For Your Eyes Only

John Glen – 1981

As a child during the later Roger Moore era of Bond movies – For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy and A View to a Kill – Eyes was my least favorite of the group, partially due to its more subdued tone coming after the outlandish Moonraker and especially due to its grating, dated, TV-cop-show disco score by guest composer Bill Conti. The great John Barry’s absence from The Spy Who Loved Me is the only thing that mars that film's otherwise perfect status, so it’s incredible that the Eon team let him get away again so soon. Fortunately, he returned for the three following consecutive Bond films, through The Living Daylights. For Your Eyes Only has grown on me over time. It shows Moore’s Bond acting his age admirably, turning down advances from an amorous underage ice skater, and genuinely bonding with leading lady Carole Bouquet before kissing her. It includes some interesting Bond lore, such as a reference to his late wife Tracy from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service; a final ignominious appearance from Blofeld in the pre-credits sequence, and a mélange of plot elements from various Ian Fleming stories that make it feel genuine on the whole. The film also marks the debut of Bond veteran John Glen in the director’s chair, promoted from longtime editor, who would attain the distinction of directing more Bond films than anyone else; all five from the 1980s – the last three to star Moore and then the only two featuring Timothy Dalton. For Your Eyes Only may not have one of the great villains in the Bond universe – Kristatos is a smuggler moonlighting as a skater’s patron? – but it does have a memorable second-tier villain in creepy speechless assassin Locque played by creepy Michael Gothard, whose car gets kicked down a mountainside by Bond in one of his most cold-blooded moments.