“A little restless but I got off eventually.”

Kyle’s rating: One of the most maligned Bond installments is actually the most unabashedly fun!

Kyle’s review: A View to a Kill has a lot of knocks against it. It’s Roger Moore’s final outing as James Bond, and he looks like James Bond’s paternal grandfather. He’s old, yes, we have to admit it. Tanya Roberts is Bond girl Stacey Sutton, and she is perhaps the most stupidest action heroine in the history of film (I’m sure there have been worse, but wait until the blimp scene and email me if you don’t injure yourself slapping your forehead).

This is quite clearly a film of the ’80s, where there is back-projection in certain scenes and the back-projection is awful. A cheapo cover of a Beach Boys’ song somewhat ruins any “street cred” the pre-credits sequence has. Finally, Bond acts really stupid at certain points, and seems to think that a fireman in the United States should know who he is (kinda defeats the whole idea of “secret agent” if so). Disaster!

If you’re trying to see what the whole James Bond phenomenon is about, or you want to impress a date with a great spy movie, A View to a Kill is not the place to start. ‘Cause, damn.

But A View to a Kill (wait for it… wait for it…) is totally awesome! It really is, because it’s still James Bond and Moore, who can do the role in his sleep by his seventh and final Bond film (and seems to, on occasion), is still super-British and cool. Well, I don’t know how British Moore’s Bond truly is, but who cares? This is how British secret agents should be: obsessed with sex and blondes, and largely indestructible.

And Christopher Walken is in this film, as the brilliantly insane villain. From his party demeanor to callously machine gunning his workers to his final laugh, he is beyond memorable. And his love/hate/space oddity relationship with earth oddity Grace Jones would support endless analysis. Walken seems just a little too happy when Grace finds a naked Bond in her bed, you know? Patrick Macnee is in here, albeit briefly, but it’s cool to see the great Steed interact with Bond. And there is a character named Jenny Flex. Wow!

The plot deals with microchips, fixing horse races, Nazi experiments yielding crazed supermen, and all the water in San Francisco. Silicon Valley gets mentioned a lot, and when I first saw A View to a Kill I figured it was made up. What a stupid name! Apparently not, and people who live there have a lot more money than me. Go figure.

The plot barely matters; this is a Bond film, after all. James Bond gets to bet on a horse race, wear a cool suit to said horse race (watch for Miss Moneypenny’s subtle My Fair Lady reference!), and blow bubbles with a smokin’ hot Russian agent. He’s the man, and even if he’s armed at one point with a shotgun filled with rock salt and hanging off of a fire engine, we forgive him because he is Bond. Ultimately, it doesn’t seem like the nefarious plot of A View to a Kill should give Bond that much trouble, but everyone has their off days.

Yep, there is palpable hatred against this film. It’s too cheesy (sure), Moore is too old (so?), Roberts is too dumb (yep!), and a blimp?!? (blimps are scary, dude). But it pays to ignore the hate, because there is a lot here to enjoy. Bond has still got it, as he demonstrates in the climatic fight scene on the Golden Gate Bridge. Which is red.

Anyway, the relationships between the bad guys are pretty engrossing, and there is an odd kind of admirable affection between Dr. Carl Mortner (the excellent monocled Willoughby Gray) and his “son” Max Zorin (Walken). The doc’s reaction to the fight on the bridge is heart-wrenching! Speaking of odd, Grace Jones and Christopher Walken together in the same movie create an event horizon of beautifully odd ethereal weirdness, reminiscent of Lou Reed’s little laugh at the 2:39 mark of “Walk on the Wild Side.” And I’ve read countless interviews with professional snowboarders who list the pre-credits sequence of A View to a Kill as sparking their youthful interest in snowboarding. You go, Bond!

A View to a Kill isn’t quite the limpest Bond film there is (Diamonds Are Forever wins the contest easily) but it is rather weak. That said, the worst Bond movie is 200x better than the average hit action film, so the only true fault of View is that it doesn’t compare favorably to the other Bond films, which are so good they should be burned onto one of those golden discs and sent into space to communicate our sexual appetites to alien species. Moore gets a nice send-off after going above and beyond his original task of filling Sean Connery’s shoes, and Moore can rest assured that his eyebrow-raising antics and penchant for wooing the ladies with witty quips helped mold one particular child of the ’80s (thanks, Roger!). And it’s Christopher Walken as a villain in a James Bond film. Walken’s delivery of the line “I’m happiest in the saddle” is one of the greatest things I’ve seen in my life.

Did I mention the Duran Duran theme song? Wow!

So if it’s for the first time or just to see that your memories may not be up to par, check out A View to a Kill to see what the ’80s superhero Bond was all about. Pierce is the man, yes, but he stands as tall as he does because he stands on the shoulder of the great Roger Moore, who I guess stands on the shoulders of George Lazenby and Sean Connery. Timothy Dalton is in there as well, I guess between Roger and Pierce. Hmm, that’s a weird way to end. Oh well. Watch out for blimps, people!