For Your Eyes Only (1981) | Back to Earth

After Moonraker went into and beyond the stratosphere and still managed to be the worst of the Moore-era Bond films, things came back down to earth to refocus on the events and politics of the world. Aside from the opening scene that references one of Bond’s many evil dictator types of villains, For Your Eyes Only feels like a hard turn back into reality after Moonraker, for better or worse. When I sat down to watch this movie again for the first time in years, the only scene that I could remember from the previous time I saw it was the opening. Everything else about For Your Eyes Only had evacuated from my mind and I could not have told you what the plot of this movie was with a Walther PPK to my head. That isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy watching it again as this movie is probably the most grounded of the Roger Moore Bond films.

Pros

Opening scene has some impressive helicopter stunts
Car chase down the Italian hillside is fun
Skiing sequence is fun and has some good stunts
Topal brings a fair amount of personality to the film to lift up the middle act
He may be a womanizer, but at least he waits until they’re old enough to vote
Rock-climbing sequence is tense and effective with a crazy & dangerous stunt
More subdued climax that doesn’t involve a big base blowing up
The stakes of the plot and the final moments of the climax are done well
Another good ruthless Bond moment by Moore

Cons

Criminal under usage of Charles Dance
The villain is more effective and memorable in Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade
Weird brief scene with the hockey players comes out of nowhere and then ends
Why stop Melina from shooting the villain at the end? She already killed someone in the beginning
Lots of close-up shots of Roger Moore’s eyes remind us all that his AARP magazine is in the mail

Plot & Thoughts

For Your Eyes Only opens with a scene that, while fun, is completely superfluous to the plot. James Bond (Roger Moore) is laying some flowers at the grave of his wife, Tracy, when a helicopter picks him up. As they fly over a city, the pilot is suddenly killed by an electrocuted headset and the helicopter seems to go out of control. However, the flight controls are actually being managed by someone on the ground with a particular vendetta. The camera does not show his face, but we can tell from the dictator outfit and white cat in his lap who he is supposed to be. The man is in a wheelchair for reasons unknown, but that doesn’t stop him from remote-controlling the helicopter that Bond is riding and flying it all over the place, even if he can’t physically see the helicopter. The man-wh0-shall-not-be-named is sadistically toying with Bond, forcing him to fall all over the place within the helicopter. Of course, Bond figures out a way to stop the remote signal and quickly takes control before flying the helicopter landing gear through the sides of the man’s wheelchair and dropping him into a smokestack, kicking off the theme song of the movie.

There’s actually some backstory to this scene, which is one of the reasons I remembered it. Eon Productions and the company’s head Albert R. Broccoli produced all the Bond movies up to this point (except Casino Royale from 1967). Kevin McClory co-wrote and helped produce one of those movies: Thunderball. Broccoli and McClory had some personal and legal disagreements at some point and McClory managed to acquire the rights to the characters of Thunderball, including Blofeld and S.P.E.C.T.R.E., which is part of the reason why we have seen neither of them after Diamonds Are Forever and we’ve seen cheap knockoffs of Blofeld in the past two movies. This scene in which Bond drops the faceless version of Blofeld into a smokestack, according to IMDB, is Broccoli’s petty message to McClory, letting him know “the success of 007 did not depend on him, and he got rid of Blofeld (supposedly) once and for all.” McClory would go on to produce the unofficial remake of Thunderball, Never Say Never Again, with Sean Connery in 1983, while the character Blofeld would not officially return to the franchise until Spectre in 2015.

After Blofeld the man is dispatched and the colorful title sequence ends, we get an opening scene that actually pertains to the plot. A British vessel carrying an important weapons encryption device sinks beneath the ocean. Shortly thereafter, a woman named Melina (Carole Bouquet) is riding in a seaplane and is delivered to her father’s yacht in the Mediterranean. Just after giving him and her mother (stepmother?) some gifts from her travels, the plane pilot shoots her parents dead and flies away. Finally, Bond is brought up to speed about the missing A.T.A.C. encryption device and sent to get it, with a prominent assassin as his main lead. Who is the assassin? The same one who killed Melina’s parents, of course.

Bond heads to an exclusive location where the assassin is residing and manages to get a good look at some other potential leads while he’s there. He doesn’t get a chance to interrogate the guy, however, because Melina shows up and shoots him with a crossbow! It screws up Bond’s plans, but being the gentleman that he is, he helps her escape in a fun car chase down a steep hill. The two of them part ways and Bond returns to Q to create a profile of one of the men he saw at the party known as Locque (Michael Gothard). This gives him a new lead and takes him to a winter resort where he meets Mr. Kristatos (Julian Glover) to get more information.

Unfortunately for Bond, a fair amount of his time at this place involves various shady people ambushing him and chasing him all over the place, including a scene in which a bunch of goons disguised in hockey gear attack him while he’s on an ice rink. The attack comes out of nowhere, which is fine, but then it ends too abruptly. It felt like a scene that was added out of obligation because there wasn’t an action scene in the past five minutes. After getting all the information he could find, Bond does some more globe-trotting and ends up in the same general area where the ship with the A.T.A.C. disappeared. There’s a sub-plot with Locque and heroine shipping that is thankfully wrapped up and Bond gets some more allies before the true villain is revealed and Bond has to storm the enemy stronghold to recover the stolen A.T.A.C.

I skipped over the rest of the plot of the film because there are some fun surprises that aren’t worth spoiling. Having no recollection of this movie and actually forgetting about the A.T.A.C. midway through my latest viewing, I was admittedly getting worried that the plot would shift around drug shipments in the Mediterranean. As I mentioned in my Live and Let Die review, I think that Bond is too good or important of a spy to be involved in drug trafficking plots. It’s fine every once in a while, and it’s okay when it’s a subplot like this. I just think that a double-o agent should be doing more important missions than the work the DEA is doing. The A.T.A.C. is certainly a bigger piece in the game of chess and refocuses the plot on the ongoing Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West.

Plot points aside, For Your Eyes Only is a fun movie, despite being a little forgettable in comparison to other Moore movies that get really wild. There are some good action scenes and crazy stunts. The sequence in which Bond is escaping pursuing thugs on skis is a classic fun chase. When Bond disrupts the heroin-trafficking operation, there are some good gunfights and it’s capped off by a few moments of note. Locque is racing away in his car up a hill, but Bond is able to take a shortcut up the stairs to cut him off. Watching Roger Moore hike up the stairs reminded me of his age because, even though he did make it up quickly, he was not running with the speed and agility of the younger Bond actors. Despite his age, however, Moore still has some great moments as Bond where he gets to be an unflinching killer. When he manages to catch up to Locque, Bond sends his car towards a cliff. As the vehicle dangles off the edge, Locque is anxiously trying to figure out what happened and hoping that Bond will show mercy in this moment. Nope. Bond just kicks the car in the side and sends it down the edge. Great stuff.

I know I’ve mentioned before that I was not the biggest fan of the Roger Moore Bond movies when I was younger, but I want to extrapolate on that and my changed opinion with this movie review in particular. I preferred the Connery films because I thought they were more serious (even if they weren’t), and the Brosnan films mainly because they were the newest movies available when I was growing up. Having taken the stick out of my backside, however, I have come around on all the different actors who have played the character, especially Moore. Moore manages to bring some great English charm to the role while still demonstrating the character’s stone-cold merciless tendencies better than some of his compatriots.

The point I’m dancing around is that I had always viewed the Moore Bond films through very opinionated glasses sitting on an upturned nose without considering what made his movies fun or why he is just as suited for the role as a younger actor. For Your Eyes Only is a movie that gets away from the otherworldly action and technology of the two previous films and allows Moore to play the character in a spy setting that makes sense. There are several scenes in which he’s seeking assistance from a person he can’t fully trust and Moore does a great job of conveying Bond’s distrust while also remaining charming in the interactions to make sure negotiations don’t sour. He may not have the physicality of other actors in the role, but I fully rescind my previous opinions of Moore and his movies after re-watching For Your Eyes Only because this is the example I would use to argue against my younger self who said “All his movies are too ridiculous to take seriously.” It doesn’t get as serious as the Daniel Craig films (thank goodness), but it also has some crazy stunts and tense moments to balance out the fun.

One section of the film that I particularly enjoy is the end. The final confrontation involves James Bond scaling a rock face and sneaking into the enemy stronghold. The whole sequence of getting into the enemy headquarters is really tense, but then it is punctuated by a cool moment at the end, with a little bit of nonsense thrown in. This is where the movie culminates around the A.T.A.C. and it’s a race to the finish.

Melina is ready to shoot the villain with her crossbow but Bond prevents her for some reason, as though she hasn’t already killed someone in this movie and that this moment would change her forever. Why did you bring her along if you weren’t ready to let her exact her revenge? Anyway, the villain is defeated and killed, but the A.T.A.C. is still there in his dying hands to be picked up just as the Soviet helicopter arrives. Out of it climbs a KGB operative and General Gogal (Walter Gotell) who has been in the same role for several of the Moore Bond films as a prominent member of the U.S.S.R., so we don’t need an introduction to know that he’s an important person. Gogal and his agent have a gun trained on him and wait for Bond to hand over the A.T.A.C., but he instead throws it off a cliff. When the KGB agent aims his gun to shoot Bond, Gogal stops him with a dramatic “Niet!” which is a moment that I appreciate. Gogal understands that if his agent were to shoot Bond he would have an international incident on his hands that he would either have to accept or cover up.

Before I wrap up this review I want to back up a little to when Bond and the rest sneak into the enemy headquarters. The whole sequence of infiltrating the stronghold is tense and captivating. Unlike the last two movies where there was an army of men in the villain’s lair, there are only a few guys here. It feels like a real spy thriller as they try their best to stay hidden because they don’t want the villain to escape when he’s been so difficult to capture thus far. The tensest moment of all is when Bond climbs the cliff face. It’s a sequence that is shot and edited well to maintain the tension between shots in which it’s Roger Moore or the stunt double. There’s minimal music as he climbs. The cliff face is extremely steep for the stunt double to maneuver up. At the top, one of the guards sees Bond and starts kicking out the posts securing his rope. When the stunt double fell from the cliff, I audibly gasped, and apparently for good reason. According to the trivia on IMDB, the stunt was extremely dangerous and it shows. The stuntman was okay from this particular fall, but another person tragically died during the making of For Your Eyes Only during the bobsled sequence. It’s terrible such tragedies occur when filming these movies, and I’m not advocating anyone be put at risk, but I’m also saying that these movies and their stunts hold up incredibly well because of the risks that were taken to show such death-defying moments.

TL;DR

Even though For Your Eyes Only is not as bombastic and memorable as other James Bond movies from the Roger Moore era, I still quite like it. It’s a back-to-basics movie with some betrayals, revenge, and wild stunts. Moore’s age is certainly getting more visible at this point in the series, especially with the many close-up shots of his eyes. It has its peaks and valleys, but I still rank this above several other Bond movies from this era.

Hair of the Dog Drinking Game Rule

Even though the primary plot centers around the A.T.A.C., it feels like there are a lot of other plots and sub-plots going on in For Your Eyes Only. There are so many things going on in this movie, I actually forgot at some point that the goal of Bond was to stop the villains from selling the A.T.A.C. to the Soviets. So, as a way of remembering the central plot, let’s make it a drinking rule.