We already know Roger Moore‘s James Bond loves a good ski chase, especially in the opening scenes, and this movie is no different – the opening ski chase here is as good as any, and it leads into the theme tune by Duran Duran which itself is as good as any Bond theme tune ever made. With good humour too, Eon Productions seem intent on sending off Roger Moore with a bang, in his last outing as James Bond. Naturally, Roger Moore delivers an excellent performance as usual.
The main antagonist in this movie, Max Zorin, is played very well by a young Christopher Walken, and his main muscle assistant called May Day is played by quite weirdly by Grace Jones. They both make a strong appearance in the first half hour. Aside from Grace Jones (whose I assume is a woman but wouldn’t bank on it) who stays on Zorin’s side until near the end; the main female in this movie is Tanya Roberts who quite well plays Stacey Sutton – a woman who James befriends after witnessing her being paid off by Zorin and then bumping into her again later on.
Bond’s assistant, Sir Godfrey Tibbett, is played very well by Patrick Macnee (who famously played John Steed in the action-packed 60s TV series The Avengers).
There’s a strong equine theme in this movie, so horse breeders and horse-racing enthusiasts should enjoy it more than most.
The sharp eyed among us may notice Dolph Lundgren shows his face for a second, as a KGB agent, when General Gogov (played quite well by Walter Gotell) confronts Max Zorin about his supposed unauthorised killing of 007. Dolph became a household face when he appeared as the main antagonist in Rocky IV, which was released just 4 months after A View To A Kill’s release in 1985 – on Bruce Lee’s birthday in fact, Nov 27.
Towards the end of this movie, they’ve attempted to bring back the outstanding humour of Clifton James as Sheriff JW Pepper, from Roger Moore’s first two Bond movies (Life And Let Die, and The Man With The Golden Gun), this time in the form of a police captain played by Joe Flood. Joe does an alright job, but he’s no Clifton James. In fact, he’s relatively deadpan.
The ending gets a bit monotonous for those who have seen it several times before, but it’s still generally well made throughout. The quality of this movie is generally pretty good – not quite on a par with Roger Moore’s best Bond movies (Live And Let Die, and The Spy Who Loved Me) for my taste, but it’s roughly in the running for joint third place. With a slightly better lead female, and better comedy from the police captain or someone else, plus a nice Bond car (which is completely lacking in this movie), and with a more dynamic ending, and perhaps better use of Patrick Macnee (who got killed off too early for my liking), it could have been up there with the best Bond movies of all time. But as it stands, I rate it on a par with most movies from the Connery and Moore eras – I rated most of them just OK.