A View to a Kill (1985)
August 27, 2015 3:51 AM - Subscribe
An investigation of a horse-racing scam leads 007 to a mad industrialist who plans to create a worldwide microchip monopoly by destroying California's Silicon Valley.
This is the 14th James Bond film adventure.
The Wikipedia entry.
ShrunkenCinema.com reviews A View to a Kill.
The James Bonding podcast (Matt Mira and Matt Gourley) crosses over with the How Did This Get Made? podcast (Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael and Jason Mantzoukas) for a live episode to cover A View to a Kill.
Some Top Critic reviews from Rotten Tomatoes:
Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune: "The film also fails on other traditional Bond levels. For example, the gadgets. Zorin and his gang have an inflatable dirigible, but so what? The key to the best Bond gadgets has been that they were something you might want to own yourself."
Paul Attanasio, Washington Post: "It's not double-oh-seven anymore, but double-oh-seventy, the best argument yet for the mandatory retirement age."
Jay Boyar, Orlando Sentinel: "Hard as it is to justify Bond films on intellectual grounds, there's something invigorating -- and strangely reassuring -- about this sort of picture."
Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader: "This one, directed by John Glen, just follows the numbers, plodding from one unimaginative set piece to the next."
TIME Magazine: "It is exhausted and exhausting, an old joke retold once too often."
Variety: "While Bond pics have always traded heavily on the camp value of its characters, A View to a Kill almost attacks the humor, practically winking at the audience with every move."
This is the 14th James Bond film adventure.
The Wikipedia entry.
ShrunkenCinema.com reviews A View to a Kill.
The James Bonding podcast (Matt Mira and Matt Gourley) crosses over with the How Did This Get Made? podcast (Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael and Jason Mantzoukas) for a live episode to cover A View to a Kill.
Some Top Critic reviews from Rotten Tomatoes:
Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune: "The film also fails on other traditional Bond levels. For example, the gadgets. Zorin and his gang have an inflatable dirigible, but so what? The key to the best Bond gadgets has been that they were something you might want to own yourself."
Paul Attanasio, Washington Post: "It's not double-oh-seven anymore, but double-oh-seventy, the best argument yet for the mandatory retirement age."
Jay Boyar, Orlando Sentinel: "Hard as it is to justify Bond films on intellectual grounds, there's something invigorating -- and strangely reassuring -- about this sort of picture."
Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader: "This one, directed by John Glen, just follows the numbers, plodding from one unimaginative set piece to the next."
TIME Magazine: "It is exhausted and exhausting, an old joke retold once too often."
Variety: "While Bond pics have always traded heavily on the camp value of its characters, A View to a Kill almost attacks the humor, practically winking at the audience with every move."
It does have the best theme of any Bond movie.
A Ha! Proof of time travel. Although why you'd travel back in time from next week's thread, I have no idea.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 5:28 AM on August 27, 2015
A Ha! Proof of time travel. Although why you'd travel back in time from next week's thread, I have no idea.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 5:28 AM on August 27, 2015
Oh god I am so sorry for that pun.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 5:32 AM on August 27, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 5:32 AM on August 27, 2015 [3 favorites]
This movie was actually better than I remembered from being a kid. It drags a little (the whole fire/fire truck thing goes on for a while and only marginally contributes), Moore is really showing his age, and Bond's one liners seem worse than usual, but it's not a terrible movie. The villain is good, I really like the visuals of the chateau, having Bond do some riding is fun in a "for some reason this dude's job is just rich people's hobbies way,"* Grace Jones is obviously good. I enjoyed it more than I was expecting from what I remembered.
*Has Bond ever had to sail competitively for a mission? The villain has challenged him to a high stakes regatta and he MUST win. I'll be looking for my check, EON.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 5:48 AM on August 27, 2015 [2 favorites]
*Has Bond ever had to sail competitively for a mission? The villain has challenged him to a high stakes regatta and he MUST win. I'll be looking for my check, EON.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 5:48 AM on August 27, 2015 [2 favorites]
This movie is disappointing inasmuch as the pairing of Grace Jones and Christopher Walken is perhaps the greatest idea in human history and the resulting film is only watchable.
I liked this movie a lot as a kid, and I think 95% of that was being madly in love with Grace Jones. As a young white kid from Virginia I'm not sure that I was actually AWARE that I was in love with her, but it does seem that way in retrospect. I did sit through all of Conan the Destroyer, after all.
posted by selfnoise at 6:53 AM on August 27, 2015 [1 favorite]
I liked this movie a lot as a kid, and I think 95% of that was being madly in love with Grace Jones. As a young white kid from Virginia I'm not sure that I was actually AWARE that I was in love with her, but it does seem that way in retrospect. I did sit through all of Conan the Destroyer, after all.
posted by selfnoise at 6:53 AM on August 27, 2015 [1 favorite]
I love this film, it's packed with literally everything I want in a movie PLUS a Dolph Lundgren cameo.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 7:22 AM on August 27, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by everybody had matching towels at 7:22 AM on August 27, 2015 [1 favorite]
Well okay. I'll leave you to it then. Enjoy it with my blessings.
posted by Naberius at 9:37 AM on August 27, 2015
posted by Naberius at 9:37 AM on August 27, 2015
Bond songs are very important! Duran Duran A View To a Kill (here's just the song without all the overdub movie stuff).
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 9:52 AM on August 27, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 9:52 AM on August 27, 2015 [4 favorites]
I managed to see this one on VHS when I was six? seven? I still have nightmares about being atop the Golden Gate facing a madman with a fire axe. My nightmares don't have bad rear-projection, either. It took a while before I could believe Christopher Walken in a role as anything but a Nazi übermensch psychopath.
I agree that the theme song to this one and The Living Daylights are the best theme songs, but then again, I was born in 1979, so I might be biased.
posted by infinitewindow at 10:03 AM on August 27, 2015
I agree that the theme song to this one and The Living Daylights are the best theme songs, but then again, I was born in 1979, so I might be biased.
posted by infinitewindow at 10:03 AM on August 27, 2015
The part about how Max Zorin is fluent in at least five languages "with no accent" is awesome. Try to imagine Walken's...unique cadence and inflection when speaking German or French or Russian. It's delighted me to no end.
posted by zombieflanders at 12:16 PM on August 27, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by zombieflanders at 12:16 PM on August 27, 2015 [4 favorites]
I'm surprised no one has commented on the absolutely horrendous sex scene between Roger Moore and Grace Jones. He looked so old and shrunken and she was so strong and sexy and powerful and there was just zero believability that she would ever choose to get it on with him, even for nefarious purposes.
This is probably my least favorite Bond move, despite both Walken and Jones. I know the Bond good girls are usually somewhat insipid, but honestly, the Tanya Roberts character was just ... unwatchable. I'm a huge Bond fan, but this movie has nothing good except for the theme song.
posted by widdershins at 12:44 PM on October 23, 2015 [1 favorite]
This is probably my least favorite Bond move, despite both Walken and Jones. I know the Bond good girls are usually somewhat insipid, but honestly, the Tanya Roberts character was just ... unwatchable. I'm a huge Bond fan, but this movie has nothing good except for the theme song.
posted by widdershins at 12:44 PM on October 23, 2015 [1 favorite]
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I've also always thought Zorin was basically the Nazi Bond.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:23 AM on August 27, 2015 [2 favorites]