Every Friday Chris hand-selects a streaming recommendation for your weekend.
This Week’s Featured Flick
A View to a Kill on Hulu
THE TRAILER
THE DETAILS
DIRECTOR: John Glen
WRITERS: Richard Maibaum, Michael G. Wilson
CAST: Roger Moore, Christopher Walken, Tanya Roberts, Grace Jones, Patrick Macnee, Alison Doody
GENRE: Action
RUNTIME: 131 min
YEAR: 1985
THE PLOT (via Letterboxd)
A newly developed microchip designed by Zorin Industries for the British Government that can survive the electromagnetic radiation caused by a nuclear explosion has landed in the hands of the KGB. James Bond must find out how and why. His suspicions soon lead him to big industry leader Max Zorin.
THE REASON
Spectre is out today and in preparation for the 24th film in the James Bond franchise I marathoned the entire catalog. Of the six men to portray the super spy on the silver screen none underwhelmed me more than Roger Moore. Despite being three years Sean Connery’s senior Moore stepped in to replace the Scotsman in 1973, and went on to star in a total of seven films. By the time A View to a Kill came out in 1985 Moore’s Bond was effectively 26 years older Connery’s at his debut in Dr. No.
With the worst Bond of the whole bunch pushing 60 View has gotta be a total cluster cuss, right? Wrong! (Well, yes, but in the best way possible!)
Moore at an all-time low in Octopussy
A lot of folks (including Moore himself) hate this film. I’m here to tell you that those individuals are tasteless and not to be trusted. Coming off of the ham-fisted one-two punch of For Your Eyes Only and The Clown Who Came In From the Cold Octopussy I couldn’t have been more anxious to leave Moore’s chauvinist, crazy-eyed grandpa-Bond in the dust. Thusly I was driven by nothing more than obligation when the time came to cue up A View to a Kill. Surprisingly the film quickly won me over as the standout among Moore’s entire lineup. This admittedly has little to do the film’s star, though I do appreciate that he’s mellowed out a bit here. The real gem of this film is Christopher Walken’s portrayal as Max Zorin.
Pure Sex Appeal
Zorin brings something many 007 films lack, a definitely unique villain and plot that set it apart from the rest. Let’s face it, The Spy Who Loved Me is generally accepted the best Roger Moore film, but at it’s core that movie is just a Mad Libs rehash of You Only Live Twice. Substituted spaceships for submarines, astronauts for seamen, and voila! This film doesn’t suffer from that issue.
Sure, Max Zorin’s plot to corner the microprocessor market by flooding Silicon Valley is absolutely bananas, but apart from the cold open (where Bond apparently invents snowboarding) there isn’t a single scene in the A View to a Kill that I would mistake for belonging in another film. Plus, I love the way it becomes wildly evident as the film progresses that not even Zorin believes his ridiculous plot will actually work. The dude’s a genetically engineered psychopath who just wants to watch the world burn. And since that genetically engineered psychopath is played by Christopher Walken it’s a whole lot of fun to watch it burn by his side! Watch it now on Hulu.
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