Review of View To A Kill, A: Special Edition (James Bond)

Introduction

Bond had slipped into mirthless self-parody long before this, but ‘A View to a Kill’ not only spelt the end of Roger Moore’s career as 007 but well and truly buried the cruel, efficient square-ness of Ian Fleming’s original character. By this point, Bond was well and truly woven into the cultural zeitgeist and each new film was more a circus of over-familiar cliches than a film in its own right.

Video

John Glen and his cinematographer had either been seduced by the soft-focus New Romantic melodramas of the time and incorporated the soft-light visual style into the film, or the contrasts on this DVD transfer are a little fuzzy. Mostly, its probably the former, the visual transfer is mostly very clean and the colours are well defined. Given the age and general tackiness of the visuals in general, its hard to imagine a great deal better.

Audio

A surprisingly excellent, and hugely enjoyable Dolby 5.1 soundtrack that screams across the speakers with gusto, managing to make the occasionally turgid set-pieces rather more watchable. And John Barry’s seductive orchestral scores are always worth anyone’s ear time.

Features

The obligatory cast/crew audio commentary is as interesting/dull as it ever is given your threshold for such things. There’s an in-depth making of documentary charting the trials and tribulations of the film’s complex shooting process. The Music of Bond documentary details (or rather, skims over) the history of the distinctive Bond sound including contributions by series veteran Barry and talented young thing David Arnold, who scored the last two 007 films. We also get the hilarious Duran Duran music video for the film’s embarrassingly earnest title song, an elaborate Eiffel Tower set debacle that is a sort of camp concoction of Dr. Who with a dash of Top of the Pops and a thick coating of hairspray. There’s an arbitrary deleted scene, a collection of TV spots and trailers. All in all, not quite as comprehensive as some of the other Bond titles on DVD, but given the relatively low standing of this installment, its good enough.

Conclusion

An interminably boring plot, which dances around a megalomaniacal scheme to submerge silicone valley under water in order to corner the lucrative microchip market features surprisingly little of this corporate-take-over-maneuvering-on-amyl-nitrate drivel and centers on some Eiffel Tower silliness, endless horse-breeding, underground oil-wells, afternoons at Ascot and a series of meandering set-pieces in San Francisco.

The cast doesn’t help much: Moore’s Bond is no more a sophisticated spy with a license to kill than a suave, smirking waiter of a five star shrimp restaurant crossed with your Fifth year chemistry teacher, which makes his seduction of the likes of ex-‘Charlie’s Angels’ babe Tanya Roberts all the more dismaying. It seems that Bond isn’t just old enough to be these girl’s fathers, but that he probably is! The villains hardly increase the threat: arch-psycho Zorin (Christopher Walken), an Aryan genetic mutant slithers around in the scenery like a petulant public school-boy, occasionally taking pause in his limpant femininity to cackle insanely. Grace Jones, as the obligatory lesbo side-kick is mildly amusing, but barely utilized.

So, things totter along at a snail’s pace and the central cast leave nothing to the imagination, but there is some crude amusement to be had: Roberts squeaky, gravelly voiced ‘State Geologist’ saunters around with an uncanny line in cashmere suits and porno glances. Bond even takes time out to cook her dinner for heaven’s sake! And Quiche! Of all things! And just when you think Bond had gone completely off its head, it seems he’s no longer much of a demon in the sack, not even managing to bed a Russian Agent with whom he settles for a short steaming in the hot-tub: “The bubbles tickle my… Tchaikovsky!”

Anyway, after burning down City Hall and indulging in a giddy, gratuitous fire-truck chase through the streets of San Francisco (has there ever been an SF movie without a car chase?) we end up in Zorin’s Southern Californian mine, which bares an uncanny resemblance to middle-England, which (obviously) gets blown to s*** while Walken machine-guns his workforce and escapes in a home-made blimp. The famous Golden Gate conclusion is a bit too much of a tease, but is satisfying enough as far as this drippy, sterile slice of Bondage goes. The series would next take a short hiatus before continuing with Timothy Dalton’s nastier, human Bond in ‘The Living Daylights’, which went to prove that every successive Bond ups the ante on the stunts and special effects, but gets further and further away from what a Bond movie was supposed to be in the first place, or any sort of movie for that matter.