This review of A View to a Kill (1985) is part of a wider rewatch of the James Bond series to mark its 60th anniversary. 007 has always been my favourite movie franchise, and I wanted to see where each film ranks within the series. Please check out the main blog post for my rankings of this and the other twenty-four official films and links to the movie reviews for the rest of the franchise.
Short Review
This film has always been one of my favourites – Roger Moore, the villains, story, locations, action, and even the blimp all come together to make an enjoyable movie. Grace Jones as May Day is awesome in this film as a henchwoman. The instrumental version of the film’s song is also used well at points in the film. From Rewatch with Love, call this movie a stealth Goldfinger remake, which is probably why I like it so much. Yes, the film is a bit all over the place at times, and the KGB narrative is not necessary to the main story, but it doesn’t take away from the rest of the movie either. The disclaimer at the start of the film is amusing when you look into why it’s there, it seems someone was a little overprotective of their brand, if you ask me. One disappointment I have with this film is the lack of a proper Q scene. We had the surveillance robot at the start and end, but no banter as 007 is getting his photo ring, polarising sunglasses, shaver bug detector, or check reader.
Long Review and Film Summary
Roger Moore is back for his final appearance as James Bond in A View to a Kill. The pre-titles start with a helicopter flying over a glacier in Siberia and Bond following a tracker. 007 finds the body of 003 in the ice. James takes a microchip from 003’s locket; as he tries to leave, troops and the helicopter fire at him, as we move into a ski chase. Bond steals a snow buggy as the chase continues. The music used in parts of this scene ruins it. California Girls by the Beach Boys doesn’t work here and distracts from the otherwise brilliant chase scene. Eventually, he uses a flare to bring down the helicopter and spots a Union Jack. James goes inside the submarine camouflaged as an iceberg and meets with Kimberley Jones (played by Mary Stavin), and they escape. Moving to the opening titles, we have the usual mix of lasers and silhouettes, this time with black lights, fire and ice sequences, and skiing. The song is 80s pop with the name of the film working well in the lyrics, and although it’s a good song, Goldfinger and Live and Let Die are better, in my opinion.
The film opens at MI6 with Miss Moneypenny (played by Lois Maxwell) in a big hat and dressed for a formal day out. Moving into M’s office, we find M (played by Robert Brown), the MOD (played by Geoffrey Keen) and Q (played by Desmond Llewelyn) playing with a prototype surveillance robot. Q talks to us about silicon integrated circuits and microchips. He explains how they are susceptible to intense magnetic pulses from a Nuclear explosion. Zorin Industries, a defence contractor for Britain, has made one that isn’t susceptible. The microchip found on 003 was a duplicate from the Russians, showing the KGB must have a pipeline into the research company, which was acquired six months ago by an Anglo-French combine.
Max Zorin (played by Christopher Walken) is a billionaire industrialist trying to increase his power, similar to Auric Goldfinger in Goldfinger and Hugo Drax in Moonraker. The races are underway as M and Bond discuss Zorin, who is in the owner’s box watching the race with his henchwoman, May Day (played by Grace Jone). Bond ally, Sir Godfrey Tibbett (played by Patrick Macnee), is concerned about how the horse won the race in the last furlong. The horse, which seems spoked and acts in the winner’s circle, shouldn’t be notable based on its breed. James asks Moneypenny, who has been watching the race with Q, to cash his slip in (he bet on Zorin’s horse, Pegasus). Bond meets Achille Aubergine (played by Jean Rougerie) for dinner in the Eiffel Tower. Achille has been investigating Zorin for cheating and tells 007 that Zorin will soon be holding an annual sale at his Château in Paris and that his security is formidable. Music starts, and the Butterfly Act gets underway. The compère is attacked by May Day, and she uses a butterfly to kill Achilles. Bond goes after her on the frame of the tower, with both of them running up the staircase, shots are fired up the staircase, and 007 is lifted by a fishing rod. May Day parachutes off the building, as Bond jumps on top of an elevator on the way to the ground. James hijacks a Taxi to follow, going backwards down a staircase, lands, spins, goes forwards down a second staircase, up a boat ramp on top of a Bus and down on the ground. The car roof comes off, as does the back, with the car just with its front end, jumping from the bridge onto a barge and into a wedding cake. May Day escapes on a speedboat piloted by Zorin.
Bond arrives at Zorin’s stud sale as John Smythe, who has just come into some stables and has decided to start dabbling in horse breeding. Scarpine (played by Patrick Bauchau), Head of Security, takes John to the stables to see the previews, hands him a program, and lets him know that a full brother of Pegasus is estimated to reach a price of $3 million. Sir Godfrey Tibbett, disguised as Mr Smythe’s driver, is waxing the car and goes looking for information. He notices Pegasus being taken to the stables and waits for the trainer to leave. Once clear, he finds the horses nowhere to be seen. Mr Smythe is shown to his room by Jenny Flex (played by Alison Doody) as May Day sneaks around. Tibbett joins Bond in his room as they check for listening devices. We find out that they can listen into any room at any time. The bug is discovered in a lamp, and they play a pre-recorded tape of Mr Smythe dressing down Tibbet for incompetence and go onto the balcony to talk.
Once outside, they see Stacy Sutton (played by Tanya Roberts) arrive by helicopter, and Zorin go to meet her. At Reception, Bond sees Zorin handing over a cheque to Stacy, as he tries to enter, he’s stopped and shown the way to the party by May Day. Eventually, after wandering around the party in his polarising sunglasses, he gains entry to the office and takes an imprint of the last cheque in the book, which shows Five Million Dollars to Stacy Sutton. James meets Dr Carl Mortner (played by Willoughby Gray), formerly Hans Glaub, a Nazi scientist, father figure to Zorin, and his breeding consultant. Dr Carl catches Bond coming out of the back area and shows him to the bar – he tells him how Pegasus can be so good even with this breeding being so average.
While mingling at the party, Bond uses his ring to take pictures of the guests and meets Bob Conley (played by Manning Redwood), who handles Zorin’s Oil business on the East Bay. Zorin comes over and talks to Mr Smythe about horse riding. James asks about fly casting, giving his cover away to Zorin. Next, Bond talks to Stacy and finds out she is not interested in horses; they get interrupted by May Day, and Stacy goes to her helicopter.
Later that night, Tibbett is snooping in the stables and runs into Bond, who shows him the secret lab area underneath. They find Pegasus, who has had surgery to put a microchip in his leg, which is programmed to control an injection of natural horse steroids. This is released when it gets a transmission from the Jokeys’ cane. Bond uses a stethoscope to discover the combination to the drug cabinet, as two Guards notice the stable door is not locked upstairs. The doors start to close as the guards try to come down. Tibbett and James put the drugs back, turns all the lights off, and hides in the warehouse. They find a surplus of Microchips being stored, at the same time as there is a world shortage of silicon. Guards come into the room and fight with Tibbett and Bond. Both guards end up on the conveyor belt and wrapped up in a box.
As this is happening, May Day and Zorin are practising martial arts as they make out, the phone rings and they’re informed of what has been going on. Security is put on full alert, meaning 007 comes across a locked gate and has to jump onto a rising walkway to get back to his room. May Day and Zorin find his room empty as May Day remembers he was the man at the Eiffel Tower. James comes around the corner and decides to go into May Day’s room and get into her bed as cover, as she did say she would, to take care of him. She enters her room, gets undressed and takes control.
Back in the lab, Dr. Carl tells Zorin that one of the vials is in the wrong place and must have been discovered. The next morning, Zorin asks Mr Smythe to meet him in his study to discuss the Progeny Index (a compilation of thoroughbred bloodlines) to help him with his purchase. Zorin uses a camera behind a painting and a computer to find out who he is. He now knows that Mr Smythe is James Bond, British intelligence, likely armed, extremely dangerous, licensed to kill. Zorin continues to play along and thinks he has the perfect horse for 007. Bond asks Tibbett to go to town and phone M to put a trace on the cheque he copied at the reception. Tibbett goes out on the pretence of getting the car washed and is followed by May Day. Dr Carl and Zorin load a vial into a jockey cane just before James joins Zorin for a horse ride on Inferno. In town, as the car is being washed, May Day strangles Tibbett from the back seat. Back at the Château, Bond is surrounded by Zorin’s men as they line up for the steeplechase. Scarpine moves the fences up when Bond comes up to jump, to their anger, James gets over the hurdles fine, and the others fall. They re-group and attack. Zorin uses his cane to inject Bond’s horse, it goes wild, and they head into the woods. Knowing that his cover is blown, James sees Tibbett’s car approaching, he tries to get in, finding May Day is driving and Tibbett is dead. 007 is searched, Zorin tells him he knows he’s James Bond, and they have a heated chat.
Everyone gets into the car, and Bond is knocked out. They drive to a wasteland and point the car at a river. May Day pushes the car into the water, and it sinks to the bottom as James wakes up. He manages to open the door but has to use the air from the tyres to keep himself alive until Zorin and May Day have gone. General Gogol (played by Walter Gotell) meets with Conrade Zorin to give him a dressing down about not answering to his control or getting approval to eliminate 007. He tells Zorin that his racing activities and unauthorised commercial ventures are bringing unwanted attention. Zorin tells Gogol that he no longer sees himself as an agent, and Gogol tells him that no one leaves the KGB. Zorin meets with his investors in a blimp. He wants them all to create a cartel to control the production and distribution of microchips, showing them the obstacle – Silicon Valley. Project Main Strike, costing one million dollars each plus half their net income, will remove the dominance of Silicon Valley and put Zorin in control. One of his investors, a Taiwanese Tycoon, wants nothing to do with it and is asked to wait outside. He descends the stairs, it turns into a slide, the floor opens up, and he falls to his death.
The Blimp goes over the Golden Gate Bridge, and we get the most on-the-nose comment from May Day: “What a view”, with Zorin responding “to a kill”. Bond meets with CIA contact Chuck Lee (played by David Yip) at Fisherman’s Wharf in the USA, he is told that Dr Carl was a Nazi scientist who used steroids on pregnant women to enhance intelligence, and a handful were born (including Zorin) with phenomenal IQs but where also psychotics. James gets information about a Zorin oil pumping station that has ruined one of the best crab patches in the Bay. Bond Scuba dives to the heavily guarded pumping station as they are testing the new equipment. He notices other scuba divers with a microphone trying to get information.
007 goes into one of the outflow pipes as they turn on the intake pump, he drops his air tank, and it jams the propeller. Henchmen check the blockage, one of the Russian spies is caught, told to defuse a bomb they placed, and is thrown into the turbine. The gauge readouts leave the grim death to the viewer’s imagination. Pola Ivanova (played by Fiona Fullerton), a KGB Agent known to Bond, comes out of the water, and they drive off together while being followed. According to From Rewatch with Love, this was meant to be agent XXX from The Spy Who Loved Me, unfortunately, Barbara Bach didn’t want to do it. They go to a Hot Tub place, she thinks that James has stolen the tape they recorded, so as he showers, she switches them and leaves in a car with General Gogol. They find out the tape is of Swan Lake by the London Symphony Orchestra. Bond still has the real tape of Zorin giving details of the Silicon Valley, Operation Mainstrike, three days, and its essential remaining pipelines are opened on time.
Posing as a reporter from the London Financial Times, 007 goes to see W.G. Howe (played by Daniel Benzali) at the Division of Oil and Mines in California. He asks about Zorin, and as he leaves, he sees Stacy Sutton showing him some test results. Bond trails her to a house near the San Andreas Lake Reservoir – her car shows she works for the Department of Conservation (Mines and Geology). James breaks in via a window and finds the house mainly empty inside. Stacy is running the shower, and as he enters the bathroom, she comes out of a closet behind him, pointing a gun. She goes to call the police (the line has been cut) when a man with a gun is seen at the window. Bond pulls the gun from her and shoots at him – more men are inside the property, shots are being fired in all directions – James finds out her gun is loaded with rock salt. The fight intensifies as an urn is knocked off and saved multiple times before Stacy hits one of them over the head with it, “Sorry, Grandpa”, she says. The henchmen flee in a car as Bond continues to shoot at them. She still thinks 007 is a reporter, and they have dinner. Stacy tells James that her grandfather left Sutton Oil to her dad, who expected her to take it over. Zorin used a rigged proxy to take over Sutton Oil. Money, furniture, everything has gone into fighting him in court. Stacy took a job as a State Geologist and has managed to keep house and her shares. The $5,000,000 cheque Zorin gave her was for her shares, but she ripped it up. Bond fixes the telephone line and joins her in her room for the night. She falls asleep, he tucks her in and sleeps in the armchair with a gun, like 007 will in multiple films. The pets are startled by a tremor as Stacy checks the Earthquake Centre, which shows a 2.5 on the Richter scale. The epicentre is near a Zorin Oil field. Bond asks if pumping seawater into the wells is causing it, she tells him it’s incredibly dangerous. She tries to tell Howe what Zorin is doing and gets fired. Chuck Lee meets them back at the house, telling them that flooding a fault could cause a major earthquake. Bond asks if Silicon Valley could be affected. The only way they would know is to find out how many wells are involved. Stacy tells them that the information will be at City Hall and grabs her security pass.
Chuck Lee leaves to contact the CIA for backup and gets attacked by May Day in his vehicle. His car drives off as James and Stacy exit the house, not knowing what just happened. They arrive at City Hall and go up to the file room. They find a document listing Main Strike as an abandoned silver mine near the San Andreas fault. While they are looking, May Day and Zorin enter the room, guns drawn. They take them to Mr Howe’s office, Zorin asks him to call the police about a break-in, he tells Mr Howe that “after you fired her, she came here with her accomplice, to kill you, then set fire to the office to conceal the crime, but they were trapped in the elevator and perished in the flames”. Howe responds, “That means I would have to be”. “Dead”, Zorin replies and shoots him with Bond’s gun. Their team start to fill the office with gasoline. Zorin and May Day put Stacy and James in the elevator and pulled the fuse once their between floors. They set a fire in the elevator shaft and the corridors of the building. The elevator cart starts to collapse under the heat, and as the cables break, Bond and Stacy narrowly escape the cart. 007 opens the doors, grabs a fire hose, and lowers it down to Stacy. The fire service arrives. James carries her up the staircase, to the roof, and down the fire ladder.
The Police Captain wants to talk to Bond. Chuck Lee’s body was found in Chinatown, and Howl was killed with his gun. Stacy says he’s James Stock of the London Financial Times; he then has to confess he’s James Bond of the British Secret Service, but the Captain doesn’t believe him. Bond sprays him with a fire hose nearby and steals the hook and ladder fire engine. Stacy puts on the siren as many police cars join the chase. She takes over driving as 007 gets on the ladder and finds out the ladder is unlocked, he swings about as signs fall, cars crash, and the top is ripped from a campervan. This scene is a fun car chase, with bits of rear projection, but not unexpected in 1985. They go towards a bridge as the Police Captain calls ahead to raise it. James and Stacy go through the closed barrier and manage to get over the bridge in the fire truck. Police cars end up stuck on the edge and roll back, smashing all the police cars up. The next morning, James and Stacy drive their fire truck towards the silver mine near the San Andreas fault, which has a lot of activity considering it’s abandoned. Many trucks of explosives arrive as they pull up to one of them, and the driver asks, “Where’s the fire?”. Bond replies, “In your rear end!”. He goes to check, and 007 knocks him out, steals his truck, and enters the facility.
The truck is stopped by security, and they are given a hard hat to wear. The Mine Foreman tells them to go get a coffee over at the hut while the truck is unloaded; it will take about 20 minutes. They steal Zorin-branded uniforms and get on the bucket train going into the mine, sitting on the explosives. They hide in an office, locking the door, as Zorin sets a bomb for an hour and lowers it into the pit of explosives. Stacy and Bond find a table with his plan mapped out. If he can blast through the bottom of the lake, he can flood the fault using his flooded Oil wells, causing a double earthquake and wiping out Silicon Valley. Zorin and May Day come back to the office and try to get in, James breaks the rear window so he and Stacy can escape into the mines. May Day and her assistants chase them as Zorin goes to flood the fault. The Mine Foreman protests, his men and May Day are down there. He gets knocked out. The dynamite placed by Scarpine earlier explodes, and water starts to flood the tunnels. The main bomb has just 10 minutes left. Zorin (laughing) and Scarpine open fire on the fleeing workers. May Day and 007 get washed away as Stacy climbs up. Zorin kicks a worker in the face as he tries to get up. May Day confides in Bond that she thought that creep loved her. Zorin and Scarpine leave the mine as Stacy escapes. Dr Carl, Scarpine and Zorin take off in their Blimp (which inflates out of a prefab office building). May Day tells Bond that the timer on the bomb is booby-trapped; they must bring the whole bomb up and out of the explosives. May Day lowers Bond down, he attaches the clamp to it – the bomb has just two minutes left. She struggles to pull James and the bomb up. Once she does, they put it on a cart with less than a minute left and push it out of the mine. The handbrake slips and May Day gets on, holding the brake to stop it from slipping. She shouts to Bond, “Get Zorin for me”. She stares at Zorin with no emotion as the bomb explodes, killing her.
James walks out of mine and runs towards Stacy as the blimp is behind her. Zorin sets the blimp down, grabs her and pulls her in. Bond clings to the mooring rope, flying 007 over the city, then the water and into the Golden Gate Bridge. Bond ties the rope around the bridge and starts to climb up, nearly falling off. The blimp crashes into the bridge, and Zorin tells Scarpine to go get him before Stacy hits Scarpine over the head with a fire extinguisher. Zorin’s not happy and grabs an axe as Stacy jumps towards Bond and nearly falls off, she gets a foothold as Zorin and James fight. Dr Carl comes around as Zorin falls off the bridge to his death. Dr Carl starts firing at Bond and Stacy, but runs out of bullets. Dr Carl grabs dynamite, lights it, and falls backwards when Bond cuts the rope with Zorin’s axe. Scarpine and Dr Carl try to throw it out, but can’t, and the blimp explodes – with bits falling into the water.
Back at MI6, General Gogle meets with M to issue Bond with The Order of Lenin on behalf of the KGB. After all, where would Russian research be without Silicon Valley? James is missing and presumed dead. However, Q is in an RV near Stacy’s house and sends in his surveillance robot. He finds clothing along the floor leading to the bathroom with the shower running. Bond throws a towel over the robot, and Q reports that 007 is alive and “cleaning up a few details”.