Pros and Cons: For Your Eyes Only
Absolutely_Cart
NJ/NYC, United StatesPosts: 1,740MI6 Agent
The 12th film in the official Eon James Bond series, and the 5th to feature Roger Moore as 007. It was originally planned to follow up The Spy Who Loved Me, but Eon decided to work on Moonraker (a more comical entry that sent Bond to outerspace). While Moonraker sold very well and was praised for it's big-budget special effects, For Your Eyes Only sought to bring balance with a more sober grounded spy story.
Pros
* The theme song and title sequence with Bond freezing and fading into the water.
* Moore does a good solemn Bond and proves to the audience he can do true-to-Fleming
* It gives the Bond formula a break, putting less emphasis on the gadgets and scantily clad women.
* Beautiful scenery, including Italy, Greece. The mountain climbing part too.
* An appreciation for subtlety
* Columbo, of course, and his penchant for pistachios.
* Nice climax and finale. "Detente; you don't have it ; I don't have it"
* The parrot
Cons
* Carole Bouquet (as Melina) is pretty flat in her acting. Awkward chemistry with Moore.
* Some of the camp (like Bibi, Thatcher, mock-Blofeld) haven't aged too well.
Overall
Even with gags, it still was the most serious film in the series since From Russia With Love. Without a doubt, inspired by the camp of Moonraker. I wouldn't call it a classic or an all-time great but its a quality film which aged well and gave the series exactly what it needed at the time
Pros
* The theme song and title sequence with Bond freezing and fading into the water.
* Moore does a good solemn Bond and proves to the audience he can do true-to-Fleming
* It gives the Bond formula a break, putting less emphasis on the gadgets and scantily clad women.
* Beautiful scenery, including Italy, Greece. The mountain climbing part too.
* An appreciation for subtlety
* Columbo, of course, and his penchant for pistachios.
* Nice climax and finale. "Detente; you don't have it ; I don't have it"
* The parrot
Cons
* Carole Bouquet (as Melina) is pretty flat in her acting. Awkward chemistry with Moore.
* Some of the camp (like Bibi, Thatcher, mock-Blofeld) haven't aged too well.
Overall
Even with gags, it still was the most serious film in the series since From Russia With Love. Without a doubt, inspired by the camp of Moonraker. I wouldn't call it a classic or an all-time great but its a quality film which aged well and gave the series exactly what it needed at the time
Comments
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
Certainly one of the very best, yes. It ranks highly on my list.
Highly underestimated imo are the scenes with Cassandra Harris - then married to Pierce Brosnan.
They have a very literary CR touch (Casino- beach house -beach images).
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
To inject some Fleming back into the series, and I think Moore gives one
Of his best performances as 007. {[]
Disagree here.
She's still going through the grieving process - hence the lack of chemistry with Moore. In actual fact there's strong chemistry in that meeting in Corfu and the keelhauling scene ("I didn't think it would end like this"). Also the scene which sets up her character - that meeting in Madrid where Melina's parameters are set.
I also think Moores and Bouquets age would have worked against them. Therefore it is done slowly. They remains equals through most of the film only succumbing in the final reel.
The Locations, The Set Pieces and the Cast all come together to make a suspenseful Fleming Thriller
My only gripe with the Film is the early 80's Disco Soundtrack.
I love the score, but it's probably the weakest part of the film because it is so far removed from the John Barry Bond sound, and it sounds dated. Conti's score is brilliantly written, but it doesn't have the right tone. If it had a serious score like Moonraker's I think more people would hold this film in the highest regard.
FYEO is followed up by Octopussy, and I really like both movies just as much despite one being serious and the other funny.
AJB007 Favorite Film Rankings
Pros and Cons Compendium (50 Years)
whilst they was on a sea /boat tour of the islands ,Now we was married in 1985 ,and went to Corfu for our Holiday/honeymoon ,
and did various tours ect ,and never once was Bond mentioned to us ,FYEO 1981, Now you would think back then it would have been fresh in the locals mind ,or is it that Bond ,is a lot bigger now ??
-Moore's performance
-More realistic approach aftr MR
-The twist of who the villain is
-Julian Glover is a good villain
-2CV Chase
-Pre title sequence
-Rock climbing sequence
-Good title song
-The Q and Bond scene in the identigraph
Cons:
-Carole Bouqet can be wooden at points
-The soundtrack is a bit dated now
-Bibi Dhal
Overall, a good a Bond film, and one of the best films as well. 9/10
FYEO certainly is the best of the Moore Bonds, helped in no small way by its fidelity to Fleming of course.
For me it's a Tie between FYEO and TSWLM.
Moore turns in a mature performance as Bond . . . which would essentially be reversed in the next two films.
Terrific supporting cast, including Topol and Lynn Holly Johnston, who plays the part in a cloying way that is both maddening and appropriate.
Plot is believable and Flemingesque.
This is the best of John Glen's efforts with Roger Moore. He is at time creative with the set ups and seems to be trying to invest more with even the minor characters, such as with Luigi and the thugs with the car chase.
Sheene Easton's song.
Excellent stunt work.
In general, a good balance between humor and seriousness.
Cons:
No Bernard Lee.
Some of the incidental music is very dated.
Too many similarities to On Her Majesty's Secret Service, including the beach scene with Lisl, the ski chase, the uniforms, the mountain-top lair, and the helicopter.
Some bad makeup with "Blofeld" during the PTS, which also, at times, seems a bit lighthearted for what it wants to accomplish.
The bit with the mine at the beginning was sometimes confusing for audiences then -- they thought that someone had purposefully sunk the ship, a la a SPECTRE mission.
I thought it was on purpose - have I been watching it wrong the whole time? I always thought it was sunk by Kristatos so he could get the ATAC.
I think it is genuine mistake. A force majeure. The whole plot is an accident. The British or the Russians don't know where it is...
I, too, always thought it was an accident. The KGB takes advantage of this accident and hires Kristatos to retrieve the ATAC. There's nothing that suggests the mine was used to blow up the St. George on purpose. If the Russians had blown up the ship on purpose that could have started a war, and there's nothing like that in the film.
And Kristatos has to wait until Bond and Melina dive below before he knows where the St Georges is..
It must be an accident.
AJB007 Favorite Film Rankings
Pros and Cons Compendium (50 Years)
At the time FYEO came out it had been 10 years since SPECTRE was in a film, and I would have thought that killing off Blofeld in the beginning would have signalled to the audience that SPECTRE was also dead. The two scenes immediately following the ship sinking clarify that the St. Georges was "lost" and the British didn't take it as an act of war (like crafts taken in YOLT or TSWLM), and the Russians and "our man in Greece" didn't sink it either. It seems like the film did everything it could to make it clear that the bad guys didn't sink it. But pretty much in any spy film, people would expect someone to have sunk that ship. If it happened in a Bond film now you'd first jump to think that someone destroyed it. It's so rare for accidents like that to happen in such films. I'd hardly hold that against them.
I was 14 when FYEO came out and can tell you that quite a few casual viewers also didn't make a distinction among Erst Stavro Blofeld, Carl Stromberg, Hugo Drax, or any of the baddies who all basically seemed the same person -- some egomaniac with the means and organization to act out some nefarious plot. Slipping a mine into the nets of a trawler seem just like the kind of thing they would do and were used to seeing, especially in the 60s Bond films.
Also, Bond was regularly on TV. Each year in the U.S., ABC (and later other networks) showed Bond films, usually on a Sunday night starting at 9 p.m., with viewer discretion advised. One could easily have just watched, say, On Her Majesty's Secret Service the week before going to see FYEO and conflated the ideas. This was before the age of videotape, when viewers treated the Bond showings as an event.
What makes FYEO so good and Flemingesque is precisely that the mine was an accident. That sets the tone for the rest of the film being grounded in some reality closer to ours. But casual viewers then and now often don't pay that close attention to the details, which is why people were asking "Who put the mine in the net?" during and after this film, even though it seems fairly obvious that it was meant to be happenstance to us, the more careful viewers.
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
Yours might, but mine didn't
They were still turning up mines from the second world war by accident. They were still finding UXB (unexploded bombs) in fields or buildings
Perhaps your audience had been watching too many spy thrillers - but the second world war was out there, forty years after the event. They found a UXB in Wembley the other day..
Different from California wouldn't you say..
But here in the States, it's not a common occurrence at all, nor was it just a single audience that reacted that way. I've shown the film to people and had them ask "Who did that?" or "How'd that get there?" sorts of questions.
Maybe they understood that a WWII mine was an accident.
Like what's been already said in this Thread, if the Russians did it then that would be an Act of War.
Must l remind you, the committee, of our overwhelming superiority over NATO forces before we give it away? The West is decadent and divided. lt has no stomach to risk our atomic reprisals.
So since you find the mine accident to be a drawback of the film, how do you think it should have been done differently to improve the story?
atmosphere ? Accidentally got its nets caught on a passing submarine ?
Blown up by some faulty gas cylinders in the galley ? Hit by a much bigger ship ?
The ship kidnapped by Somalian pirates ? ..... The list is endless.
I only know from news reports but unexploded bombs are found fairly frequently
When ever any building work is done around London. I can't remember the story
But one was discovered recently ? And didn't they dig one up doing the building
Work on Wembley stadium ? So I enjoy the old mine idea -{