For Your Eyes Only
Dir: John Glen
1981
***
For Your Eyes Only, the twelfth Bond film of the series is based on two of the short stories that make up the eighth 007 book from Ian Flemming. The stories chosen; For Your Eyes Only and Risico are combined while the remaining short stories; From A View To A Kill, Quantum of Solace and The Hildebrand Rarity were later developed into films of their own (The Hildebrand Rarity formed part of the Licence to Kill story). After Moonraker's fantastical plot peaked believability, producers were keen to bring Bond down to earth so to speak and return the franchise to the original style of Ian Flemming's novels. John Glen was offered the role of director after working on previous Bond pictures at he accepted and was quick to change the Bond films for then on. I loved the over the top Bonds of the 70's but it was right to steer the franchise down a more classical direction, the idea that Bond would rely less on gadgets and more on his wits. This was symbolically represented in the famous scene whereby Bond's Lotus is blown up and he has to rely on his driving skills in a Citroen 2CV. The film is much more of a thriller than the previous Roger Moore Bonds had been and the performances and writing (particularly the character development) was far more impressive. Glen was also quoted as saying ..we wanted to make the new film more of a thriller than a romp, without losing sight of what made Bond famous - its humour" but in this respect I'm not sure he did as great a job as he could. Highlights for me were the performances from Moore, Topol (one of my absolute favorite actors) and one time Bond contender Julian Glover. The story was a little slow and somewhat uninteresting, especially compared to the previous films. It was a thriller but it wasn't thrilling. As for the humour, For Your Eyes Only contains one of the most horrible scenes of the whole franchise. Whoever wrote the scene whereby Margret Thatcher, the then Prime Minister of Great Britain, flirts with Bond over the phone while thanking him for what he's done, shouldn't work in film again. This, and the obvious dig at Kevin McClory (who owned the rights to the Ernst Stavro Blofeld character) that saw an unnamed but obvious Blofeld character dropped down a large chimney was a symbolically 'funny' scene gone too far. It was a little too arrogant, as if the franchise had never made a mistake in the past and had made a really exciting film (which it really hadn't). A good film but overall the first Bond film I was disappointed by. It has moments of greatness but also far too many slow and rather dull bits. It also marks the first Bond film there Bernard Lee's M is absent. Sadly, Lee died before filming but his character was not replaced out of respect. Another new chapter for the world's favorite spy but it certainly got better for John Glen and indeed the fans.