Fighting talk, Barbel - the music is exceptional, its one saving grace.
It does somewhat occur to me that it's mainly only @CoolHandBond and @Barbel joining in with this thread in practice, the rest of us are just responding or chipping in with new thoughts; I don't actually own NSNA on DVD (I've got Never Say McClory Again somewhere) so it's not fair to put CHB and B through this when I won't be.
@CoolHandBond and I are the thread starters, so that isn't surprising.
Nobody is being forced to watch anything, so I totally back CHB wanting to skip NSNA. I would have been prepared to take one for the team, but it doesn't seem as if that will be necessary.
Okay then, last chance for someone to watch it is till tomorrow, let's say 9am GMT, just in case. Otherwise AVTAK it is.
I think NSNA isn't great but it's not terrible, and it even makes a few improvements on Thunderball here and there. Plus it's got a few of the all-time best Bond lines (the "martini's still dry" one is a proper classic), it's got one of the best Felixes, Sean is very engaged, and I think the baddies are great. Oh and it's got Fatima who's just brilliant. It's far from my favourite but I'm glad it exists.
The PTS starts well, plenty of skiing action. John Barry’s score is instantly more energetic than his work on OP, the action music used here (as “Snow Job”, but it’ll recur later) is appropriately OHMSS-like. All is going just fine until….
“California Girls”. And it’s not even the real Beach Boys. Just like the Tarzan yell one film earlier a pretty good action sequence is ruined for a cheap laugh. Still the rest of the PTS is all right bar one little thing that mars the entire movie.
Albert R. Broccoli
Presents
47 STUNTMEN
And Roger Moore
As Ian Fleming’s
JAMES BOND 007
I don’t think they’re even trying any more. Really obvious, especially in the Paris scenes.
If you can overlook the aged elephant in the room, Sir Rog is just as charming as ever. Christopher Walken makes an effective villain, Grace Jones is just plain weird, and Tanya Roberts is one of the weakest Bond girls (“James! Help me, James!”).
The title song from Duran Duran is one of the best. There’s some silly action but it gets better as it goes along towards the mine sequence.
Iwonder if only Bond fans noticed the plot being basically GF again, or if your average filmgoer noticed or cared.
So yeah, A VIEW TO A KILL. This is barely a film...the narrative throughline is terribly underwritten/underplotted and nothing really interesting happens.
The bad:
The direction is perfunctory at best, pretty much 'point and shoot' without any really interesting shot compositions.
The acting is uniformly terrible from pretty much everyone with almost every scene playing like an unrehearsed first take. Even actors that I've seen be good elsewhere, like Patrick Bauchau, are terrible here. Walken feels lost in terms of what to do with his character. Especially bad is Tanya Roberts, easily the worst of the Bond girls. Denise Richards gets a ton of crap for TWINE but she's Judi Dench compared to Tanya Roberts. Do a drinking game where you take a shot every time Tanya says 'James' and you'll be underneath the carpet by the time the climax comes arount.
The action sequences lack punch. The climactic fight on the Golden Gate Bridge is a great location for something to happen, but the delivered fight is nothing but swinging a fire axe around. The terrible fire engine chase gets undercut by terribly unfunny Keystone Kops crap all the time. Prior to that chase, you have an uninspired elevator escape where John Glen has simply no idea where to put the camera to generate any tension. The mine shaft shootout is just a mess with bullets and arms flailing about without any rhyme or reason. The pre titles sequence is ok but we've seen better skiing in other films (like TSWLM, for instance), but the introduction of snowboarding is cool...get rid of that Beach Boys cover and you'd have something. The Eiffel Tower chase is a wasted location because both Moore (and his stunt double) and May Day (and her stunt double) are moving too slowly...again, no tension. The worst fight is the Moore/MacNee fight with the thugs when escaping the stables. I mean, come on.
The humor rarely works.
Roger Moore is clearly too old and only in about 30% of the film (his stunt doubles are doing the heavy lifting).
It's not a total loss, though. The good:
One of the best theme songs. Duran Duran delivered a real winner here.
The John Barry score is actually really strong too.
Roger, while looking old, also looks in better physical shape than he did in OP. He's much trimmer. Nothing you can do about his neck, though.
The Roger Moore/Patrick MacNee character stuff is genuinely funny and does a lot of heavy lifting in terms of making that first act work at all. Roger and Patrick were clearly both having a great deal of fun here.
I don't disagree with any of these points (although I'll always defend the California Girls gag- it's fun! I've never really got why people hate it); the action is poor (the fight in the microchip factory barely hangs together in the editing; the firetruck chase is pretty weak too, and the fight in Stacy's house just isn't really anything at all), the acting is sometimes appalling (yep, looking at you Scarpine), and Roger isn't even running up stairs himself anymore.... and yet.. I absolutely love it.
It's like comfort food for me: watching Roger go on a ski trip, then spend the morning at Ascot, lunch at the Eiffel tower and then a lovely luxury weekend at a chateau with some horse riding is kind of like tagging along on Roger Moore's life in the 1980s for a bit! (I mean on the DVD commentary he literally says that his mate the Aga Khan owned that chateau!) It's all so, well, pleasant. Pat Macnee is wonderful company and him and Roger spark off each other so well (plus he actually makes Roger look quite trim and vital which is very helpful!), and Walken and Jones are just terrific baddies- and Roger actually seems to properly despise Zorin, which is unusual for Bond and works really well. John Barry makes the whole thing seem terribly serious and dangerous and really ties the whole thing together- I think without his music it wouldn't work at all. And then yeah: Duran Duran- top stuff.
One thing I really like also is how properly 80s it feels: puffy jackets and walkman things and crazy angular fashion and 80s Renaults- it's great.
And one area I think it really excels in is the climax: it's got a proper big ending on the Golden Gate bridge, with some amazing production design and top stuntwork. Not all Bonds manage a decent climax like that and I really like it.
So, yes: it's not great, but I unreservedly love it 😄
There’s some really good things in this movie. There’s also some really bad stuff too.
Once again the PTS is the best thing in it, only marred by the risible use of California Girls, all the excitement and tension built up to that point in the skiing scenes evaporates immediately. I love the iceberg submersible, that’s great fun. Into the credits and we get the best song since Live And Let Die. John Barry is at last back on form in this movie, providing his best Bond score since DAF.
Roger looks so old in this, he was never an athletic actor at the best of times, but he can barely move in this one. His double gets a lot of exposure here, so much that John Glen doesn’t even try and hide it anymore and we are treated to the stunt double in plain sight with Roger dubbing his usual grunts and groans. Roger isn’t the only one suffering from a double in plain sight, it happens with Gogol in the car, as well.
DAF was like a game of two halves, first good second bad. This one lurches from good to bad to good to bad from scene to scene. But there are a lot of saving graces in the good bits. Patrick MacNee is brilliant as the foil to Bond, Christopher Walken is suitably mad as Zorin, Willoughby Gray as the Nazi scientist and Fiona Fullerton as a KGB agent are marvellous. It’s a pity that Fiona Fullerton wasn’t cast as Stacey Sutton, that would have a much better solution to what we get as Tanya Roberts is the worst Bond Girl to date, and Grace Jones is just Grace Jones, both cannot act in the slightest bit.
Once again the plot repeats things of long past, this time mainly GF, but I see parts of TB as well. Strangely, the good bits are so good that they outweigh the bad, even though they are probably of equal length.
AVTAK has a myriad of faults but it’s actually a fun movie, one of those so bad it’s good movies that I love so much, and for that reason I’m ranking it higher than three other Roger Bond’s.
**************
My son had a friend over for a couple of days who is Japanese and we watched YOLT, he also wanted to see how it had all begun so we watched DN and AVTAK. Henceforth on my rewatch I’ve dropped FYEO down a couple of places, it really cannot compete with 60’s Sean.
It’s about the tension is it with California Girls? If it were replaced with the Bond theme blaring in its swing section, or the triumphant 007 theme, wouldn’t that dissipate the tension in the same way? Those tunes are all about celebrating how cool Bond is and how he’s winning (it’s literally in swing time); they eliminate tension too. I just never get the problem with it.
But then the music isn’t reacting to what Bond is doing; you’ve got to highlight the moments where he does something signature Bond, haven’t you? It comes back when he faces the helicopter and it’s all appropriately serious again.
There’s even a hidden little motif which we can barely hear under the sound of the chopper crashing: I really hope LLL give us a CD soon!
@emtiem It’s good to see that at least one person enjoys the “musical tributes” (if that is the correct term), I often wondered if anyone actually thought they were a good idea. The Bond Theme and 007 Theme dissipate tension? No, they heighten the excitement of what’s happening! @Barbel is correct in saying that Barry should have just carried on with the rather good score he was using up to that point.
The Magnificent Seven is my favourite film and theme tune, but it’s inclusion in MR was ridiculous (even though John Barry had success with it early in his career, I thought it was silly and pointless to include it).
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
The Bond Theme and 007 Theme dissipate tension? No, they heighten the excitement of what’s happening!
Sure, but that’s not tension, no? It’s fun, it makes you smile. I was laughing out loud watching the tank in GE with the Bond theme blaring, I felt no tension at all. Definitely exciting and enjoyable, but not tense. I don’t know if you can do tension with swing time 😄
I like the silliness and the jokes, it’s part of what these films are. They’re not serious spy thrillers.
Quick sidetrack - the effect of that GE tank would have been much lessened if Serra's offering for that scene hadn’t been replaced with John Altman's piece.
You see things differently to me, there’s no point in trying to force your view onto me, I’m not changing my mind. In your mind you’re right, I know you’re wrong 😉
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Okay, I thought we were just having a fun chat exchanging points of view, not ‘forcing them on each other’. If you say why you feel tense in something like the tank chase but not in the bomb climax of OP maybe I could understand, but you just enjoy being wrong 😉
I haven’t mentioned the tank chase, you did. Tension would be the train sequence in FRWL, Bond threatened with emasculation with the laser in GF and the ski chases in OHMSS. Bond dressed as a clown defusing a bomb is not tense.
And I finished my last post with a wink icon, usually meaning as not to be taken seriously (unless I’ve got that wrong too 😁).
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
I put a wink on mine too! 😁 We're discussing the Bond theme: you said it doesn't dissipate tension, I think the tank chase is a good example of the Bond theme, no? None of the sequences you mention have the Bond theme blaring either, maybe it's not a very tense bit of music? Exciting and triumphant, absolutely, but I think maybe tension isn't its primary mood. 007 is very triumphant. The closest I can think is the Ice Chase in TLD, where Barry gets it to sound a bit more dangerous than usual, but that disappears once it hits the bebop/swing part.
But thanks for forcing your view of the bomb defusal on me; wrong again of course 😜
I'm pleased to find that me and @emtiem have similar tastes when it comes to Bond - see the Colonel Sun thread - but that 'martini still dry' line is cited by a good number of fans as pure wit (unless it's emtiem going under different names) and I don't know, it's a foretaste of that self-referential trend we began to see in GoldenEye. It seems odd that the official producers loathed NSNA yet did plenty to pay homage to it later on; the notorious first meeting between Brosnan's Bond and Jinx in DAD, with its joyless, straight out the packet innuendo owes much to Bond's queasy encounter with Fatima Blush in this film, and both are followed by an unearned and very candid sex scene.
I caught this scene on a recent reshowing on ITV4. It's the details - Connery looks ruddy old in this, and it's unnecessary. I don't know why, maybe it was losing weight that aged him - losing weight can do that temporarily; see pop singer Gary Barlow or stand-up comic Jimmy Carr, it does even out later. Connery looks 10 years older in this film that he need be or did around the same time. Here are some shots from my NSNA scrapbook of the time (what a foolhardy enterprise that was).
The Woman's Own was a publicity interview for the movie, why Connery looks the picture of humour and vitality, something he never showed in his actual Bond film. You could bung a DAF-style toupe on him (not the ropey one but the one he had when first meeting the real Blofeld) and he'd look barely any older, he'd be the actual James Bond we know and love, the one we simply never see in NSNA. Granted, his wig sometimes looks off in films from Thunderball onwards, but in NSNA it never looks right, not even in one scene.
In the scene I describe, the details are all wrong. Bond delivers his Martini line wrongly imo, it should be openly humorous and wry: 'Well, at least my martini's still dry...' not the muttered aside of other Bond gags. When he is splashed by Blush on her single water ski, he should react with humour and surprise, an expression of erotic anticipation at the challenge posed by this hot young woman. Instead, he reacts like a crochety old man sat by a draught in a restaurant.
Homage is paid to the car chase continuity error in DAF by having Blush suddenly switch to two waterskis.
Lest you think I have gone all ageist, Cary Grant was older when he played opposite Hepburn in Charade and pulled it off fine. He had his own hair, too, but I guess Connery wasn't doing the same kind of role all the time so didn't have a decent rug on standby. But you can't help thinking, if they can't even get that right. That said, Grant made sure Hepburn did most of the running in Charade, aware that otherwise he might look old and predatory. It seems they had the same idea with Connery in this film, but once you take away Connery's cool predatory ways, he doesn't have much. Okay, tbf, he is staked out a bit in his last two Bonds, YOLT and DAF, but even when strapped to a chair by Helga, he seems dangerous. Connery doesn't here, when Blush comes on to him he looks awkward and sheepish, like he doesn't want to be there.
This is all in just one scene, it's like the opposite of many Bonds where you don't mean to watch it but it pulls you in.
Comments
Shall we all watch NSNA this week? Or go straight to AVTAK?
Watching NSNA might make AVTAK seem better....
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Fair point, especially the music. Unless anyone objects, it's NSNA this week.
I’m not watching the pile of 💩 that NSNA is, and it’s not an official EON film anyway, I’ll leave AVTAK until next week 😁
Fighting talk, Barbel - the music is exceptional, its one saving grace.
It does somewhat occur to me that it's mainly only @CoolHandBond and @Barbel joining in with this thread in practice, the rest of us are just responding or chipping in with new thoughts; I don't actually own NSNA on DVD (I've got Never Say McClory Again somewhere) so it's not fair to put CHB and B through this when I won't be.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
@CoolHandBond and I are the thread starters, so that isn't surprising.
Nobody is being forced to watch anything, so I totally back CHB wanting to skip NSNA. I would have been prepared to take one for the team, but it doesn't seem as if that will be necessary.
Okay then, last chance for someone to watch it is till tomorrow, let's say 9am GMT, just in case. Otherwise AVTAK it is.
Actual footage of Barbel watching NSNA:
I think NSNA isn't great but it's not terrible, and it even makes a few improvements on Thunderball here and there. Plus it's got a few of the all-time best Bond lines (the "martini's still dry" one is a proper classic), it's got one of the best Felixes, Sean is very engaged, and I think the baddies are great. Oh and it's got Fatima who's just brilliant. It's far from my favourite but I'm glad it exists.
Bernie Casey was a great Felix, agreed.
I think McClory’s name has just come up on the credits.
And we also have an image of me listening to the soundtrack album.
When is La La Land Records going to turn its hand to that one?
Roger Moore 1927-2017
A VIEW TO A KILL (1985)
The PTS starts well, plenty of skiing action. John Barry’s score is instantly more energetic than his work on OP, the action music used here (as “Snow Job”, but it’ll recur later) is appropriately OHMSS-like. All is going just fine until….
“California Girls”. And it’s not even the real Beach Boys. Just like the Tarzan yell one film earlier a pretty good action sequence is ruined for a cheap laugh. Still the rest of the PTS is all right bar one little thing that mars the entire movie.
Albert R. Broccoli
Presents
47 STUNTMEN
And Roger Moore
As Ian Fleming’s
JAMES BOND 007
I don’t think they’re even trying any more. Really obvious, especially in the Paris scenes.
If you can overlook the aged elephant in the room, Sir Rog is just as charming as ever. Christopher Walken makes an effective villain, Grace Jones is just plain weird, and Tanya Roberts is one of the weakest Bond girls (“James! Help me, James!”).
The title song from Duran Duran is one of the best. There’s some silly action but it gets better as it goes along towards the mine sequence.
I wonder if only Bond fans noticed the plot being basically GF again, or if your average filmgoer noticed or cared.
Copy/Paste from last year with minor edits:
A VIEW TO A KILL
So yeah, A VIEW TO A KILL. This is barely a film...the narrative throughline is terribly underwritten/underplotted and nothing really interesting happens.
The bad:
It's not a total loss, though. The good:
Roger hated the film. I understand why.
I don't disagree with any of these points (although I'll always defend the California Girls gag- it's fun! I've never really got why people hate it); the action is poor (the fight in the microchip factory barely hangs together in the editing; the firetruck chase is pretty weak too, and the fight in Stacy's house just isn't really anything at all), the acting is sometimes appalling (yep, looking at you Scarpine), and Roger isn't even running up stairs himself anymore.... and yet.. I absolutely love it.
It's like comfort food for me: watching Roger go on a ski trip, then spend the morning at Ascot, lunch at the Eiffel tower and then a lovely luxury weekend at a chateau with some horse riding is kind of like tagging along on Roger Moore's life in the 1980s for a bit! (I mean on the DVD commentary he literally says that his mate the Aga Khan owned that chateau!) It's all so, well, pleasant. Pat Macnee is wonderful company and him and Roger spark off each other so well (plus he actually makes Roger look quite trim and vital which is very helpful!), and Walken and Jones are just terrific baddies- and Roger actually seems to properly despise Zorin, which is unusual for Bond and works really well. John Barry makes the whole thing seem terribly serious and dangerous and really ties the whole thing together- I think without his music it wouldn't work at all. And then yeah: Duran Duran- top stuff.
One thing I really like also is how properly 80s it feels: puffy jackets and walkman things and crazy angular fashion and 80s Renaults- it's great.
And one area I think it really excels in is the climax: it's got a proper big ending on the Golden Gate bridge, with some amazing production design and top stuntwork. Not all Bonds manage a decent climax like that and I really like it.
So, yes: it's not great, but I unreservedly love it 😄
A VIEW TO A KILL (1985)
There’s some really good things in this movie. There’s also some really bad stuff too.
Once again the PTS is the best thing in it, only marred by the risible use of California Girls, all the excitement and tension built up to that point in the skiing scenes evaporates immediately. I love the iceberg submersible, that’s great fun. Into the credits and we get the best song since Live And Let Die. John Barry is at last back on form in this movie, providing his best Bond score since DAF.
Roger looks so old in this, he was never an athletic actor at the best of times, but he can barely move in this one. His double gets a lot of exposure here, so much that John Glen doesn’t even try and hide it anymore and we are treated to the stunt double in plain sight with Roger dubbing his usual grunts and groans. Roger isn’t the only one suffering from a double in plain sight, it happens with Gogol in the car, as well.
DAF was like a game of two halves, first good second bad. This one lurches from good to bad to good to bad from scene to scene. But there are a lot of saving graces in the good bits. Patrick MacNee is brilliant as the foil to Bond, Christopher Walken is suitably mad as Zorin, Willoughby Gray as the Nazi scientist and Fiona Fullerton as a KGB agent are marvellous. It’s a pity that Fiona Fullerton wasn’t cast as Stacey Sutton, that would have a much better solution to what we get as Tanya Roberts is the worst Bond Girl to date, and Grace Jones is just Grace Jones, both cannot act in the slightest bit.
Once again the plot repeats things of long past, this time mainly GF, but I see parts of TB as well. Strangely, the good bits are so good that they outweigh the bad, even though they are probably of equal length.
AVTAK has a myriad of faults but it’s actually a fun movie, one of those so bad it’s good movies that I love so much, and for that reason I’m ranking it higher than three other Roger Bond’s.
**************
My son had a friend over for a couple of days who is Japanese and we watched YOLT, he also wanted to see how it had all begun so we watched DN and AVTAK. Henceforth on my rewatch I’ve dropped FYEO down a couple of places, it really cannot compete with 60’s Sean.
OHMSS - TB - FRWL - GF - YOLT - DN - FYEO - TSWLM - LALD - DAF - AVTAK - TMWTGG - MR - OP
It’s about the tension is it with California Girls? If it were replaced with the Bond theme blaring in its swing section, or the triumphant 007 theme, wouldn’t that dissipate the tension in the same way? Those tunes are all about celebrating how cool Bond is and how he’s winning (it’s literally in swing time); they eliminate tension too. I just never get the problem with it.
It got a laugh in the cinema at the time, but fans watch these movies again and again so rapidly tire of it.
Rather than either the Bond Theme or "007" how about just continuing Barry’s music for the scene? It was doing the (ahem) snow job just fine.
But then the music isn’t reacting to what Bond is doing; you’ve got to highlight the moments where he does something signature Bond, haven’t you? It comes back when he faces the helicopter and it’s all appropriately serious again.
There’s even a hidden little motif which we can barely hear under the sound of the chopper crashing: I really hope LLL give us a CD soon!
Agree totally with that last point.
@emtiem It’s good to see that at least one person enjoys the “musical tributes” (if that is the correct term), I often wondered if anyone actually thought they were a good idea. The Bond Theme and 007 Theme dissipate tension? No, they heighten the excitement of what’s happening! @Barbel is correct in saying that Barry should have just carried on with the rather good score he was using up to that point.
The Magnificent Seven is my favourite film and theme tune, but it’s inclusion in MR was ridiculous (even though John Barry had success with it early in his career, I thought it was silly and pointless to include it).
The Bond Theme and 007 Theme dissipate tension? No, they heighten the excitement of what’s happening!
Sure, but that’s not tension, no? It’s fun, it makes you smile. I was laughing out loud watching the tank in GE with the Bond theme blaring, I felt no tension at all. Definitely exciting and enjoyable, but not tense. I don’t know if you can do tension with swing time 😄
I like the silliness and the jokes, it’s part of what these films are. They’re not serious spy thrillers.
Quick sidetrack - the effect of that GE tank would have been much lessened if Serra's offering for that scene hadn’t been replaced with John Altman's piece.
You see things differently to me, there’s no point in trying to force your view onto me, I’m not changing my mind. In your mind you’re right, I know you’re wrong 😉
Bleep bloop gleep
Okay, I thought we were just having a fun chat exchanging points of view, not ‘forcing them on each other’. If you say why you feel tense in something like the tank chase but not in the bomb climax of OP maybe I could understand, but you just enjoy being wrong 😉
I haven’t mentioned the tank chase, you did. Tension would be the train sequence in FRWL, Bond threatened with emasculation with the laser in GF and the ski chases in OHMSS. Bond dressed as a clown defusing a bomb is not tense.
And I finished my last post with a wink icon, usually meaning as not to be taken seriously (unless I’ve got that wrong too 😁).
I put a wink on mine too! 😁 We're discussing the Bond theme: you said it doesn't dissipate tension, I think the tank chase is a good example of the Bond theme, no? None of the sequences you mention have the Bond theme blaring either, maybe it's not a very tense bit of music? Exciting and triumphant, absolutely, but I think maybe tension isn't its primary mood. 007 is very triumphant. The closest I can think is the Ice Chase in TLD, where Barry gets it to sound a bit more dangerous than usual, but that disappears once it hits the bebop/swing part.
But thanks for forcing your view of the bomb defusal on me; wrong again of course 😜
I believe that's enough, please let's draw a line there.
I'd much rather talk about the deficiencies of Eric Serra's GE score
@HarryCanyon Bleep bloop gleep it is, indeed!
But it's too early for that.
I'm pleased to find that me and @emtiem have similar tastes when it comes to Bond - see the Colonel Sun thread - but that 'martini still dry' line is cited by a good number of fans as pure wit (unless it's emtiem going under different names) and I don't know, it's a foretaste of that self-referential trend we began to see in GoldenEye. It seems odd that the official producers loathed NSNA yet did plenty to pay homage to it later on; the notorious first meeting between Brosnan's Bond and Jinx in DAD, with its joyless, straight out the packet innuendo owes much to Bond's queasy encounter with Fatima Blush in this film, and both are followed by an unearned and very candid sex scene.
I caught this scene on a recent reshowing on ITV4. It's the details - Connery looks ruddy old in this, and it's unnecessary. I don't know why, maybe it was losing weight that aged him - losing weight can do that temporarily; see pop singer Gary Barlow or stand-up comic Jimmy Carr, it does even out later. Connery looks 10 years older in this film that he need be or did around the same time. Here are some shots from my NSNA scrapbook of the time (what a foolhardy enterprise that was).
The Woman's Own was a publicity interview for the movie, why Connery looks the picture of humour and vitality, something he never showed in his actual Bond film. You could bung a DAF-style toupe on him (not the ropey one but the one he had when first meeting the real Blofeld) and he'd look barely any older, he'd be the actual James Bond we know and love, the one we simply never see in NSNA. Granted, his wig sometimes looks off in films from Thunderball onwards, but in NSNA it never looks right, not even in one scene.
In the scene I describe, the details are all wrong. Bond delivers his Martini line wrongly imo, it should be openly humorous and wry: 'Well, at least my martini's still dry...' not the muttered aside of other Bond gags. When he is splashed by Blush on her single water ski, he should react with humour and surprise, an expression of erotic anticipation at the challenge posed by this hot young woman. Instead, he reacts like a crochety old man sat by a draught in a restaurant.
Homage is paid to the car chase continuity error in DAF by having Blush suddenly switch to two waterskis.
Lest you think I have gone all ageist, Cary Grant was older when he played opposite Hepburn in Charade and pulled it off fine. He had his own hair, too, but I guess Connery wasn't doing the same kind of role all the time so didn't have a decent rug on standby. But you can't help thinking, if they can't even get that right. That said, Grant made sure Hepburn did most of the running in Charade, aware that otherwise he might look old and predatory. It seems they had the same idea with Connery in this film, but once you take away Connery's cool predatory ways, he doesn't have much. Okay, tbf, he is staked out a bit in his last two Bonds, YOLT and DAF, but even when strapped to a chair by Helga, he seems dangerous. Connery doesn't here, when Blush comes on to him he looks awkward and sheepish, like he doesn't want to be there.
This is all in just one scene, it's like the opposite of many Bonds where you don't mean to watch it but it pulls you in.
Roger Moore 1927-2017