After the mostly unfortunate experience of re-watching Moonraker, I couldn’t get the Blu Ray disc for its followup, 1981’s For Your Eyes Only, in the player fast enough. I was trying to erase my memories of James Bond fighting a Star Wars-style laser gun battle in space as quickly as possible.
The 007 producers, despite the financial success of Moonraker, decided to go in a different direction with this film: back to basics. Decrease the silliness. Make it more serious than the previous Moore entries. Considering its predecessor, it was time to bring Bond back down to earth, literally and figuratively.
For Your Eyes Only gets off to a rather interesting start in the pre-title credit sequence, hearkening back to the Bond pictures of old. We begin with 007 visiting the grave of his wife Tracy from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Other than a very brief mention of her in The Spy Who Loved Me, this is the first time her character is acknowledged since her death that took place 12 years earlier in Bond world. This leads right into an action sequence where Bond has one last battle with Blofeld, the famous villain who served as 007’s arch nemesis in several earlier pictures. Due to legal issues involving using Blofeld’s likeness that would take far too long to explain, we actually never see Blofeld’s face in the scene and the character is never called Blofeld. However, there’s no doubt it’s Blofeld. I mean… the fluffy white kitty is on his lap and everything! There’s been other Bond films where the pre-credit sequence has nothing to do with the rest of the film, but this one really doesn’t and it does feel a little out of place. Still, it’s refreshing to see the producers establishing a continuum that we don’t often see in the franchise.
Moving on to the title credits, the song “For Your Eyes Only” is sung by Sheena Easton. It’s a pretty solid ballad and the title credits are notable because Easton actually appears in them singing the song. This is the first (and I believe only) time this occurred. This probably happened because the film was released in 1981. MTV debuted in 1981 as well so music videos were the hot thing around at the moment. Easton would go on to play Sonny Crockett’s wife in an episode arc of “Miami Vice” and have some of her songs produced by Prince. Why mention this? No real reason really. I’m just a huge fan of Prince and “Miami Vice”.
The plot involves Bond investigating the sinking of a British spy boat. A marine archaeologist and his wife who were contracted by the Brits to find the sunken boat are murdered in front of their daughter, Melina (Caroline Bouquet), who serves as the main Bond girl this time around. Her part is a little more integral to the story than lots of Bond babes because her mission to track the bad guys is much more personal than 007’s.
The bad guy turns out to be Aristotle Kristatos, who works for the KGB and is initially presented an ally to Bond before we find out otherwise. The villain is played by Julian Glover in a solid performance, even if the character isn’t particularly memorable.
Of course, we get a number of action scenes that are handled well. This is the first time in the 007 director’s chair for John Glen, who served as 2nd unit director on three previous Bond pictures. 2nd unit director essentially means he shot a lot of the action sequences and that experience shows here. There’s great underwater action footage. At a couple points, Bond and Melina nearly meet their demise by sharks. And yet again, none of these sharks have giant laser beams attached to their frickin heads.
Of particular note is the climax in the beautiful mountains of Greece, which is very well-directed and exciting. We also get yet another ski chase scene, but this one’s damn good and involves motorbikes and bobsleds too!
Director Glen would go on to direct five Bond movies in a row, which means every 80s 007 flick. This makes Glen the man who’s directed the most films in the franchise.
One of Bond’s allies in For Your Eyes Only is Columbo, played in a winning performance by Topol, who you may know as Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof. The secondary Bond girl is Bibi, an ice skating prodigy being sponsored by the villain. Played by Lynn-Holly Johnson, her character serves no real purpose in the story and she could have been cut out completely and that probably would’ve been better. The other Bond girl here represents an interesting bit of Bond history. Actress Cassandra Harris plays Columbo’s mistress, who ends up sleeping with 007, naturally. At the time of filming, Harris was married to an up-and-coming actor by the name of… Pierce Brosnan, who I’m confident you’ll read a lot about in later blog posts. Sadly, Harris would pass away in 1991 due to complications from cancer.
To show that this Bond was going back to basics, 007 even kills a character in cold blood by kicking his car as its falling down a cliff. It’s a little startling at first because this doesn’t really match Roger Moore’s characterization of the super spy. We believe it when Connery did it, as he did in Dr. No. Apparently, Moore had to be coaxed into this scene by the writers and producers. It worked for me, even though Moore will never be as menacing as Connery. At least he knew it.
For Your Eyes Only does contain some overly silly elements that are par for the course with the Moore films. Quite a few of them, however, are unintentional and more a product of the early 80s time frame. There’s “Q” showing 007 the “3D Identigraph”, high-tech technology using 3D effects for facial recognition of a suspect. When you watch the scene, it’s basically just Bond explaining what the dude generally looks like (hair color, style of glasses) and all of a sudden… we’ve got him!! The absence of composer John Barry is missed, too. Bill Conti is the composer here. For most of the film, he does an adequate job. However, there is a scene on the ski slopes where the synth-driven and ever-so-eighties sounding instrumentals sound like they’d comfortably belong in one of that era’s raunchy sex comedies. Not exactly the lush sounds we’re used to from Barry, but oh well.
The film would fall a little short of Moonraker‘s box office performance, but it still made a killing at the box office, earning nearly $200 million worldwide. In the U.S., it earned $54 million, placing it eighth for that year’s releases.
For Your Eyes Only is not in the very upper echelon of 007 pictures, but I found it quite entertaining and the change of pace worked for me, especially after the horribly silly levels that Moonraker took us to. Watching it, I kind of wished the producers had used this approach to the Moore flicks. Seeing the Roger Moore entries switch back and forth in tone contributes to a kind-of box of chocolates like mentality the producers seemed to have during this time period. The exception, of course, is the terrific Spy Who Loved Me from four years earlier. This picture isn’t on that level, but it’s a step above the other features in Moore’s tenure for sure.
Here are the facts:
Film: For Your Eyes Only
U.S. Release Date: June 26, 1981
Director: John Glen
Screenplay: Michael G. Wilson and Richard Maibaum
Bond: Roger Moore
Main Bond Villain: Aristotle Kristatos (Julian Glover)
Main Bond Girl: Melina Havelock (Caroline Bouquet)
Theme Song: “For Your Eyes Only” – performed by Sheena Easton
Budget: $28 million
Worldwide Box Office: $195.3 million
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