Interesting that both Sean Connery and Roger Moore’s final films came out sequentially, it’s a great pausing opportunity for me to start watching other movies to take a brief break from my Bond marathon.
A View To Kill opens with Bond in an arctic wasteland being pursued by Russian soldiers, with everyone involved on skis. There’s a brief moment where Bond uses some wreckage as a snowboard and the music switches from classic Bond-Action music to the Beach Boys, it was incredibly weird and misplaced for what was happening on screen. The scene ends with Bond leaving the Russians in his dust and he boards a submarine/boat that’s in the shape of an iceburg, it’s the most Austin Powers moment that I’ve seen in these films yet.
There’s a great plot thread that moves Bond from the old world to the new, both metaphorically and literally, as James investigates microchips at a massive and gloriously beautiful horse stable. It thread takes him from the stables in stuffy Paris to the cutting edge technology of Silicon Valley, where a very Superman esque plot to blow up a chunk of California is being put into motion by the Villain name Max Zorin, played by Christopher Walken, who apparently is a fan of playing characters named Max? He played a Max in Batman Returns as well.
This was a great send off for Roger Moore and a great transition from the old style of spy movie with insane yet some how believable to the newer over the top / nearly unbelievable films to come.
