Number in Countdown: 21

Title: A View to a Kill

Year: 1985

Synopsis: This time, Bond starts off in Siberia, on the hunt for the body of 003 and the microchip he stole from the Russians. The Russians, not eager to lose their microchip, track Bond down and try to kill him. Bond snowboards away (to a cover version of Beach Boys’ “California Girls”. . .) and meets up with his sexy co-agent. Then they escape in their super cool (not cool at all) iceberg-submarine.

In London, Q gives a mini-lecture about microchips and how the electro magnetic pulse (or EMP) from nuclear bombs can knock them out completely. As Bond explains, everything from the common toaster to the most sophisticated computer machines would be rendered useless (MI6 needs their toasters). Q explains that one of their private defense contractors has developed a microchip impervious to EMP. The Russian microchip 003 retrieved is identical to it. (Hmmm…) M notes that the research facility was bought by Zorin Industries, although have been no leads in the extensive security check of the company. Bond proposes to investigate Max Zorin, the man in charge, but everyone is scurred because he is a positive public figure. Bond doesn’t give a shit, but they keep their investigation on the DL anyway.

MI6 takes a field trip to the horse races, where Bond binoculars in on Max Zorin (with his trusty cane) and his assistant/henchwoman May Day. Zorin’s horse wins the race in a last-minute sprint. Sir Godfrey Tibbett, horse trainer and MI6 agent, notes that Zorin’s horse of inferior bloodline might have been drugged during the race, even though tests proved negative. Through Tibbet, Bond travels to Paris to meet some French detective. Over some soup at some Eiffel Tower cafe, the French guy tells Bond that Zorin is holding a horse sale at the end of the month. The French guy is killed by a staged performer masked and dressed all in black and Bond gives chase. The stage performer gets away, leaping off the Eiffel Tower and parachuting away to safety. Bond chases in a stolen car, but fails to apprehend the murderer.

Bond and Tibbett travel to Zorin’s estate for the horse sale. After being turned down hardcore by some woman, Bond and Tibbet sneak into Zorin’s lab, where they find out Zorin’s been implanting his horses with microchips full of steroids. When Zorin needs a win, he just presses a button on his cane, and the horses become Major League Baseball players. Zorin figures out these two rapscallions are agents and tries to kill them by sending a knocked-out Bond and a dead Tippet into a car and sinking it. Bond escapes because he’s Bond.

General Gogol of the KGB visits Zorin at his racetrack and tells him he had no authorization to kill 007 (they all think he’s dead). Zorin scoffs and shrugs it off, telling Gogol and KGB folk he’s not with them anymore. One of the KGB guys doesn’t like that, saying that they funded and trained him, and calls Zorin something like a physiological freak of nature (which we’ll get to later). These words get him tossed around by May Day. Later, Zorin holds a meeting in his big-ass blimp and reveals his plan to a bunch of shareholders: He’s gonna destroy Silicon Valley and gain a monopoly over the computer chip market. All right, cool…

Bond travels to San Francisco and learns from CIA agent Chuck Lee that in World War II, Nazi scientist Dr. Carl Mortner was experimenting with steroids on pregnant women in hopes of making super-intelligent babies. They succeeded in making smart offspring, but there was one side effect: they all grew up to be psychotic. Bond and Lee speculate Zorin might be one of these experimental kids because he’s “of the right age and definitely psychotic.”

Bond later investigates one of Zorin’s oil-rigs and notices that Zorin is pumping water into his pipelines, instead of out of it. Hmmm…Bond later sees the woman who turned him down at the party and finds out she is geologist Stacey Sutton. He finds out from her that Zorin is trying to buy her family’s oil pipeline (for 5 million smackeroos), but after being attacked by Zorin’s men, she rips up the check and joins Bond in his pursuit to bring Zorin down.

Bond and Stacey travel to City Hall to find out further locations of oil rigs run by Zorin, but the Nazi-baby finds them there, killing Stacey’s boss, and setting the whole place on fire. Bond narrowly escapes, rescuing Stacey from the inferno. Framed for both the murder and the arson, Bond and Stacey escape from SF police in a firetruck. When they’re chillin’ after their escape, they figure out that Zorin might be trying to blow up some shit under some lakes in the fault-heavy area and cause a cataclysmic series of earthquakes that would set all of Silicon Valley under water.

Stacey and Bond then go investigate Zorin’s mine, and there, find a bomb deep down that will disrupt the plates and get Zorin’s plan movin’. Zorin and May Day are there to cause Bond and Stacey some trouble, and while Bond fights May Day, Stacey gets to safety. Zorin gets away as well, leaving May Day behind. Ticked off, May Day changes allegiance and helps Bond get the bomb out of the mine, even though she has to sacrifice herself to do it. Zorin is like “May Day betrayed me wtf?” (Friends don’t like it when you abandon them in a mine that has a huge bomb in it, I guess).

Bond comes out of the mine and sees Stacey running toward him. She refuses to listen to him saying “Stacey, behind you!” like five times and stupidly gets swept up by Zorin’s blimp. Bond grabs the mooring line of the blimp just as it lifts off and takes a little arial trip over San Francisco. Zorin crashes Bond into the Golden Gate Bridge, but it fails to kill 007, who instead moors the blimp to it. Bond and Zorin fight on the famous bridge with fist and axe, but eventually, Zorin falls to his death into the bay below. Dr. Mortner, the evil Nazi guy, lights a stick of dynamite (to throw at Bond, I guess), but drops in in the cabin of the blimp. Bond unties the blimp to the bridge, and after floating away for a second, the dynamite goes off and the blimp blows the hell up.

After Zorin’s defeat, Gogol awards Bond with some medal, the first time it has ever been awarded to a non-Soviet. They are all happy, but sad because Bond has been missing since the blimp explosion. Q finds him and Stacey in the shower by spying on them with some little robot (the illegitimate child of an Electrolux and Rob the Robot). He reports 007 is alive and just “cleaning up a few details.” Britain’s toasters are safe.

Things I like:

In this department, A View to a Kill really doesn’t have that much to offer. While Moonraker had a TON of stupid stuff, it at least had great locations and foxy Bond girls. This time around, the only thing I really like was the fact that Zorin was some sort of freak baby. A lot of people and Bond fans hate this part of the movie, but I think it’s awesome. Pregnant women taking steroids, having genius but insane kids, and now one of them is trying to take over the computer chip market. It’s basically saying “don’t mess with nature or else you’re gonna get weird fuckers,” and I can always support a message that supports the not-messing-around-with of nature.

I can appreciate Christopher Walken’s performance as Max Zorin as well. He plays a nice, classic Bond villain.

Apart from that, there isn’t really much else.

Things I didn’t like:

A View to a Kill is never really high up on anyone’s “top Bond lists”, including this one. Not even Roger Moore, who played Bond in this entry, liked the movie.

First off, the entire movie is just BLAND. For locations we have Paris and San Francisco, two of the most beautiful cities in the world, and yet, neither are used to their full potential (or to any potential at all). There are so many pretty sights in San Francisco they didn’t use. Even Tommy Wiseau’s The Room had better vistas of SF than this, so that’s kind of disappointing.

The two Bond girls are both kind of boring. May Day is just some buff bodyguard type lady, and Stacey Sutton is some kind of airhead geologist that is just always asking for Bond’s help. And it’s not like an endearing kind of airhead (maybe that’s what made Zorin’s blimp float). I understand that not every Bond girl can be badass, but there seems to be absolutely no chemistry between Stacey and Bond, or May Day and Bond, or anyone and anyone. Everyone just kind of seems to be going through the motions and wondering when they can all go to lunch break.

I don’t think a big problem with this movie is Roger Moore, but you can see it in his performance that even he was a little over the whole thing. By this time, he was 57 and had done six previous Bond flicks. He stated later in interviews that it was, even for himself, hard to believe that he was this playboy super secret agent at such an old age. And if the actor playing Bond isn’t really into it, then no one else is, and the whole thing sucks. Again, I’m not blaming Roger, just saying.  . . meh.

The Song:

As the story goes, a drunk John Taylor of Duran Duran saw Bond producer Albert R. Broccoli at a party and asked “Hey, when are you going to have someone decent do one of the songs?” This was apparently enough to get Duran Duran the gig of writing the next theme. The only problem was that Duran Duran wasn’t really a band anymore, wrought with arguments and hurt feelings. Although they all hated each other, they managed to scrounge up and record this shitty crap.

This song has middle-eighties written all over it (as will the next song in the series), and I think it suffers greatly. It might have been a hit back in the day, but nowadays, it just. . .sucks. The melody of the verse is all right, but absolutely cannot stand the chorus where they sing “Dance! Into the fire!” So shitty. I just don’t like it at all.

Favorite part: Uhh. . .nothing?

Favorite line: “Oh, the bubbles, they tickle my. . .Tchaikovsky!” Said by Pola Ivanova as a hot tub’s bubbles, and some Tchaikovsky music, come on simultaneously.

Extra tidbit: A View to a Kill spawned four children’s Choose-your-own-adventure-types books, one of them (Win, Place, or Die) written by R.L. Stine, who would later go on to write Goosebumps! Trippy! Such a good book, in fact, that someone wrote a metal song about it.

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