Word: bonding
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
AMID THE death motorcycles, the cross-bow slayings, the killer umbrellas and helicopter spearings in this, the latest chronicle of Her Majesty's most potent secret agent, there is a strange poignancy. Bond films have been appearing regularly for about two decades now, and almost because of the hyperthyroid nature of the adventures, they have increasingly begun to seem like parodies--gimpy versions of the real thing. Roger Moore, the man with the cement face, is getting on in years; and the idea that his homeland, leading candidate as successor to Turkey as the sick man of Europe, could muster...
This pathos, however, doesn't have much effect on the pace of the proceedings, and things are predictably busy in For Your Eyes Only. But even the premise of Bond's latest fling shows the mustiness of the whole 007 concept. The British, see, have lost the transmitter that controls deployment of the missiles in Her Majesty's submarine fleet. Now, the idea that Britain still has any military secrets worth protecting from the Big Bad Russian Bear seens like the premise to a comedy, not a thriller. Given the pathetic state of British intelligence services--where the big news...
Once again Bond matches wits with nasty men and lips with shady ladies. Once again his work takes him to a bunch of tony vacation spots (the Dolomites, Corfu, Spain, Albania, Moscow in winter). Once again the fate of the world is threatened by-what is it this time?-a nuclear-sub tracking system that has fallen into enemy hands, and can be saved by one lone agent working for an empire over which the sun set long...
This is all standard equipment, but the technicians responsible for the Bond films' felicities-car chases, aerobatics, all the sophisticated paraphernalia of Saturday-matinee thrills-have devised some splendid optional features for For Your Eyes Only. There is a funny-brutal pentathlon of alpine sports: cross-country skiing with hired assassins; a two-man ski jump with the competitors gouging each other in midair; downhill racing at gunpoint; a bobsled run on skis; ice hockey using players as pucks. Director Glen has kept the plot moving briskly, and, in several action sequences, clipped a frame or two from within...
...must remind oneself that human beings-actors, actually-are also involved in the enterprise. Carole Bouquet (23, long dark hair, Aegean-blue eyes, lissome frame) is the love interest, and more: a warrior goddess who saves Bond's life at least as often as he saves hers, and a welcome addition to this summer's gallery of can-do heroines. Topol, as the wily Greek smuggler Columbo, should be in the "Guinness Book of Word Wreckers"; he is perhaps the first performer to demonstrate the art of overacting by chewing pistachio nuts...