For Your Eyes Only - Review

Since going on this most recent James Bond marathon in preparation for No Time To Die, the only movie I had not seen in the official lineup of 007 was 'For Your Eyes Only'. I was excited because every James Bond ranking I have ever seen had For Your Eyes Only fairly high on the list, at least compared to other Roger Moore films.

I can already tell that this is going to be an unpopular opinion but this movie in my eyes is less than the sum of it's parts, but I still enjoy it. Roger Moore is still great as bond, although I'd be lying if I said that he didn't seem a little too old at this point, especially when you see him with Miss Moneypenny. Carole Bouquet plays one of the best bond girls as she is not only gorgeous, but she can hold her own in a sticky situation with her badass crossbow and she has some depth to her unlike the majority of Bond girls that came before her. The action sequences are exciting, especially the ski chase in Italy, but there have definitely been more exciting and memorable scenes in earlier entries. A soundtrack that is very 80's from Bill Conti (the man who brought us the score of the Rocky movies) which works... for the most part. And the giant set piece of the movie is very suspenseful with Roger Moore climbing the mountain.

Where this film loses me are some of the dumber or unnecessary moments, and the plot itself. Sure, I can bitch and moan about the tacky face recognition technology, the hockey players, and for heavens sake that Bebe character, but my main issue was that the plot felt like it dragged. While I wasn't bored per say, I definitely felt like the plot was constantly being left behind while the characters continued on with their adventures. The whole plot of the movie is that a British missile tracking machine goes missing, but he doesn't investigate that until over half way through the film. Instead we go to Spain to find one of the contracted killers, only to go to Italy to find one of the contracted killers, and so on and so forth. I was constantly feeling nothing had actually happened yet. Twists and turns were happening which I feel were nice additions, but the movie focused in the wrong places. Because of this, the actual climax of the film itself felt like it didn't hold the emotional weight that the film had set up for it.

Either way, there is much to like about For Your Eyes Only as it has all the pieces for a great Bond film, but got lost in the order the sometimes dragging plot was told in. Still and enjoyable 007 adventure which I was glad I saw.