The Spy Who Loved Me on Prime Video — Shared Bodily Warmth
As before, I am so in love with Moore’s take on James Bond. After blaxploitation and dueling — both low key movies — I was mentally ready for some old school Connery style evil villain with a evil lair with a evil world destruction plan with Moore in it.
So, here we are. Back to some bombastic ludicrous plans, gadgets and super cool henchmen.
Jaws The Indestructible
The more I think about it, the more I am more clear about my lack of enjoyment with the Daniel Craig movies. They are so serious. To me bond has always been about escaping the realities of life. My life is already serious and depressing as it is.
If bond can take me away from all this for a couple of hours, his mission is accomplished.
That is why, I love the introduction of Jaws. Once again, the bond producers get all the credit for continuing to come up with super cool villainous characters. Jaws is massive, and indestructible. The latter part is critical because, villains are disposable, similar to the bond women. Then, you have Jaws.
He keeps coming back. Then, there are those reactions Moore has every time he has to fight him.
‘It’s that big dude again. Alright, how do I defeat him this time?’
That’s probably what Moore’s bond is thinking. I suppose, they are like frenemies? At one point, Jaws is dropped into a shark tank. Of course, the shark dies.
That Wonderful Car
I never quiet understood the villain’s plan in this movie.
The underwhelming villainous billionaire businessman plans to live in the ocean. His plan is to build an underwater city. For some reason, this means, he has to steal two nuclear submarines. Later he wishes to use the nukes to destroy two major cities of the two world powers.
Of course, all this means, we get a dastardly submarine swallowing ship, which is like a dirty innuendo in itself. We get a massive liar with massive people running around. A moving massive villain house that is under water and at the ocean. All of this is built with massive sets and is super cool to watch and hear.
But, I keep thinking. Who was stopping this guy from building the under water city in the first place? If there is one thing that the world does not grow is real estate. You build underwater cities, countries will line up to pay you.
And, once again, we have a gadget filled car. An underwater car, on top of that. Bond just drives off a cliff and boom, he is swimming and battling underwater vehicles. At one point, bond takes out a helicopter that is circling above the water surface. He does this by shooting a missile from the car, which is submersed.
The helicopter was being driven by a feisty, bikini clad, Caroline Munro, that goes up in flames.
At the end of the movie, bond also uses a little shown water bike jet thing. We also get to see more of Q in this movie. Money Penny and M are also there, doing there usual insulting of Bond.
All in all, very happy to see an over the top villainous plan thing, after a long gap.
More Respectable Bond Girl
I just want to note here that, in the olden days, XXX used to mean hardcore pornography. Of course, these days, that no longer makes sense because all porn is now hard core.
X — means, nudity but no boobs or genitalia.
XX — means, boobies but not genitalia.
XXX — means, hardcore stuff. everything is being inserted everywhere else and is shown on the screen.
Anyway, sorry about that diversion. Now back to our main flow.
The bond movies are made at the height of the cold war stuff. However, a common theme in these movies is UK and USSR coming together to work together on many occasions. Most of the times, the USSR side of things would be a woman, because, Bond is already a guy.
This time, we have Agent XXX (lol, yes, like the hardcore pornography rating), who is an equal to Bond. She is classy, wears the best clothes and really knows how to take down bad guys. Also, she sleeps around a lot. The first time we see her, she is happily boning some guy, all this time, it is implied that her lover is somewhere in Austria.
So, yes, she is an essential opposite number to our favorite agent, Bond. I like her. More importantly, she does find herself locked down with the villain at his lair, like all bond girls. Fortunately, she isn’t in a bikini or dumb or stupid.
So, yes, a definite improvement.
Score
I am marathon watching the James Bond movies and I wish to rank them at the end. So, I came up with a numbering system. The scores for this one are here.
- Action and Stunts 9/9
- Coolness Cool 9/9
- Double Entendre and One Liners 9/9
- Hot Women 9/9
- Ludicrous Villainy, Cool Deaths and Traps 9/9
- Gadgets Man! 9/9
- General Awesomeness 9/9
- Boredom Factor -3/-9 (the end climatic battle, really drags down the pace of the movie)
Total : 60
Note: I confess, that, I cannot help buy enjoy the Moore movies. They are, despite their flaws, better than majority of bond movies. Sorry, about this, bias.
Final Note
The last two bond movies were a change of pace to the usual bond fare.
I am glad that we are now kicking ass all over the world, again, back to formula. Of course, I have always had a soft spot for Egypt with its sand and dunes.
Egypt! One day, I got to see those sand dunes for myself.
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