The Spy Who Loved Me
A pretty grand one, and one I understand Cubby Brocolli threw everything he could get into after the commercial disappointment of The Man With the Golden Gun. It worked. This is a pretty damn good Bond movie. It's helped by a few things - great song, great set pieces, and a sense of the grandness that harks back to the like of Goldfinger and You Only Live Twice.
First thing that grabs you about the movie is its opening sequence (mentioned a few posts back) where Bond has a decent skiing action sequence (recalling the great skiing stunts in OHMSS) which culminates in probably the most memorable Bond stunt of them all - Bond skiing off the side of a mountain and after an interminable fall, pulling a chute that's a union jack. That had them cheering in the aisles in some places, I've heard.
Couple that with some other solid set pieces - the terrific car/helicopter/motorcycle chase, the fight with Jaws in the Egyptian ruins, and the fight with Jaws on the train, the fight in the fake tanker - and you have something that delivers on action (even though some of the larger scale action looks out of Thunderbirds).
The villain is bland as hell in this, but the main Henchman, Jaws is fun (in a 60s Batman kind of way) and when I saw this at the cinema - aged 12 - it seemed brilliant. Looking back 35 years+ on, it seems quaint, but I can forgive it as the film has great drive and energy.
Not much taken with the leading lady on this one - Barbara Bach doesn't have much charisma, and the has the look of a recovering anorexic to me (I have no idea if that's true). This film seems to me to be the start of a trend of quite unBond-like leading ladies.
Again Moore is cracking off one-liners like a pro.
When Bond and XXX are caught banging by a group of superiors:
"Bond! What do you think you're doing?"
"Keeping the British end up, sir."
77/100