Movie Review: For Your Eyes Only (1981)

Patrick J Mullen
Aug 31, 2018 · 8 min read

I definitely consider this to be the most underrated James Bond film. In fact, if you take away a few moments/aspects, it would probably be my favorite. The strengths of this movie are just so good.

The movie begins with the rare acknowledgement of James Bonds’s marriage, with him dropping flowers off at Teresa’s grave. He gets picked up in a helicopter that he finds is controlled by Blofeld.

Well, they don’t call him Blofeld, and they don’t even show his face. I think it’s because they didn’t have the rights to the character or something, but honestly, it’s a better attempt at the character than Diamonds Are Forever. It’s even more in line with the Blofeld we know from You Only Live Twice and back when he was only known as “Number One.”

As an opening scene, it’s really exciting, as Bond is forced to climb on the outside of the helicopter to get to the cockpit.

It’s very much in line with The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, which both opened with amazing stunts. Of the three, this is probably my least favorite, and as always, it’s very obvious that Roger Moore isn’t doing the actual stuntwork. But still, I like it just fine.

After Bond gets control of the helicopter, he scoops up Blofeld and drops him down a chimney to his death. It’s an undignified way to kill off a classic character, but I can’t ignore the fact that the character was completely ruined in Diamonds Are Forever. And I appreciate Roger Moore’s sly humor as he’s killing someone. That’s always great.

Following a pretty great song from Scottish singer Sheena Easton, we’re introduced to the plot proper, which — as is always appreciated — involves the Bond girl in an interesting way. Melina Havelock’s (Carole Bouquet) family of marine archaeologists are murdered after they had tracked down a device crucial to the British fleet of nuclear submarines.

They’re murdered by Hector Gonzales (Stefan Kalipha), and Bond is sent to Spain to find out who hired him. While there, he gets captured, but escapes when Melina kills Gonzales. What proceeds is a pretty awesome chase scene that’s both quite humorous and exciting, with Bond and Melina using the environment cleverly to their advantage.

Though you might say it gets a little too silly in spots

Bond did see someone paying off Gonzales, and Bond and Q use the Identigraph to find out who that is. It’s so ridiculous, and it’s one of the parts of the movie that I really don’t like. Anyways, they find that it’s Emile Locque (Michael Gothard), who is supposedly working for Greek organized crime. Bond heads to Cortina, a village in the Italian Alps, to find him.

As one of the primary locations, I like Cortina a lot. It’s not the first Bond movie to be set in the snowy mountains, but it’s definitely a very picturesque location, and it’s a good change of pace, considering Bond’s usually off doing something in the tropics. And for some damn reason, I love seeing Bond skiing.

Bond meets up with MI6 contact Luigi Ferrara (John Moreno), who introduces him to a Greek contact named Aristotle Kristatos (Julian Glover, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade). He in terms introduces Bond to Kristatos’s figure skating protege, Bibi Dahl (Lynn-Holly Johnson). Bibi sucks. It’s a bad performance, and the character just doesn’t really fit into this movie.

Anyways, Kristatos makes Bond aware of Milos Columbo, whom Kristatos believes is going after the device from the submarine. Bond sees Melina in town buying a crossbow, and saves her from assassination. He finds that she was sent a telegram saying that Bond had found the man responsible for her parents’ assassination, but Bond of course had sent no such telegram. Bond tries to convince Melina not to engage any further, considering there is much more at stake than personal revenge.

In one of the most uncomfortable scenes of the movie, Bond finds Bibi in his hotel room trying to seduce her. It’s uncomfortable mostly because of the age difference. Lynn-Holly Johnson was only born one year prior to Carole Bouquet, but she just looks so damn young, and Roger Moore at this point is really starting to show his age.

Anyways, Bond doesn’t engage with her, instead treating her like a child, thankfully. They go skiing and watch the biathlon, where we meet East German champion Erich Kriegler (John Wyman), who’s an expert marksman and working for the KGB. After Bond skis away from Bibi, Kriegler tries to kill him. Bond escapes both Kriegler and Locque through the use of a ski jump and eventually a bobsled track. It’s a really exciting scene. It might go on for a bit too long, but it’s filled with awesome stuntwork all the way through.

Bond eventually goes to an indoor rink to say goodbye to Bibi, and after she leaves, in the worst scene of the movie, a bunch of hockey players come to I guess kill Bond.

It’s a really dumb scene, and I’m not sure if it’s made better or worse that each time Bond disposes of one of them in the goal, the goal horn goes off.

If nothing else, at least he takes out one of them with a zamboni. That’s always fun.

Bond finds Luigi dead, and heads to Corfu to go after Columbo. He meets Melina again, this time not in pursuit of justice at least as far as he can tell.

Bond meets Kristatos again, and Kristatos gives him more crap about how Columbo smuggles heroin, and says that he won’t be able to arrest him, but will need to kill him.

Bond sees Columbo for the first time, played unfortunately not by Peter Falk, but by Topol (Fiddler on the Roof), and it’s revealed that Columbo has recorded Bond’s and Kristatos’s conversation. Bond takes off with Columbo’s mistress, Lisl (Cassandra Harris). They spend the night together, but Locque kills her in the morning by hitting her with a car.

While Locque is about to capture Bond, Columbo’s men step in and save him. It turns out Columbo isn’t the villain, but Kristatos is. Columbo admits he’s a smuggler, but that he doesn’t smuggle heroin, and that Kristatos does, when he’s not working as a double agent for the KGB. Columbo proves it by taking Bond to Kristatos’s opium-processing warehouse in Albania. There, Bond discovers that Kristatos was behind the sinking of the submarine, and Locque blows up the warehouse following a pretty good action scene.

Bond chases after Locque on foot while Locque has a car. It may sound ridiculous, but with how windy the roads are, it sort of makes sense. Anyways, Bond shoots him, and Locque’s car is hanging off the edge of a cliff. In a wonderfully badass moment, Bond kicks the car off.

Bond and Melina dive for and find the device, but then are captured by Kristatos and Kriegler, who in turn take the device to the impenetrable fortress to end all impenetrable fortress. But I’ll get to that.

First, Kristatos has Bond and Melina tied up and dangles them off his boat, forcing them to struggle for air. It’s a horrific way to potentially kill someone, as they scrape them against coral to get them to bleed for the sharks in the water, and it’s one of my favorite Bond death traps. They’re able to break off the rope, of course, which knocks one of Kristatos’s men into the water, and I love that the sharks go for him first.

They escape back to Melina’s boat, and thankfully figure out where Kristatos is thanks to a loose-lipped parrot, and Columbo.

Kristatos is hiding out at St. Cyril’s, an abandoned mountaintop monastery, awaiting the KGB to give him money.

This picture isn’t from the movie, but it gives you a good indication of how awesome this is for a fortress.

Bibi is already up at St. Cyril’s, oblivious to her sponsor’s criminal intent.

ond, Melina, Columbo, and his four men prepare to climb up there, with Bond leading the way in a very tense scene.

Once they get up there, it’s a pretty standard action scene. For the climax of the movie, it’s not the most compelling. I think the ski chase and car chase in Spain make for better action scenes, and perhaps even the one in Albania.

Still, this is a very strong Bond movie. Roger Moore is as charming as ever, Melina Havelock makes for a very compelling Bond girl, the twist with Kristatos and Columbo is pretty great, with Columbo standing out as one of my favorite secondary characters in the series.

And the stuntwork is amazing, elevating the action of this movie above most of the series. This same movie has a guy climbing on the outside of a helicopter as it goes over London, a guy falling from a cliff on a rope and having to climb his way back up, and an awesome ski chase involving one and later no poles.

What’s not to love?

Well, unfortunately, a decent amount. The Bibi character is really obnoxious. It’s not a huge role, but the movie would be better without her, clearly. And the hockey scene is embarrassing. I’d say the movie drags a bit when Bond and Melina are diving, but that’s not really a bad moment, just sort of a bland one.

But I seriously think that if you get rid of Bibi, the hockey scene, and the absurdly silly Identigraph, you probably have the best movie in the series. Even with that, I’d say it’s the best Roger Moore Bond movie, and it’s better than all but From Russia with Love and Goldfinger, as far as Connery is concerned.

Rating: 8/10

As Vast as Space and as Timeless as Infinity

This blog will be dedicated primarily to horror and sci-fi media, chiefly film and television.

Patrick J Mullen

Written by

As Vast as Space and as Timeless as Infinity

This blog will be dedicated primarily to horror and sci-fi media, chiefly film and television.

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