When I was a kid I saw this movie
where this guy was taking out bad guys left and right, doing impossible feats,
and gettin’ the ladies. He wasn’t a
superhero, and he didn’t ride around in a spaceship, he was by all accounts a
regular guy, only there was nothing regular about him. He was Bond… James Bond. And the film was twelfth in the Bond series,
but my first, “For Your Eyes Only”.
The opening
of the film has Bond played here by Sir Roger Moore, at a grave of someone, and
then he’s attacked by a mysterious man in a wheelchair and a cat. At the time I had no previous knowledge of film
rights for characters from “Thunderball” or Blofeld, I just thought the fact
that you never saw his face made it creepier.
Then the Sheena Easton jam kicks in, with naked women swimming around
and shadows of a guy with a gun, what seven year old wouldn’t instantly fall in
love? I still have a bit of nostalgia
for the song.
The MacGuffin
of the film is the ATAC which is a device that in the hands of the enemy could
bring down the British fleet. So Bond is
sent in, I noticed how they say his name a lot throughout the movie, that or “007”
as they do as well in the run of the series.
Bond meets the Bond girl Melina (Carole Bouquet) where he is instantly
held at gun point which he escapes from by using a beach umbrella as a parachute
(yeah, I tried that jumping off a roof of a shed once). Then from there it’s all standard Bond
troupes, car chase, Q’s gadget room, villains and their henchmen, a great ski
chase, and the eventual capture of Bond where the bad guy doesn’t just shoot
him, he rather tie him to a beautiful woman and drag him behind a slow turning yacht. Great plan, oh yeah, and he monologues as
well.
The whole
film seems very formulaic now, but after coming off the mostly absurd “Moonraker”
this slightly more grounded Bond was a return to form. My favorite moment as a kid and I still
enjoyed some of it this time around was the climax where Bond has to scale the
side of a mountain. The sounds, the
tension, the silence, really sold it for me, and I became a fan of the James
Bond films ever since.
While there
are much better Bond films than “For Your Eyes Only” and there are some considerably
worse ones, overall it’s where it belongs, right in the middle, and aside from
the steady pace and old school spy action, it’s still a really enjoyable Bond
film.
--Robert L.
Castillo
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