A View To A Kill

Okay, just let me say this. A View To A Kill is a lot better than you think it is. I know people can be quick to dismiss it: Moore is far too old, nearly sixty. By now we're bored with him. He shouldn't have made Octopussy, let alone this. Reviewers, like me, ploughing through the films in order, are impatient to move on, to get to the good stuff. But despite all that, we should not overlook AVTAK. There's much to admire here - including Roger Moore's last performance as 'James Bond as played by Roger Moore'.

To be fair, it's not his fault he carried on. Moore was sure Octopussy was his final Bond - but then he had thought the same thing after FYEO, and even Moonraker. Throughout the late Seventies and early Eighties a seemingly never-ending search was under way for a new James Bond. Some actors (like Michael Billington) were auditioned again and again. Future stars like James Brolin and Sam Neill were screen-tested. The implication is, apparently, that nobody could do it better and, like the Grail Knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Moore was required to soldier on regardless. Broccoli did have his eye on a pair of comparatively young actors called Pierce Brosnan and Timothy Dalton by now (Dalton had been first considered back in 1969 for OHMSS, then again during the late Seventies; Brosnan came to Broccoli's attention during the making of FYEO) but neither of them was quite ready yet. For whatever reason, Broccoli remained unsatisfied.

Unfortunately this is surely a Bond too far for Moore. Watching AVTAK, one can't help but scrutinise him, to wonder what construction work or emollient has been applied behind the scenes. I've even heard it said that Moore had had cosmetic surgery after Octopussy, which is neither here nor there, but just look at his eyes. Whatever de-wrinkling techniques have been employed, nothing could have been done about those; faded and washed out to a pale watery blue, they are the eyes of an old man.

There's always been a hint of play-acting with Moore's Bond, but here it is very much all play and little acting. This is especially the case in the scenes where he has to flirt with his (ahem, much) younger female co-stars. It's as if his age has become a joke in its own right, like in a Carry On film where Moore might be playing the doddery old man who doesn't know he's too old to be phwoaring at Barbara Windsor. Listen to the exaggerated "Ooooh!" he emits as he and Tanya Roberts finally get it on at the end - it's half Kenneth Connor, half Charles Hawtrey and it's the very last sound Moore's Bond makes. It doesn't help either that Moore has so many opportunities to try it on in AVTAK, as if the producers are trying to manufacture sexual charisma by draping him with women. It doesn't work, but it is not always sleazy either. There is actually something tender about some of these hook-ups: Bond even tucks Stacey up in bed after she falls asleep in her underwear. Connery's Bond, one feels, would at least have stuck his hand down her top whilst he was at it. In fact there's no hint whatsoever of the sadistic brute about this version of Bond. And (mercifully) without the awful jokes of Octopussy, Moore is left with nothing to do but play 007 with a straight bat. He's not showy, or mean, or troubled. He is, instead, just a charming old gent, a nice guy who rescues damsels and bakes them quiche; who plucks people from burning buildings; who, when confronted with a dastardly villain, shows his own goodness with a series of earnest and principled frowns. The end result is an uncomplicated, straight-backed and really rather sweet old duffer of a Bond. It might not be your cup of tea, but this is, if nothing else, an eminently likeable portrayal of 007.

(from l to r) Dull, Old, Mad, Psycho

I was pleasantly surprised by the women here, whom I had previously written off as, respectively, dull and mad. But that's not fair. Stacey may seem dull in comparison with May Day, and May Day may seem bonkers when compared to Stacey, but they both have many good qualities. Stacey is remarkable really in that she is one of those exceedingly rare 'ordinary' Bond women. She has a real job, a house, a back story, and even a legitimate reason to be involved in the plot. (The other Bond women from the Moore era, for the record: a clairvoyant voodoo priestess, an MI6 spy, a KGB spy, a CIA astronaut, a marine archaeologist and a circus-owning international jewel smuggler.) Stacey is a geologist working for the State of California. For the Bond films her character is like something out of a kitchen-sink drama. Even better, Stacey doesn't throw herself at Bond, or end up in a bikini for no reason; she's not patronised and she doesn't 'hilariously' make stupid girly mistakes like a stupid girly-girl. No, she's not particularly exciting. But she is nice, and competent, and she even gets to drive the fire truck.

Then there's May Day. Yes, Grace Jones does seem to be a prime piece of stunt casting and yes, what the hell is she wearing? But look past all that and she is actually pretty good. May Day's character may seem outrageous and absurd compared with Stacey, but don't forget that May Day is the film's henchman - stick her alongside Jaws, or Nik-Nak and suddenly she makes sense. At least she does have a character (unlike some) and it's a compelling one, too: a damaged woman in a weird relationship, brimming over with anger, frustration and pride, ultimately prepared to kill herself to get back at the lover who has betrayed her. As last minute conversions go, it's a damn sight more convincing than Pussy Galore's. And of course, Jones is amazing visually and physically - it's great for the series that May Day poses a real physical threat to Bond and she deserves to be considered as at least one of the most interesting and memorable Bond henchmen, if not one of the best.

And, hang on, who's that but Christopher bloody Walken! Even then he had a reputation for being able to play scary oddball characters and he is brilliant in this, making Max Zorin the best Bond villain since Scaramanga and easily one of the greatest of the franchise. Zorin, a left-over from Nazi breeding experiments and a genuine psychopath, is a more nuanced and compelling baddy than one might imagine from that description. Yes, he's unhinged and violent, but Walken gives him layers of self-control with which to cover up the madness, a reasonable jocularity that is all the more chilling for being a ruthlessly calculated façade.

It's just a shame then that his evil scheme is a bit, well, dull. For a start, Californian earthquakes are all very Superman I. And, yes, I know the world silicon chip market is important, but this is hardly holding the world to ransom. Who would mind if he just bought out Silicon Valley? Surely not the governments of Reagan or Thatcher (it's the Russians who seem happiest when the scheme is foiled after all - has MI6 been played?).

So, with that last comedy "Oooh!" still echoing in our ears, the Roger Moore era comes to an end. The Bond films in the Sixties were a phenomenon, but during Moore's tenure they become an institution - no mean feat considering how precarious the future of the franchise was in the early Seventies. For a long time it has been fashionable to sneer at Moore's movies and at his performances but I don't think that's fair. His films vary enormously, both in style and quality, and should be considered on their individual merits. The bad ones are awful, yes (Moonraker, most of Octopussy) but TSWLM and FYEO are absolutely brilliant. But good or bad, the series flourished during this time. The audiences were always happy to go back for Moore.

* * *

Pre-Credits Sequence: It's another mission for Bond, this time in some ice-bound expanse, and it's another neat little PCS. It's nearly brilliant, featuring, as it does, some nifty skiing, some snowboarding (which was unheard of in 1985) and even an exploding helicopter. But why in the name of Penelope Smallbone did anyone stick the Beach Boys over the snowboarding stunt? It's not actually even the Beach Boys, but a cover by a band called Gidea Park. (Google them, go on, I dare you.) BOND PRODUCERS TAKE NOTE: if you want 007 to impress us, whack the Bond theme over the top of what he's doing. Ta very much.

Theme: Apparently John Barry was a bit sniffy about working with Duran Duran but, goodness me, the resulting track does give the whole franchise a whacking great kick up the backside and a much needed injection of energy. The song was (very unusually for a Bond theme) a massive world-wide hit and suddenly, from this point, this is what a Bond theme is supposed to sound like. It may be a coincidence, but after several rather lacklustre efforts, Barry's score for AVTAK is a return to his previous high form; it's exciting, full of energy, and even manages something approaching grandeur during the escape from City Hall in San Francisco. Maurice Binder has also had a shot in the arm of something. It may be the same 'slowly gyrating girls' stuff as always but the visuals do look strikingly different thanks to all the neon and day-glo colours. Finally the Eighties have arrived.

Deaths: 66. It's not particularly high compared with some Moore films, but as is traditional the tally sky-rockets in the final act. Although here, instead of a climactic battle, we have a massacre as Zorin kills all the civil engineers and labourers that have been working for him in the mine. I counted 55 deaths on-screen during this sequence alone but surely there would have been more. It's the most gratuitous act of violence we've seen carried out in the series so far.

Memorable Deaths: Aubergine is stung by a poisoned butterfly up the Eiffel Tower. Grace Jones rides a massive bomb down a railway. Christopher Walken giggles and gasps as he tries and fails to hold on to the Golden Gate bridge. Reminiscent of Mr Solo from Goldfinger, an investor reluctantly 'drops out' of Zorin's air-ship board room meeting.

Licence to Kill: 5 - very low for Moore but then he is loaded with rock salt during the only gun battle.

Exploding Helicopters: 1! And a zeppelin! Get in!

Shags: 4! The record's gone thanks to a perfect storm cooked up by a) the need to have a conquest in the PCS; b) May Day being a bit crazy/desperate/into old men; c) a saucy hot-tub cameo from Fiona Fullerton; and d) Stacey Sutton taking pity on Bond in the very last few seconds. Four. That's more than Dalton managed in total isn't it?

Crimes Against Women: Not much. There's a poor 'women's lib' reference that sounds hopelessly out of date even for 1985. Bond is rather sleazy at Zorin's party but otherwise Moore is now all sweet and avuncular and not the callous sexual predator of LALD or TMWTGG. In the scene where Zorin and May Day spar there is an uncomfortable moment where it looks like Zorin is attempting a sexual assault. But then they are both fairly unusual, even by the standards of Bond villains, so it's not entirely impossible that this isn't 'normal' within the parameters of their (dysfunctional and damaged) relationship. If so, they really need a Safe Word.

Casual Racism: I can't remember the last time we saw a Frenchman (not counting Michel Lonsdale or Louis Jordan who aren't playing French, of course) but the character of Achille Aubergine is strangely unpleasant, almost repellent, which, given that he's only on-screen for about a minute, seems oddly deliberate. Dr Carl Mortner is your common-or-garden Nazi eugenicist. All the (good) American men are dull but worthy, as usual (and all appear to have moustaches - was that a thing in 1985?). For the first time we get some British stereotypes as Bond and Tibbett play Upstairs, Downstairs.

Out of Time: What's a Walkman?

Fashion Disasters: It's tempting to say 'everything Grace Jones wears' but it's a little obvious. Her thong/leotard thing is eye-watering though and her asymmetric sunglasses are merely pretty bad. Bond has sunglasses too, trick ones from Q, but sadly they just look like part of some odd prescription and make Moore appear, astonishingly, even older.

Eh?: Does May Day have superhuman strength? It's sort of implied that she is at least incredibly strong, but unlike (say) Jaws she doesn't have the physique to match (yes, she is obviously in top shape, but she's still very slight). >> Why does Zorin go in person to collect his assassin (May Day) from the scene of the crime? Is that not just a little bit of an unnecessary risk? >> Why does Zorin use his private residence, his 16th century French château, as a packaging and distribution factory for silicon chips? They're not manufactured there, it makes no sense! >> Gogol, 'doing a Zorin', is there in person to pick up one of his operatives. The man is the head of the KGB and he is driving through California with known Soviet spy (and internationally famous ballet dancer), Pola Ivanova. How? Either (as is hinted elsewhere during this period) East/West relations are dramatically better in the Bond universe than they were in real life, or US counter-espionage operations are non-existent (which would explain, perhaps, why James Bond has to keep saving them). >> Bond tricks Pola by switching cassettes, but how does he know she even has a cassette? >> I may be wrong but the film appears to muddle up state and city government: Stacey works for the Californian Department of Conservation but the office is based at San Francisco City Hall? (The real DOC is, sensibly, with the rest of the state bureaucracy in Sacramento). >> Bond uses a credit card to break open a sash window. Fair enough, except that this is achieved electronically and with a beep, rather in the manner of a sonic screwdriver. Why not just slip the catch with it? And who the hell is auditing Q Branch? >> Why does Bond break in? Why not just ring the bell? >> Why would Bond go back for the shot gun now that he knows it is not loaded? >> Bond cooks a quiche. Stacey says, "I had no idea you could cook!" Well, you've just met him, why would you think he couldn't? Bond replies: "I've been known to dabble." No you haven't! We've been watching for twenty years! The closest you've come to cooking is when you flambéed Mr Kidd in DAF! >> The baddies creep up to the house and kill nice CIA man Yip and then drive away. Why? Why not kill Bond and Stacey too? >> Bond steals a fire engine, gets chased through San Francisco, escapes and drives it to Zorin's mine. Except when he gets there it is a very different fire engine. Maybe, overnight, he ditched the first one and stole a second so as to evade his pursuers? >> Once again, Gogol turns up in M's office at the end of the film for a cosy chat. This time, he offers Bond the Order of Lenin to boot. Why? Was the USSR threatened by Zorin's plan particularly? Does the Governor of California not want to say thank you? >> Q, searching for Bond, is exploring Stacey's house with his Mars Rover. 1) How did it get up the stairs? 2) Why not just knock on the door himself?

Worst Line: May Day and Zorin gaze at nothern California as their airship approaches Silicon Valley. "What a view!" breathes May Day appreciatively. "To a kill!" hisses Zorin. Because that's a phrase isn't it, 'a view to a kill'. Whilst we're on the subject of dialogue, I have to record the first "shit" of the franchise, muttered by Stacey during the fire chase. It's immediately followed by the second "shit" of the series, which comes from the SFPD officer. I haven't gone back and checked, but I think these are the first profanities we've had so far. Back to the Future's full of them too.

Best Line: Again, not much in the way of a killer line, but the banter between Bond and Tibbett at least sounds like it was fun for the actors.

Worst Bond Moment: For sheer audience discomfort it has to be Bond in bed with May Day, but I'm not sure 007 would be complaining.

Best Bond Moment: Well it would be the snowboarding if it wasn't for the ersatz Beach Boys song. So I think instead it should be Bond carrying Stacey out of the burning City Hall - one doesn't often see a crowd cheering for Bond and the scenes here are reminiscent of other '80s films like Ghostbusters or Superman II.

Overall: This is a bit more like FYEO and bit less like Octopussy, but it's all very gentle (apart from when Zorin machine guns everyone to death). Moore's amiable old Bond is fun and familiar but all the edges have been knocked off of 007 and Fleming's original character has almost completely disappeared. Next time, (if there is a next time, see below) it'll be back to basics...

James Bond Will Return: ... Well, he'll just return, okay? Have some faith.

A Tiny Slice of Canada with a New York Chaser

I did something unnatural the other day. I crossed a land border into a new country. To some of you that won't sound like too much of a big deal, but to the English this is an alien concept. We prefer our international perimeters to be described by large bodies of water, and this partly explains why cries for Scottish, Welsh or even Northumbrian independence might confuse us. Why bother having a separate country if one can just walk there? Well, that's what you get for growing up in a cul-de-sac, I suppose.

Such rules can not be applied to the vastness of North America and, to be fair, the Niagara river that divides the USA from Canada is large enough perhaps to give even the most insular Englishman pause for thought. But after a plethora of road tolls on the way there, the border checks to get into Canada didn't really seem that much of a big deal. If anything, it was an unexpectedly convivial process. Not that this should in any way be taken as a sign that Canada isn't a 'proper' country: Americans take note, one doesn't judge a nation's greatness by how difficult or unpleasant it is to get into it.

On another occasion we might have fooled about with the idea of driving to the border from Texas, but it's not really feasible during Spring Break. Another time, perhaps. No, we flew to New York to stay with cousins (my wife has cousins everywhere) and drove from there. A trifle of a drive, really, just four hundred miles or so. We took our time.

The road winds up through perfectly rounded hills, its path endlessly criss-crossed by shallow river-beds. The water is dark, winter-cold and dashed with pale rocks and stones. The hills are covered with countless bare trees so that their outlines are softened to a faint grey blur. When the land does flatten it is thick with fur-brown grass, like the countryside has its own winter pelt.

It was nice to be up in the North of the world again. A mixture of oddness and familiarity. I realised I miss even the subtlest of things: the low angle of winter sunlight; the way shadows pool up in the sharp valleys, in the lee of hills; it's an intricate landscape, chiselled and sculpted. There isn't much in the way of topography in my part of Texas and none at all in the city, of course. Even if you do get out west, the land is smashed flat, hammered into an expanse of grassy plains or beautifully desolate desert.

The road in to Ithaca, NY was vertiginous in comparison, rising up over the brim of yet another hill before plunging down into the city. We only stopped for dinner but I liked it. I didn't realise that it was the home of Cornell University, but I should have guessed it was something like that: there were too many cool-looking young people around for it to be an ordinary out-of-the-way small town. From there it was another hour or so, driving through the pitch dark between invisible finger lakes to Geneva, and then in the morning we headed for the border.

It is weird that America is so big. It is unhelpfully large, so much so that I can see, just a little bit, why there are crazy people here who are scared of the federal government or think that their state should be able to ban contraception or what have you. Even I had come to the point, I realised, where I was starting to think of the states as individual proto-countries. Texas is so different from New Mexico, let alone New York, that I had begun to think of them as distinct areas, mis-matched patches in an ungainly American quilt. And then I crossed a real frontier into a real foreign country and I was forced to squeeze the 50 states back into the small box in my head labelled "America", mixed and muddied together like poorly-managed playdough. And, having, done that, I had to try and come to terms with Canada, a country which looks just like America, but which has the Queen on their money.

So, yes, we did Niagara Falls. The horseshoe falls are the big ones and, to be fair, it is impressive. The falls are nagging, insistent, unrelenting. If you ever had to do anything like woodwork at school then I expect you've forced a rod of dowling against the wheel of an electric sander, pressing it forwards so that it is inexorably shwizzed into wood dust. Well Niagara is like that. Relentless and inescapable. No photo can do it justice because it is always thundering and always in motion, continuously dragging the eyes over and down, over and down, over and down until one gives up the fight and lets them rest against the white-out of the gently coiling mist.

The worst bit (or the best bit, depending on your inclination), is the part of the path that somehow goes around the top of the falls so that one is just a couple of metres from the very lip itself. I stood there, caught in a single rolling instant of time, watching the same water rush over and disappear into the event-horizon itself. The sunlight stabbed down, slicing through the water so that I could see just how deep it was at the edge. It also made the water shine, translucent like thick glass, so that I could almost see through the apex. But never for very long. Always the thunderous flow would drag me on with it and I'd be back again to the comparative calm of the lower river: the smoke-blue water giddily spinning and foaming; the mist falling as rain; the permanent rainbow; the hundreds of gulls, wheeling and diving, black against the whiteness.

In my imagination I had always seen it as being set in a wilderness, rather like the Grand Canyon. But no, it has two towns wrapped about either side of it: Niagara Falls, NY, which is rather rugged and a little decrepit in a post-industrial way, with a rather ugly shiny nub of downtown, and Niagara Falls, ON, which is a little tacky. It's got some nice buildings, some lovely houses but it also has a stretch of crap amusement arcades, wax work displays and over-priced pizzerias. For the deeper pockets, there's the casino - the upmarket end as it were. The boys went on a ferris wheel and then we went up the Skylon Tower. Both offered excellent views of the wider landscape and therefore options for escape.

We carried on to Hamilton, ON to stay the night with cousins (my wife has cousins everywhere, did I say?). It was another of the most fleeting stops, but we had a lovely time. We got to shop in a real Canadian store and we got to walk along the hill and stare out over another Great Lake, Ontario. In the very dimmest distance we could see the faint skyline of Toronto.

Annoyingly this first trip was only a series of first impressions, but I like what I saw of Canada. It was suddenly exotic and exciting to see something other than the Stars & Stripes flying, and it was rather wonderful to see kilometers and French words on the road signs. But is this a kind of knee-jerk homesickness? After all, even New York feels like Britain after a winter in Texas. I don't know. It is nice to see that the USA, which can sometimes believe itself to bestride the whole world, doesn't even fill North America. And Canada is such a fascinating idea, a parallel-universe Bizarro America, tinged by another century or so of British rule. Having seen it for myself, I think I understand the country a little now, I have a better sense of how it plugs into the world. It's worth exploring properly and I hope that I will get a chance to do that one day.

We spent the whole day driving back to New York. Surprisingly, getting back across the border was a rather fraught affair, with lots of queuing and waiting and, at the end, a surly American border guard who rolled his eyes at us for trying to navigate the frontier at all. But after that we had a good day's drive. We had possibly the best hot dogs ever at a place called Ted's in Buffalo, NY  (America, for good or ill, excels at inexpensive, unpretentious and very tasty food) and then we ploughed on back down the road, through the hills and across the rivers, all looking much the same as they had on the way up, until the sunlight ebbed from the world and the galaxy of lights that is New York city rose up before us.

It is my ambition that one day I will be able to be blasé about New York City. I want it to be familiar and known, scoured of secrets and mystery.

It's unlikely to happen but we did get to spend a day chipping away at the mystique and I fixed down some of the things I half-remembered from previous visits. This felt good but of course there was no defence against stumbling into new unforeseen wonders or, worse still, foreseen ones.

For example, I knew Grand Central Station was impressive, but seriously? For the first time, I arrived in New York by train and it took a long while to get out of that building. I had expected it to be grand. I hadn't expected it to be exquisite and banded by its own blue vaulted heaven of sky and stars.

Once outside, we ambled. Battery Park to stare across at the Stature of Liberty, then back uptown. On a whim we poked our noses inside the Schwarzman building - the branch of the New York Public Library at 5th Avenue and 42nd Street - only to find another palace. Like a Tuscan church its white stone and marble gives away to a beautiful interior of carved dark wood and luscious frescos. The Reading Rooms were full of people, studying and researching, their gaze split between page and screen - libraries aren't just for storing books, they are for helping knowledge and information to spread freely, regardless of the medium.

With the time we had left we took a walk along the High Line, an old elevated railway line that has been reclaimed as a public park. Initially I was underwhelmed: I hadn't come to New York city to encounter calm or quiet. But as we strolled along above the streets and the traffic I took to it. It's fun to share the space with other pedestrians, to see the backs of buildings and to enjoy the odd vantage points: a secret version of the city hidden away amongst the air rights, which is after all exactly the sort of thing I had been hankering after. Best of all, being an old train line, the High Line actually took us somewhere. Rather than walking around a park to end up where we had started, our stroll had taken us to our destination. Or rather the next in a series of destinations, a series that ended, finally, late that night with us rolling up to the door of our home, way down south.

Octopussy

It's not as bad as Moonraker, but it is almost nothing like FYEO. Octopussy returns the Bond franchise to familiar surroundings with a poor script, an ageing male lead and some unjustified nonsense where a taut adventure story should be. Presumably the criticism of FYEO had been that there weren't enough jokes, but goodness knows there are far too many here.

Like the Curate's Fabergé egg, Octopussy is good in parts. Despite everything, the sequence in East Germany works very well: it maintains tension and shows that Bond can still be relevant within the Cold War setting of the Eighties. This film is mostly rubbish though. And the problems start on the first line of the script.

At this point there are almost no more Fleming stories left to adapt: the producers have worked over all the novels (except Casino Royale, the rights for which are tied up elsewhere) and are now having to pick through the bones of the short stories. This worked with FYEO, when they had all the short stories to choose from - but now they are getting down to the dregs and, although they are having to produce a lot of original plotting, they still feel obliged to smear something of these lesser works on to the screen.

The producers settle on a vignette about an old soldier who stole some gold during the war. Many years later his crime is discovered and a man from London comes to tell him he's going to be court-martialed. The old soldier is devastated and the man, who's name is James Bond, decides to allow him to kill himself instead of facing disgrace. It's called Octopussy, because the old soldier has a pet octopus and commits suicide by provoking the animal to attack him. Whatever its merits as a short story, one does not spend a lot of time wondering whether the title is particularly good or pertinent - but as soon as the production team chose it as the title for Bond 13, 'Octopussy' had to mean something within the context of the film.

The problem of justifying a silly title is not unique to Octopussy. In Thunderball, the title is excused by being a blink-and-you'll-miss-it codename. Those of YOLT and OHMSS enjoy the fig leaf of being thrown into random lines of dialogue. And we mustn't forget QOS, the title of which perplexed almost everybody, gets no reference within the film itself, and only really makes sense if one is prepared to thoroughly digest the short story from which it is taken. But all these clumsy efforts are nothing when compared to Octopussy.

It is a terrible, silly title and EON's solution, to give it as a name to the female lead, is even more terrible and silly. We are faced with the prospect of Roger Moore and Louis Jordan having to call Maud Adams 'Octopussy' and keep a straight face, pretending that this a reasonable state of affairs. It isn't of course and the Bond series ends up pushed as close to resembling a Carry On film as it ever does. Lumbered with this baggage, the film now has to justify it. Who is this Octopussy woman? What is she like? Well with a name like that she'd obviously have to be an exotic Eastern madame, living on an island with her spandex-clad harem of lesbian jewel-smuggling circus acrobats or whatever that's supposed to be. I hope I'm not being unfair on Maud Adams if I suggest that her sincere efforts to sell this are about as convincing as Roger Moore's legs in the picture at the top.

I'd hate to single Adams out though - none of this is her fault and she even manages to imbue her ridiculous character with a quantum of dignity. And the unwarranted silliness infects the whole Indian portion of the film in which the story is daft, the characters are limp, the action is weak and the jokes are wearisome. I won't spend too long sticking the boot in, but I can't pass up mentioning a few of the larger problems with this section.

Quickly then - India is just the latest developing country to be treated as an exotic backdrop for some Bond japes. With its palaces, tiger-infested jungles, crocodile-infested lakes and streets crowded with beggars, fire-eaters, sword-swallowers and fakirs, this is an India only of the British imagination. A Raj-themed playground in which posh Brits can muck about without having to engage in any uncomfortable post-colonial soul-searching. George MacDonald Fraser (author of the Flashman books) was hired to write the Indian bits but there's no way of knowing if what appears on screen is his fault or if it was mangled by the producers into something less interesting.

Louis Jourdan strikes me as an odd choice to play exiled Afghan prince Kamal Khan. I can see that he has the easy sophistication that so often graces Bond villains, but his chilled urbanity is almost soporific. He's very much a mirror image of Moore's Bond in fact: suave and unflappable to the point of utter blandness. That's not to say that Jourdan isn't trying here, because he turns in a performance that is subtle and clever in places (there are some lovely nervous bomb-related glances, for example), but this is hardly the point of a Bond villain, where understatement is nearly always pointless. And Khan is such a boring villain! He has no grand scheme, no megalomania - he's just a posh petty criminal. It all seems rather a waste.

No the real villain of the piece is General Orlov, the deranged and off-message member of the Soviet Praesidium played by Steven Berkoff. He is an unusual baddy for a Bond movie: they are (as you know) nearly all private citizens of wealth and taste with impeccable manners. Orlov is a soldier and his villainous scheme is born of a frothing raging frustration. How he is supposed to know, let alone fall in with, Khan is unclear (nothing is made of the USSR invasion of Afghanistan for example) but it is an unlikely pairing to say the least. But never mind that because he is a great baddy here and a wonderful change from all the Draxes and Strombergs.

Orlov's plan is a great piece of Bond villainy too and provides Octopussy with its real saving grace: a brilliant twenty minute sequence through East and West Germany as 007 races after a nuclear bomb. Orlov wants to force unilateral nuclear disarmament in the West by faking an accident at a US airbase, leaving NATO without its deterrent. It's a wonderful example of how an evil scheme's very plausibility can raise the stakes and make it more frightening. Dropping orchids from space to sterilise the Earth? Who's going to worry about that? But Orlov's plan, with his bomb hidden inside a circus tent, brings the threat of nuclear death right into the reality of family outings.

The mechanics of the sequence, a long convoluted chase involving trains and cars and many fights, are excellent and the drama is well above average for a Bond film, with 007 cast as the secret agent who alone knows the truth of the conspiracy. It's a proper (albeit mini) Cold War thriller and it works so well, in fact, that it doesn't really matter, as the last few beeps of the countdown sound, that James Bond is a middle aged man in a clown costume.

It's impossible to ignore Moore's age in Octopussy. I'm not actually sure that the film, or his portrayal suffer very much because if it, but it can distract the attention if, like me, you are waiting for signs of decrepitude, knowing that his time is nearly up. Always a visibly relaxed actor, it's hard to tell if he's merely going through the motions here or not, but I doubt it. There is perhaps a slight loss of intensity compared with FYEO but that could be as much down to the excessive amount of jokes as anything else. Moore's still in good shape here for a man of 56 and, thanks to some hard-working stunt men, Bond is able to save the world once again. But this would have been a good time to call it a day.

* * *

Pre-Credits Sequence: For the first time in ages, Bond is on a mission rather than just getting randomly set upon or tangled-up in something. This is the one with the mini-jet hidden in a horse's backside. The aerial work is not unimpressive but, as spy-gadgets go it's rather ostentatious isn't it? Interestingly, the target here is South American military hardware - I'd always assumed it was supposed to be Cuba, but now (what with the polo references), as I write this I wonder if it wasn't supposed to be Argentina. That's a bit much isn't it? Let bygones be bygones and all that, I say. [Moore's biography claims it's Cuba, just so you know, but the credits refer explicitly to 'South American' troops.]

Theme: Raise your glasses, this is the last hurrah of that mighty lumbering dinosaur, the Bond Ballad. All Time High is yet another innocuous three minutes of blandness but from now on it's going to be MOR rock-pop numbers all the way. Meanwhile, Binder can't leave the gymnastics alone, even if somebody has bought him a laser pointer to play with.

Deaths: 44. Slightly below par but then everyone seems to be taking it easy this time.

Memorable Deaths: 009, dressed as a clown, crashes through the British Ambassador's french doors with a Fabergé egg in his hand. I'd say that was memorable.

Licence to Kill: 39 - it's high, but then Bond did blow up a large aircraft hangar full of South/Central American troops. Many of them were seen to escape but there were certainly some left inside - I've estimated 25. More unusually, Bond's kill tally is a very high proportion of the overall death toll: 89% in fact, fact-fans!

Exploding Helicopters: 0. Again. Next time though, eh? Must be one next time?

Shags: 2. (Magda, the 'bad' Bond woman here, must have the highest ratio of hair-to-body mass of anyone in the series.)

Crimes Against Women: Bond complains that having an island just for women is "sexual discrimination" and then stages a sort of Fathers4Justice style protest, going there in a crocodile-shaped submarine and shagging the boss woman. That'll learn them pesky women's libbers. He also uses government equipment to ogle a co-worker's breasts. Otherwise he's quite well-behaved. The production team make the most of Octopussy's all-woman outfit by ensuring that the costume designer makes their outfits out of very little.

Casual Racism: Bond is helped by a very stereotypical-looking couple of sausage-munching Germans. As for India, well, perhaps this is an apt point at which to mention the great work Sir Roger has done for UNICEF for many years.

Out of Time: Can't really imagine Bond being given a fountain pen these days. The Barbara Woodhouse reference is classic 1983. There were plans (apparently) for a Charles and Diana cameo à la FYEO but this never happened, luckily.

Fashion Disasters: The clown costume is surely an all time low for 007. Everything the women of the Octopus cult wear is highly suspect. There's an honest-to-goodness Nehru jacket for Jourdan and one last safari-suit for Moore.

Eh?: The Egg plot just disappears, but that might be because it didn't make any sense in the first place. Let's get this as straight as we can. Khan and Orlov are stealing art from the USSR and smuggling it out of the country. To cover their tracks they are getting fakes made and leaving them in Russia. 009 somehow gets involved with this and steals a fake Fabergé egg which then ends up in London with 007. But if this fake was made by Orlov then why is the original up for auction in London? If it is missing from the USSR, won't they notice it reaching £500,000 at Sotheby's? And why do Khan and Orlov need the original back? It's the fake that they end up buying and it's the fake that was stolen from them by 009, so... they're sorted then aren't they? When they do get the original back from Bond, Orlov smashes it thinking it's the fake - so where is the fake? Khan seems to know that it is the original that's been smashed but doesn't say anything and the fake is never seen again, not even in the pile of treasures that gets smuggled on the train. And finally, was the whole jewel smuggling operation thought up just to create a way to get the bomb into West Germany? >> If not, their smuggling operation is a LOT more complicated than it needs to be given that Orlov can just take the jewels to India in his helicopter. >> If Octopussy's circus is based in Europe, why do so many of its staff live in India? >> Famously, each clown's make up is unique, so how come there's another clown that looks just like Bond? And even if 007 has just nabbed a spare costume and miraculously accidentally copied another clown's face, then surely having two identical clowns would be blindingly obvious to the circus people? All of which misses the obvious point which is how come Bond - who is racing to defuse an atomic bomb, remember - thinks he has time to apply clown make up? >> This weeks top-ranking British intelligence officers off on a wander: M saunters around Checkpoint Charlie and Q is sent to India where he sits by himself on a river bank all night, keeping watch. >> There are obviously staffing issues in MI6 though as Q's right-hand man, Smithers, (from FYEO, keep track) is doubling up as a taxi driver to follow suspicious foreigners. >> Bond has about 8 seconds to climb out of that gorilla suit. >> But then he manages to get in and out of that ludicrous crocodile submarine too? >> If the lake is full of crocodiles, how did the assassins swim across? >> When Bond is trying to listen in on Khan, the bug picks up interference from Magda's hair-dryer - but why is she using it? Her hair's  not wet! She also spots Bond creeping about the house and doesn't raise the alarm. >> Is it really practical for the circus to put on two shows in one day in different cities? How long does it take them to take down/put up the marquee? And Karlmarxstadt (now Chemnitz) is a good way from the border with West Germany... >> When Bond is 'driving' the car along the rails he keeps wiggling the steering wheel for some reason. >> Why does Khan take Octopussy on the plane? What's he going to do with her? >> Why does the plane crash once Bond jumps out? Khan just seems to forget how to pilot it. >> Proving that the KGB are just as reckless with their top officers (or that Anglo-Soviet relations in the Bond universe are massively better than in ours), General Gogol visits M in his office for a chat. Which is nice.

Worst Line: Argh! Bond channels Barbara Woodhouse (and somehow quietens a tiger) by shouting "Si-it!". Reporting Bond's break-in, a USAF guard adds "And he's wearing a red shirt!" as if this was yet another crime 007 had committed. Worst of all though is Bond's quip, having just thrown a load of money at some impoverished Indians, as he pushes a wadge of cash into his Indian co-worker's hand: "That'll keep you in curry for a few weeks!" Stay classy, James.

Best Line: I didn't spot one. Let me know if you do.

Worst Bond Moment: Hmm.. The Tarzan yodel? The clown costume? The tuk-tuk chase? Probably that last one.

Best Bond Moment: There's a neat trick in the PCS where Bond escapes from a pair of guards by pulling the rip-cord on their parachutes. But the best bit - and you can tell it's the best bit because the Bond theme drops in - is where 007 swerves the Mercedes-Benz onto the railway and the wheel rims fit on the tracks just so.

Overall: With the clever use of the Cold War, the Germany bomb chase and Gogol's Internal Affairs subplot there's quite a bit to like here really. Imagine this with Dalton and with the Indian scenes completely rewritten and it would quickly begin to smarten up. Unfortunately, as it is, it's all a little too easy going and a little too pleased with itself. Remember: dishipline, 007, dishiplin!

James Bond Will Return: ... in From A View to a Kill (although they contrived to drop the 'From' at a later date - that's why the marketing department get paid the big bucks).

Paranoid Collage

The Internet, eh? Just chock full of STUFF. So much stuff in fact that you will never ever see it all. You won't even be able to wade through all the bits you want to see. Luckily there are people out there who are devoting themselves to organising, marshalling and curating content, sometimes even re-working it into something new, and directing it to your eyeballs.

Here's something you want to see, something that exemplifies this process. It's a collage of cover versions of Paranoid Android by Radiohead.

I know grumpy people (people anyway who are differently grumpy to me) who might say "Oh yeah, look! If you knit together all these mediocre homespun covers you end up with a version that is almost as good as that which was skilfully produced by the original artist!"

But that misses the point. Firstly, this is the point of the Internet: how wonderful that anyone can share their passion, their musicality, their personality in this way? How brilliant that their efforts could be combined so cleverly into a new and different and, arguably, wonderful version that includes contributions from so many people? How touching that people who will never know each other can collaborate on a larger project?

Secondly (and I can't stress enough how much you should click on this link), everything is a remix.