombo’s yacht approaches Locque’s smuggling ship and a battle commences. Like a lot of this film, it’s competent but very unremarkable. Anyway, there’s some stuff with huge rolls o paper crushing people, then it turns out that Locque is rigging up some kind of mine. He detonates it to make his escape and Bond is lucky to get away with his life. As Locque flees in his car, through some twisty uphill tunnels, Bond pursues… up a long staircase. My, the drama of it all. Bond gets to the top before Locque, shoots him but not fatally and his car skids to the edge of a cliff… and Bond kicks the car over as revengef or the death of Luigi so Locque plummets to his death. “He had no head for heights.” It’s unusually vicious for this movie.
Then an extended underwater sequence among some ruins with Bond and Melina, while we’re treated to a horrible smooth-jazz version of the movie’s theme. She’s willing to help Bond find the sunken ship with the A.T.A.C. (remember that?). Turns out she has a handy two-man sub to go exploring in (it’s called the
Neptune, you will be unsurprised to discover). They find the sunken ship – hurrah! – suit up and head inside. But up above on the surface, Kristatos is waiting and knows someone is down there. Bond and Melina explore the sunken vessel – impressively shot – and find the A.T.A.C. intact (It looks like a toy calculator that might be used by an especially challenged youngster). Bond gets the A.T.A.C. free but just as he does they are attacked by someone in a huge white diving suit, who manages to take the A.T.A.C. There’s an underwater fight – oh good – and Bond attaches some explosives to the back of the suit, and he and Melina leg it. Bond is able to get the A.T.A.C. back, and bang goes the man in the white suit. They make it back to the
Neptune safely, but while they’re getting out of their suits another underwater vehicle attacks them and starts ripping the sub apart. But the
Neptune has more powerful engines and is able to reverse the little attack vessel into the boat wreckage so they can make their escape. Slowly. They get to the surface and are hauled onto their boat, only to find Kristatos, who takes them prisoner and takes the A.T.A.C. to sell it. Bond and Melina are tied up, Kristatos’s launch takes off, and they two of them are dragged behind. Bond is able to get his wrists free on a rock, but gets cut in the process– naturally there’s a shark hanging around, almost as if waiting for an action sequence to be shot. None of this makes any sense – just shoot them already! But of course villains never listen to me. Bond wraps the rope round a rock, a henchperson becomes shark chow, and Kristatos tries to run them down in the boat. Melina, unexpectedly proving useful, finds a tank of oxygen she left in a previous diving trip so they survive. Assuming the sharks also ate them, despite there being no blood or any other evidence of such a thing, Kistatos heads for port, and leaves a handy boat for them to escape on. Ah but not only that, there’s an Exposition Parrot, who tells them to go to St Cyril’s. So they do.
How long
is this film?
Bond slips into a church, and Q is there as the priest. Wait, the parrot sent them to a church where Q is… oh what’s the point. Anyway now they’re off to
another St Cyril’s, which this time is an abandoned monastery sitting atop an isolated rocky crag. The A.T.A.C. is there, as is Kristatos, and Bond climbs up. There’s a brief, flimsy attempt at feminism when Colombo regrets not bringing more men because he only has five, and Melina rebukes him by saying, “and one woman”. Hmm. Anyway, bad news everyone, because Bibi is here as well. She throws a hissy fit at the idea of moving to Cuba for a few months and… oh can she not just die already? Back to Moore scaling a cliff-face… he makes his way up (well, a stunt man does). There’s a perspective issue here too - Colombo is waving him on or telling him to stop when he must be practically invisible to Bond, given the relative distances. But since nobody else has bothered to think about this, why should we? Anyway Moore makes it to the top, only to be kicked off by a henchperson. He flies off the end and hangs by his rope while the henchperson descends and starts knocking out his pitons. Bond climbs up the rope while one by one his supports get knocked out. We are again getting this in silence – no music – and that’s an effective choice, but it’s all going on too long. Eventually Bond throws a blade at the henchperson, who plummets to his death (then we get a bit of the Bond theme), and Bond makes it to the top and slips inside. Colmobo, Melina and the men are brought up in a picnic basket inside a winching hut. There’s a bit of action as another henchperson catches them but Melina shoots him with an arrow. Meanwhile… General Gogol (remember his brief earlier appearance?) approaches in a helicopter. Bond catches Bibi’s coach – Brink – who offers to help. She shows them where Kristatos’s men are and they’re promptly captured. But there’s a bit of a fist-fight – Bond again out matched – and while he eventually defeats his blonde attacker, Colombo goes after Kristatos. They fight, but Kristatos just about wins, only to be confronted by Melina. She’s ready to kill him, but Bond stops her so Kristatos can be handed over to the authorities… but Colombo has one more knife throw left in him and kills Kristatos. Wait, so Bond didn’t get to kill him and Melina’s denied her revenge? So what was the point of this? After which, Gogol lands, but rather than handing over the A.T.A.C. Bond throws it off the cliff, for it to shatter into a million pieces. After which the Comrade General just leaves – oh but it turned out Colombo survived and will becomes Bibi’s sponsor – because that’s what we really care about. Ah but it turns out there was one scene I do remember from this film, because then we get the frankly embarrassing, terrible scene with the Thatcher impression and the parrot.
Fuck.
That.
James Bond will return, but whether you want him to after that last scene is another matter.
In Conclusion:
Disappointing in many, many ways,
For Your Eyes Only acts as a necessary corrective to the series, but does it at the expense of finding much to replace the over-the-top nature of the last few films with. But before we get to that I do want to start with some positives, because although this is a deeply flawed film, there are lots of things it gets right. For one, there’s that de-escalation of the more-is-more approach, which every Moore film has embraced up until this point.
The Man With The Golden Gun is certainly “more” than
Live and Let Die, The Spy Who Loved Me is “more” than
The Man With The Golden Gun and so on. This culminates, of course, in a space laser battle and, other than pitting Bond against a hoard of invading aliens, there’s not really anywhere else you can go with that approach. So whatever the follow-up to
Moonraker was, it had to bring things down to a more realistic level, and that’s certainly what
For Your Eyes Only does. There’s a proper attempt to put together a much more traditional spy thriller here – the use of gadgets is massively toned down, at least for part of the film (specifically, the middle part) Bond is properly investigating and working things out, and there’s no globe-spanning conspiracy or insane lunatic trying to take over and/or destroy the world (well, there is, but we’ll deal with the prologue a bit later on). Those are all big ticks in favour of
For Your Eyes Only, but wait, because there’s more! This time out our female protagonist, Melina, is given some proper character motivation – revenge for the death of her parents – and her working with Bond is entirely so she can achieve that aim. She even has an unusual method of dispatching bad guys (her arrows), which also marks her out as strikingly unusual. But wait, there’s
still more! Because Kristatos and Colombo have a personal grudge against each other entirely removed from the events depicted in this film, and have motivations and alliances separate from the mission to retrieve the kid’s toy that can apparently control British submarines. Every single thing I’ve listed there is true, and all of them are good points – so why does
For Your Eyes Only end up feeling so airless?
Let’s start with that notorious prologue, when a bald man with a white cat is unceremoniously dropped down a chimney. Which bald man? Well, it’s obviously meant to be Blofeld, but thanks to some legal shenanigans neither the character nor SPECTRE could be used, so instead we get this – a tossed-off fuck you to the rights holder. But why even bother? There’s some great stunt helicopter work in the first few minutes, which is exactly what you want in an opening sequence, and it’s a different kind of areal acrobatics than the last two movies opened with. Yet the openly dreadful begging of “Blofeld” to strike a deal, or the “keep your hair on” gag are terrible acting and terrible writing respectively – not even in a funny, self-parodic way (which maybe
Moonraker could have pulled off), and even Moore looks like he can’t really be bothered with this shit any more. And even before that there’s the sight of Moore placing flowers on Tracy Bond’s grave, which is somehow even more odd. OK, if you want to do a fuck you to the rights holder of Blofeld that’s one thing, but why have this? It’s not that it isn’t nice to have her existence acknowledged, but realistically who in the audience would even have cared outside of a few die-hard fans? Remember, this was being released in the time before there was a home video market, and before these movies were on regular rotation on TV, and it comes from the most forgotten and neglected Bond movie of the lot. Oh, and the events happened to a different Bond. So what’s the point? The answer is, sadly, there isn’t one. So we get some excellent helicopter stunt work following a plot point likely nobody remembered in service of a continuity point that was long forgotten. It’s not, by any stretch, a great start to your movie.
But that’s kind of the story of
For Your Eyes Only. There’s lots of parts of it which are properly good, at least on paper, but they get lost in among a film that’s far, far too long, never really finds its focus, and just rambles about the place in the vague hope that something compelling might emerge. It doesn’t, and when you’ve got the peerless Julian Glover as your bad guy that’s quite the achievement. Glover is straightforwardly terrific here, both when playing the version of his character that’s helping Bond, and when he’s finally revealed to be the villain of the piece, but the part is badly under-written and needs a lot more focus to make this switch work. The
idea of the switch is fantastic, and it’s not like Glover’s incapable of pulling it off (quite the reverse, he handles it extremely well), but the character also vanishes for long stretches of the movie, so there’s not a lot of build-up when the reveal happens. That’s a terrible shame, because he and Moore have a lot of rapport together on camera, and the reveal that he was the bad guy all along would have been substantially more effective had Bond and Kristatos really built up a friendship over the movie, only for it to be betrayed at the end. What we get instead is the eventual reveal happening a bit too early and/or a bit too late but definitely not at the right moment. There’s also a typical-Bond villain way of dispatching Bond (the keelhauling) when just shooting him already would have made sense – it looks OK on screen (though no better than OK) but it makes bugger all sense and of course Bond can escape.
Then we get the final stretch of the movie when Kristatos is basically just stuck up a hill waiting to be attacked. And, to be clear, the monastery is great idea – a genuinely unique location, lovingly shot on film, and this visits a part of the world Bond movies never normally go to. But there really
is just a sense that he’s hanging around, waiting for the final action sequence of the movie to start – sure there’s some talk of Kristatos fleeing to Cuba, and General Gogol is on his way by helicopter to buy the A.T.A.C., but there’s no sense of threat here at all, so all that good work put into the location and shooting it so well goes to waste.
The script is also unduly fussy when it really doesn’t have to be. There’s a lot of background details, which is normally something to be supported, but it’s often clumsily written or delivered, when something a bit simpler and with more clarity would have helped this. If
For Your Eyes Only is an attempt to tone down the lunacy of the last couple of movies, then a clean, clear mission would have been a much better choice than spending about a third of the movie on Melina’s revenge mission when the same material could have been covered in about five minutes flat, and without changing her motivation. By the time we’re reminded that the whole point of this movie is meant to be recovering the A.T.A.C. we’ve spent miles of film on something which has nothing to do with the device, the threat it poses, or what might happen if it’s not recovered. The revenge material feels like padding in other words, because it is, but again there’s a sense how this could have worked. There’s simply no need for it to go on for so long, and a lot of the back-and-forth of the revenge plot gets lost in muttered conversations, or gets broken up for action set piece that turn up at regular intervals because, well, that’s what a Bond movie
does, rather than because they feel like a logical extension of the events we’ve witnessed. Similarly the reveal the Colombo isn’t the bad guy after all is terrific (some praise for Chaim Topol here, who gives a delightful performance) and, unlike the reveal of Kristatos, happens in exactly the right place, so we see how this kind of reveal can work only to have it messed up later on.
More than anything, what
For Your Eyes Only needs is a decent script editor, and it doesn’t have one. This ought to be a taut thriller, in the mode of
From Russia With Love, giving Roger Moore his stab at a down-to-earth, credible spy thriller in the Connery mode. What we get instead is a flabby, often directionless meander though a bunch of largely unrelated set-pieces, which, while superficially watchable when people are being shot at, often tips over into outright boring when they’re not. Carole Bouquet’s Melina is a noble attempt at creating a different type of female protagonist, but she’s not quite up to the task – after her parents are shot early on in the movie, she’s given the task of staring, blank and dead-eyed at the camera. We’re supposed to believe this is the moment her girlish innocence hardens in an implacable desire for revenge over the death of her family, but instead it looks like she’s just gazing vacantly into a camera lens. To be fair she’s not bad elsewhere in the role and, like Barbara Bach, gets better as the film goes on. But she never quite stands out either, which for such a well-conceived character is a bit of a pity. On the other side of the equation, Moore has visibly given up. For the first time since taking on the role, he’s actively bad in the pre-credits sequence. To be clear, he’s
fantastic at Tracy’s gravesite, but actively abysmal during the helicopter stunts – but elsewhere in the movie he’s passed through caring about the performance and at times is almost visibly rolling his eyes at the camera. His age isn’t so much the issue here – he’s obviously older, and sporting a far-form-convincing rug – but increasingly he’s just not trying. There are exceptions – the escape from the mansion that precedes the 2CV chase shows him still putting in some effort, and as mentioned before he does well in his scenes with Glover. Even the sometimes-criticized kicking of Locque’s car off the cliff, while tonally a bit off for this film at least shows Moore working well. But there’s often a sense here that he just doesn’t want to be doing this any more, and it’s not the fun wry-acknowledgement we’ve had in past films. It very undermining, and that’s before we mention the nightmare of Bibi’s pointless inclusion (which, presumably unintentionally, makes Glover look like a paedophile, especially when she says, “I know what you want!” at the monastery), or the horrifically ill-conceived Thatcher impression. For all the good points here there’s at least one, and sometimes more, to undermine them. So yes, point for trying,
For Your Eyes Only. This could have been really something, but just… isn’t. A frustrating miss.
What Percentage Of This Film Could Be Cut?Oh, easily
25%, and even that feels like it’s generous. Everything to do with Bibi, her “sponsorship” (which looks like grooming), and big chunks of the go-nowhere revenge plot can easily be dropped. That opening sequence can go as well, unsurprisingly, though Moore placing flowers on Tracy’s grave show a rare gravitas from him – it would have been better to cut from that moment to him arriving in London. The stupid “just kill him” keelhaul also makes no sense, and yet again we have that great Bond stand-by, the conveniently-placed shark. Come on, even Moonraker was inventive enough to give us a snake instead! So much of the drama and tension here just dissipates in the face of pedantic plot details or faffing about for no readily apparent reason – hello, the Identigraph! It’s not that it isn’t lovely to have Desmond Llewellyn round the place for a bit longer than usual, but it’s an utterly pointless scene, weirdly written (the coffee being delivered), and it takes forever. It’s also tonally different from almost any other part of the movie, which largely eschews a reliance on technology in favour of something a bit more credible. Whatever the Identigraph sequence is, credible is not it…
Quip Level:
Not that high, though it’s very much a case of good vs bad. The “keep your hair on” gag as Bond slaps “Blofeld”’s bald head is beyond terrible, but the “he had no head for heights” after kicking Locque’s car off a cliff is a rare example of post-
The Spy Who Loved Me punning done properly. That’s at least in part down to Moore, who delivers the line filled with bitter regret, rather than playing to the back rows, and as ever it makes the line work. Elsewhere there’s a few scattered examples, but nothing that tends towards overload, so let’s be kind and go for a
Low. But that doesn’t forgive the opening sequence….
2017 Cringe Factor:
Less cringe-inducing, more a bit dull, there’s not a lot to get worked up about here really (they should have put that on the poster). Melina is give a decent back-story, decent motivation and is shown to be mostly competent, so there’s not much to write home about there. Yes, the performance could have been a bit stronger in the early running, but it’s not bad. Obviously there is one exception to this, and it’s Bibi. Bibi is horrifically awful, and appalling misjudged, and nobody seems to have considered the fact that Glover’s “sponsorship” of the young girl might look incredibly suspect. Her hard-as-nails coach, who actually turns out to be rather a decent person, is a nice twist, but the character, her situation and (especially) the way she’s acted are all dreadful. Without Bibi,
For Your Eyes Only would have scored a
Fine. With her, it’s getting a
What Were They Thinking…?
