A View to a Kill is considered bad Bond and propelled Moore out of the role he had occupied for over a decade. With a great title song from Duran Duran, the film has a unique if rather unspectacular plot (Christopher Walkin, with blond-dyed hair and sociopathic, cold-blooded method of conducting business, plans to use an earthquake to submerge Silicon Valley under water so he can take full control of the microchip industry). Walkin's Max Zorin is assisted by titanic model May Day (Grace Jones) who can lift people in the air, throwing them around like rag dolls, and is not afraid to kill for her man when needed. Tanya Roberts is a geologist (!!!) whose father once owned an oil plant Zorin stole from her, fighting him in the courts which has taken practically everything but her mansion. Patrick Macnee has a nice part as a field operative, Sir Godfrey Tibbett, who goes undercover as Bond's chauffeur, both trying to figure out what Zorin plans to do. With locations in Paris and San Francisco primarily, Bond will wind up trying to halt a bomb set in a cave near the San Andreas Fault, hang from a rope dangling from Zorin's blimp, and battle Zorin on the Golden Gate Bridge. Patrick Bauchau's Scarpine is Zorin's right-hand man, as psychopathic as his boss is. When Zorin floods the cave where the workers had been setting the explosives, he and Scarpine machine gun them all who attempt to escape from out of harm's way! Hell, Walken's Zorin laughs while shooting them as pleas of help spray out across the entire cave! Jones makes a sacrifice when Zorin betrays her, Bond gets plenty of action (not just from Walken's cronies, but with the girls, Roberts, Fiona Fullerton (as the foxy Russian agent Pola Ivanova), and even Jones!), and the climax is quite the bonafide stunner (the Golden Gate Bridge, quite a place for the hero and villain to duel, don't you think?). There's plenty of plot centered around the horse track (Zorin's is an aficionado of horses, and his mentor and "creator", a Nazi who was performing experiments on women to see if they could perfect a genius race, is using steroids on thoroughbreds) and stuntmen are put to good use as Moore's no spring chicken by this point. I didn't have the least bit of problem with Moore, here, as Never Say Never Again will attest to, an actor can remain in a part a little too long and strain credibility as a chick magnet, particularly when you see him in scenes next to the much younger Roberts. Roberts is eye candy, but her part is similar in acceptability as Denise Richards' role was in a later Pierce Brosnan Bond vehicle. Moore's chase of Jones through Paris in a car that takes a licking and keeps ticking with just two tires left and half a torso gone once he reaches her to a boat, unable to reach her is quite a stunt sequence.
Review of A View to a Kill
