For Your Eyes Only is generally regarded as one of the better Bond films and certainly Roger Moore’s best Bond film outside of The Spy Who Loved Me. However to me it still feels like this film doesn’t get enough credit and should be higher rated on most lists. This is a very entertaining film with some great action sequences, an intriguing story line, a top-10 Bond girl and a solid villain.
The prologue to For Your Eyes Only is very interesting as well, although it has nothing to do with the rest of the film. What it does do, however, is it ties up a loose end that had been hanging around for about 10 years. It had been nearly that long since we’d seen SPECTRE in a Bond film, and Blofeld met a very unceremonious ending in this sequence, which starts with Bond laying flowers at the grave of his wife of his wife Tracy, who was killed by Blofeld at the end of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. In this film, Blofeld, still wearing his neck brace and confined to a wheel chair, remotely takes over the helicopter Bond is riding in and takes Bond for a terrifying ride before Bond is able to get control of the chopper, use one of the landing rails to scoop Blofeld up in his wheelchair before dropping down the top of a factory smoke stack. It’s definitely an interesting an way to tie up an earlier loose thread to the series. I must say, however, that it seems to me that Blofeld deserved a better end than what he got. As I said, it was fairly unceremonious and crossed over the boarder to silly. To be perfectly honest, it was an ending better suited for Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers films.
But enough on that. The rest of the film is outstanding. When looking at the Roger Moore Bond films, For Your Eyes Only and The Spy Who Loved Me are in a league of their own, and the rest are a step or more behind.
What really does it for me with this film is the action. As the series moved into the 80’s the action sequences had to become more modern and intense, and that’s just what happened with For Your Eyes Only. Yes, The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker started to develop very sophisticated, and in some ways iconic (Think Bond skiing off the cliff in The Spy Who Loved Me and releasing the Union Jack parachute) action sequences. However the car chase in this film took car chases to another level. The fight on the cliff is tense and riveting. The underwater scenes harken back to Thunderball, and work just as well, but with more realistic action. And the climax, sans music, is as unexpected as it is satisfying.
The other strong aspect to this film is that the film makers were able to construct an action thriller without sacrificing the story. The storyline to this film is engaging and the characters in this film are some of the more likable of the series. Characters like Milos Columbo and Bibi Dahl add great personality to this picture. Villain sidekicks Locque and Erich Kriegler add the appropriate menace without devolving into silly caricatures. General Gogol’s role also expands a little in this film, and he gives the Soviet Union an adversarial personality, but not a monstrous one.
For Your Eyes Only is a film with depth in the story as well. The villain, Kristatos, played by Julian Glover (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Empire Strikes Back, Troy) is a mercenary who tricks Bond into thinking that Columbo is the real bad guy. Like they did with Drax in Moonraker, the film makers humanized Kristatos, this time by giving him a genuine affection towards Bibi, and an honest caring for her well being. That depth of character allows the audience to relate to him, even though he’s a murderous fiend. Then when Kristatos turns on Bibi at the end, it’s a powerful moment that portends his own demise, and allows the audience to root for that to happen even more. Glover played this character competently, and I won’t go as far to say that he’s one of the great villains of the series, because he’s not. In fact, he’s probably one of the more for forgettable villains in the series, but he fits this film well and Locque and Kriegler are able to carry the film’s menace over the first two acts.
Melina Havelock is one of the most independent Bond girls to date. Motivated by avenging the death of her parents, this crossbow wielding vixen proves to be a good match for Bond, and a worthy successor to the likes of Pussy Galore and Anya Amasova, previous Bond girls who were more than capable of taking care of themselves. Half Greek, Melina is one of the most exotic of the Bond girls to date, and she spends all of the film as Bond’s equal. Not since Pussy or Anya has there been a Bond girl that is less of a damsel in distress than Melina Havelock. Carole Bouquet was a better actress than most of the other Bond girls, and her character was given more weight and a very serious goal. She played the role with a sultry sexiness that fit the franchise and this film perfectly so that it made sense when she wasn’t satisfied by merely killing the assassin of her parents. She also wants to kill the man that ordered the hit, despite the constant warnings from Bond. As I mentioned before, I would put Melina in a top-10 list of Bond girls, and she could be positively compared to any of them.
Even Roger Moore brings a new level to his game. He’s acting better than he has in any installment of the series, and he seems to be taking the role a lot more seriously than he had at any time on the past. This was also the first of five Bond films directed by John Glen (he would helm the next 4 in the series), and he brought a level of seriousness to the franchise not seen since Thunderball. The film didn’t lose all of it’s fun and silliness, but it certainly lost the absurdity that came along with Moonraker. In fact, right from the opening of the film when Bond lays flowers on Tracy’s grave, we’re being shown that this is going to be a more serious Bond than we’ve seen recently. What Glen brought to the series in this film was balance in his film making, with enough drama, humor and action to make this feel like one of the more balanced Bond films.
From a screenwriting point of view, this is also a well crafted script with well defined story structure, excellent archetypes, and a well structured hero’s journey. There is a clear catalyst that disturbs the ordinary world (the ship carrying the ATAC device, which can order all British subs to fire their nuclear missiles, sinks in shallow water) with a strong inciting incident (the marine archeologist who was going to salvage the wreck is murdered along with his wife in front of their adult daughter). The adventure begins when Bond starts to investigate and finds out from Kristatos that Columbo is responsible for the murders and trying to get the ATAC. The stakes are raised when Bond discovers that it is really Kristatos that’s responsible for that and he and Melina try to beat him to the ATAC. The crisis occurs when Bond and Melina are captured and nearly killed by Kristatos, and he gets away with the ATAC so that he can sell it to the Soviets. The climax takes place on the mountain top chateau where Columbo kills Kristatos and Bond destroys the ATAC before the Russians can get it. It’s a very simple storyline that’s well constructed and has depth added to it by by well developed characters.
There are a few Bond films that I would recommend seeing again if you haven’t seen them for a long time. So far that list is made up of From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and The Spy Who Loved Me. For Your Eyes Only should definitely be on that list.
