A VIEW TO A KILL
Roger Moore's seventh and final outing as 007 came about two movies too late for Moore to avoid looking like Britain's suavest secret grampa. A View to a Kill is a blatant 80's rehash of Goldfinger. Christopher Walken's (dashingly young) genetically engineered KGB renegade Max Zorin hatches a plot to destroy Silicon Valley (Operation Main Strike) and monopolize the world's supply of microchips, just like Auric Goldfinger wanted to destroy Fort Knox and own all the gold in the world (Operation Grand Slam). Walken's lair is a French chateau complete with stables and a lab to breed steroid-enhanced horses, similar to the Kentucky stables Goldfinger camped out in. There's even a direct homage to the famous scene where Goldfinger holds a meeting for America's crime bosses and executes the lone dissenter (although Goldfinger ended up killing everyone anyway. Zorin actually showed surprising restraint.) The over-complicated plot takes Bond from Paris to San Francisco, culminating in Bond preventing a bomb detonating the San Andreas Fault before a final slugfest with Zorin atop the Golden Gate Bridge. The mid-80's experiment of Grace Jones as a Bond Girl and international sex symbol is as puzzling two decades later as it must have seemed then. Meanwhile, Tanya Roberts fulfills the traditional Bond Girl role of smashing looks and terrible acting. Patrick McNee of The Avengers has some fun as Bond's sidekick, while cameos include a young Allison Doody years before she appeared in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and a young Dolph Lundgren before he became Ivan Drago in Rocky IV. "A View to a Kill" by Duran Duran remains at the top of the list for All Time Best James Bond themes.
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