FOR YOUR EYES ONLY has got to be an all-time topper for absolute stupidity, with foolishness that quite over-arches the usual Bondian idiocies.
For starters, you got some of the dumbest bad guys in the history of dumb bad guys. Among the highlights:
* attempted assassination not only by hockey brawl (wow) but also by dune buggy - does nobody have a radon pellet blow gun umbrella?;
* not one but two death-by-methods-slow-and-unlikely-enough-to-allow-Bond-to-escape - one is enough for most supervillains, but after all this time there are not one but two of those;
* multiple other opportunities to kill Bond in which he is instead either taken captive or kicked or knocked out, always by people who want him dead and are holding guns;
* okay, this is just another example of the last, but it's the HEAD OF THE KGB telling his own guy not to shoot the most effective member of the opposition;
* a fistfight with a guy who can throw motorcycles, in which the strongman insists on picking up things heavy enough for him to throw inaccurately (like for instance motorcycles) instead of crushing Bond's head in his hands;
* and a mountaintop fortress/lair guarded by about, oh, maybe four guys, some of whom are apparently armed only with old WW2-surplus handguns.
But wait - there's more.
You got a cute Bond girl Bond inexplicably refuses to sleep with although she's present for no other purpose; in fact this Bond is remarkably sexless, bonking only the future Mrs Remington Steel until the end, when he finally gets around to the Chanel chick;
you got Bond doing a Jon Voight impression up the back of a mountain just so he can lower a basket (to pick up his team) on a noisy winch that alerts the guards, because he wanted "the element of surprise" - this of course during the great Mediterranean helicopter shortage of 1980 - then he ruins the surprise for that portion of the guards who were asleep by engaging in noisy brawls and throwing people through windows;
best of all, you got a macguffin sunk at the bottom of the Ionian sea for about two weeks, a macguffin everybody says is really really important, the recovery of which somehow requires a drive through Spain and a skiing tour of Italy followed by a couple of boat trips to Albania, before anybody dives for this incredibly valuable and time-sensitive thing, a salvage operation so simple, by the way, that it can be accomplished by a girl with a mini-sub. A girl who had a mini-sub the whole time. And knew where the wreck was. And was ostensibly working for MI6. And was already diving nearby. But just didn't get around to it. Good thing the Russians weren't looking for it - oh, wait...
To be fair, there's some good second unit stuff, better than usual for an Eon production actually, especially the skiing. The underwater stuff, featuring a diving girl who wouldn't go underwater, had to be shot in slow motion sans water, and I must say that the process shots with bubbles fooled me. Good stuff. That stuntman who gets sharkbit in the jewels should have got extra pay. And Topol's a great prop for Moore's sagging charisma.
But overall, ehhhhh.
For starters, you got some of the dumbest bad guys in the history of dumb bad guys. Among the highlights:
* attempted assassination not only by hockey brawl (wow) but also by dune buggy - does nobody have a radon pellet blow gun umbrella?;
* not one but two death-by-methods-slow-and-unlikely-enough-to-allow-Bond-to-escape - one is enough for most supervillains, but after all this time there are not one but two of those;
* multiple other opportunities to kill Bond in which he is instead either taken captive or kicked or knocked out, always by people who want him dead and are holding guns;
* okay, this is just another example of the last, but it's the HEAD OF THE KGB telling his own guy not to shoot the most effective member of the opposition;
* a fistfight with a guy who can throw motorcycles, in which the strongman insists on picking up things heavy enough for him to throw inaccurately (like for instance motorcycles) instead of crushing Bond's head in his hands;
* and a mountaintop fortress/lair guarded by about, oh, maybe four guys, some of whom are apparently armed only with old WW2-surplus handguns.
But wait - there's more.
You got a cute Bond girl Bond inexplicably refuses to sleep with although she's present for no other purpose; in fact this Bond is remarkably sexless, bonking only the future Mrs Remington Steel until the end, when he finally gets around to the Chanel chick;
you got Bond doing a Jon Voight impression up the back of a mountain just so he can lower a basket (to pick up his team) on a noisy winch that alerts the guards, because he wanted "the element of surprise" - this of course during the great Mediterranean helicopter shortage of 1980 - then he ruins the surprise for that portion of the guards who were asleep by engaging in noisy brawls and throwing people through windows;
best of all, you got a macguffin sunk at the bottom of the Ionian sea for about two weeks, a macguffin everybody says is really really important, the recovery of which somehow requires a drive through Spain and a skiing tour of Italy followed by a couple of boat trips to Albania, before anybody dives for this incredibly valuable and time-sensitive thing, a salvage operation so simple, by the way, that it can be accomplished by a girl with a mini-sub. A girl who had a mini-sub the whole time. And knew where the wreck was. And was ostensibly working for MI6. And was already diving nearby. But just didn't get around to it. Good thing the Russians weren't looking for it - oh, wait...
To be fair, there's some good second unit stuff, better than usual for an Eon production actually, especially the skiing. The underwater stuff, featuring a diving girl who wouldn't go underwater, had to be shot in slow motion sans water, and I must say that the process shots with bubbles fooled me. Good stuff. That stuntman who gets sharkbit in the jewels should have got extra pay. And Topol's a great prop for Moore's sagging charisma.
But overall, ehhhhh.