A View To A Kill (1985)

Rating: **
Director: John Glen
Cast: Roger Moore, Christopher Walken, Grace Jones, Tanya Roberts, Alison Doody, Patrick Macnee

Roger Moore is looking old and tired in his final James Bond film, and what is up with his hair? (is he taking tips from William Shatner?) The silly and lightweight plot concerns a psychotic villain's (Christopher Walken, naturally) plan to take over the microchip industry by destroying Silicon Valley. The spotty action scenes help keep you awake, but they're mostly pretty stupid. The film also suffers in the babe department. Androgenous Grace Jones is on hand as Walken's assistant and she is neither sexy nor interesting. Beautiful Tanya Roberts is on hand, but she is totally wasted by being reduced to a helpless shrieking set dressing. In fact, the babe who steals the show is Alison Doody as bad girl Jenny Flex, but her screen time is sadly very short. Once again, the series dips into the absurd, and the "California Girls" segment is downright embarrassing and insulting. It's also obvious that the film suffered greatly from the imposed sterility of the political correctness movement in the 80's. At this point, the franchise was starting to show some wear, and James Bond would need to be reinvented in order to survive in the political climate of the 1980's.