Lima

Gentlemen, sometimes locking yourselves in a cottage and mine ideas in a creative atmosphere is not enough. You worked hard, but you couldn't put it together in such a way as to make a coherent story. This film is in fact a sequence of more, but rather less effective scenes, with a somewhat dull plot in the background. Jokes and the brilliant Ivan “Adolf” Trojan do not make a good film.

007__#15__The last movie with Moore. No swan song for the nearly 60-year-old Roger; on the contrary, it was quite good. Except for some ten or fifteen minutes, it has no weak point. There's a terrific ski intro, a chase of a killer with an impressive jump off the Eiffel Tower, a decent car chase with a fire truck with a loose ladder (it reminded me of Terminator 3), and the final scene with the airship. Walken's Zorin is a psychopath par excellence and no Bond villain should be ashamed of his idea to flood Sillicon Valley. Finally, out of nostalgia, I think maybe I was too hard on Moore. His sense of humour and panache will be sorely missed in the Bond films. PS: Duran Duran's song is for me the worst Bond song of the whole series.

007__#13__Certainly not a bad contribution to the Bond franchise. The setting of far away India is nice, the action scenes are imaginative, some of them excellent, in fact, the final one with Bond strapped to a plane is an amazing stunt. But the first problem with the film is Roger Moore. Of course, I can't demand any significant physical presence from a fifty-six year old actor, but if he needs a double even for a roughly five-meter sprint (which is significantly evident in one scene), something is wrong. Moore has always reliably compensated for his dull movements with wit and dry humour, but sadly we see very little of that in Octopussy. The second problem is the extremely unlikeable main villain, who lacks the necessary charisma. Still, a pretty solid show.

007__#12__On the one hand, great action scenes (the car chase in the olive groves, the ski and motorbike chase, Bond being tied up and dragged by a boat), on the other hand, Roger Moore is already ageing considerably, it's very obvious. His movements are quite breathless, I didn't believe the climber for a moment, and I didn't trust his sex appeal at all (Bibi's "I could eat you up alive!" really sounded like the scream of a gerontophile). The main villain wasn't great, but it has to be said that this Bond film wasn't boring. And the theme song is beautiful. Three and a half stars.

007__#11__Sci-fi Bond? Yeah, why not? As an experiment, it’s good. The whole world just went crazy with Star Wars, so the final battle with ray guns is quite understandable from a producer's point of view, although it was my least favourite part of the film. Otherwise, the whole film runs like a well-oiled machine, with a chase on boats, a fight on cable cars, a duel in a glass museum, in short, action after action (sometimes quite comic-book-like, which is mainly due to Jaws and his almost supernatural abilities, after all, cutting a steel cable with your teeth is not a very common sight). A favourite of audiences at the time, the indestructible assassin Jaws, played by Richard Kiel, makes a comeback here, becoming the only villain to appear in two Bond films (not counting Blofeld). Roger, now in his 50s, is still going strong.

007__#10__I don't really like Roger Moore much in his later Bond films, maybe he should have quit sooner, especially in the last episodes it was clear that he doesn't have it anymore and his fights are more for laughs (I miss Connery and his brisk duels). That said, he's still pretty cool in this episode. Just like the whole film, packed with imaginative action and with a little bonus on top in the form of an amazing Bond amphibian and one of the prettiest Bond-girls in Agent Amasa. And most importantly, when I'm filthy rich, I want Jaws as my bodyguard. He's just incredibly cool, definitely the best sidekick in the entire Bond franchise.

007__#9__First of all, I really like Christopher Lee, I liked his charismatic bad guy a lot. At the beginning I couldn't get into the story, it was too confusing in a Hamilton way again, but as time went on it got better and better. The action was good, a couple of scenes (the car chase and the jump with the propeller over the river) were excellent, the villain's mansion with the labyrinth was impressive. Thank God that the final typical Bond exaggerated mass brawl was missing, only a one-on-one duel. That's why it's a four-star overall.

007__#8__This film does have a few clever scenes (the crocodiles, the boat chase), but they are not incorporated into the story in such a way as to create a compact spectacle that is not boring and the whole does not feel so confusing. Personally, I consider Hamilton one of the weakest Bond directors (except for his Goldfinger). But we can say with satisfaction that the character of Agent 007 has a worthy successor after Connery. And the boorish Sergeant Pepper irritated me to no end with his overacting.

007__#7__A strange Bond film with a weak script and directed quite badly, but with intriguing characters (the stylish hitmen Wint and Kidd), some interesting moments (Bond in the coffin, the moonwalk chase, the car chase in Las Vegas), but unfortunately a pretty bland story. And speaking of Bond, I would never have believed it would be possible to age so much in four years. Sean had gotten a bit chubbier, no longer resembling the sexy athlete he was in his early days, but more like a middle-aged uncle.

007__#5__The attractive setting of exotic Japan and a beautiful central musical motif (“borrowed" by Robbie Williams in his successful hit “Millennium”), but the action sequences have already been somewhat dented by the ravages of time. Incorporating the element of ninjas that was so fashionable at the time (training in the Ninja Academy) doesn't really fit, especially since they don't show anything of their fighting skills in the decisive battle (just pew-pew from firearms). The main villain, the No.1 man of the Spectre organisation played by Donald Pleasence, who only appears in the last twenty minutes, is more of a caricature, and during the exaggerated final shootout with the storming of the command bridge, which seems to have fallen out of Bond's The Spy Who Loved Me, I realised how often James Bond films resemble each other.