The Spy Who Loved Me

The Spy Who Loved Me often gets compared to Goldfinger for what it meant for the respective Bond actor - namely that both Moore and Connery were 3 films in when they made their archetypal and arguably left their most iconic stamp on the series with that third film. For Goldfinger it was slotting the classic Bond templates into place, for Moore it is taking the epic stylings of You Only Live Twice, and proving that Rooge certainly does it better.

For that is (more or less) the title track for this Bond film - Carly Simon's "Nobody Does it Better" going against the trend of having the title song more often than not referring to the villain, and instead providing our hero with a piano led power ballad bigging up Bond. With the title track seguing in from an pre-credits sequence as iconic as Connery's scuba-gear to tuxedo reveal in Goldfinger, being a spectacular ski to Union Jack parachute stunt, the two elements of the opening sequence and song work in tandem as a mission statement: this film wants you to have fun on an epic scale, with its tongue firmly planted in its cheek.


(I can't go much further with acknowledging the immortal Alan Partridge episode where he recreates the introduction of The Spy Who Loved Me where I sadly see a little bit too much of myself...)

With such a knowing attitude, just the right side of self-parody, mixed with genuinely spectacular action set pieces, Moore is the only Bond in the canon who could gracefully navigate between these two tones, without you hearing the gears change. He manages to effortlessly flit between joking winks, whether it is when famous truly "convertible" Lotus Esprit, goes from land to submarine and back on to land again, with Moore daintily dropping out crab out of the car window, or to leading an all out assault on the villain's command room at the end, Moore rises to challenge.

Unlike in The Man with the Golden Gun, Moore is never required to dirty his hands in some of the more Connery-esque darkness (although he still doesn't shy away from a few misogynistic comments, most notably the wince inducing "women drivers" remark), but the first act of the movie finds him in a more serious, dare I say spy like mode. There the plot revolves around nuclear missile subs being stolen from the Allies and Axis, it is up to the super spy to track down the submarine tracking device.

In doing so, he tangles with another iconic figure of the series - the steel toothed mountain of man, Jaws (played by gentle giant Richard Kiel). As the lead henchman of the villain, Jaws' introduction in the ghoulish shadows of the pyramids of Giza is played completely straight, leaning into horror.  Whilst it is disappointing that over the course of the film, Jaws becomes more of a comedic character (which will be doubled down on in the following film), his earlier scenes are nightmarish, particularly his ghastly method of execution (hint: the teeth), and a genuine jump scare in a Bond film when, like a classic bogeyman, he emerges from a wardrobe to ambush Bond and his uneasy Russian spy counterpart ally, Anya Amasova, played with steely control by Barbara Bach, but embarrassingly code-named Agent XXX...

Amasova sees the Bond series taking some baby steps towards equality in its attitudes towards women, but let's not forget that Bond still makes the "women drivers" dig, and despite the fact that she is clearly Bond's equal, often besting him, she still ends up wearing very little by the end of the film, under lock and key of the villain, waiting to be rescued. As it is both English and Russian nuclear submarines that have gone missing, this leads to a temporary alliance between the West and Soviet Union, which was likely seen as fairly progressive at the time, as the film was released in the midst of the Cold War. Amasova starts the film as being quite clearly Bond's equal, and she even manages to hoodwink Bond, thanks in part to his chronic underestimation of anyone who isn't called James Bond. However, the plot has to have Bond come out on top by the end, thus leading to her doing next to nothing for the final third of the film.

Anya also brings in an under utilised angle for the film, as she has a personal vendetta against Bond. In the pre-credit sequence, Bond happens to kill a Russian spy, who turns out to be the lover of Amasova. For a significant portion of the film she is vowing vengeance against her lover's killer, unaware that Bond is that killer. Unfortunately, this sub-plot is significantly underdeveloped, with Anya finding out that Bond did kill him, vowing to kill Bond, but of course by the end, hostilities are forgetting, in the name of, "keeping the British end up" as Bond puts it... 

And what a pyrotechnic ending - here were get a remix of You Only Live Twice's volcano siege but instead taking place on the villain's massive submarine eating tanker (another wonderful set designed by Ken Adams, complete with world domination globe). Bond manages to free the captured English and Russian prisoners who band together to gain entry to the control room. Whilst this appears to be nothing more than a retread of You Only Live Twice's ending, it is a more engaging sequence, that doesn't simply stick to endless gunfights until the closure. Instead, it mixes up Bond cooperating and leading squads of troops, working to disarm a nuke, and smartly working out a way to blast open the control room.

But why would he need to get in the control room, Joe, you haven't mentioned what the villain's plot is at all? Ah yeah, there's a reason for that. Unfortunately, the central villain, Karl Stromberg, is easily the weakest piece of the film. His plan is to fire the nukes at Moscow and New York City, thus triggering a global nuclear war, so that he may then start a new civilisation under the sea...It is one of the more barmy plans (which, like Jaws, will only be increased tenfold on the barmy scale in the next film), and it is sufficient enough to get Bond globetrotting to stop it, but Stromberg himself is just a bit bland. He spends a significant portion of the film simply sitting behind a grand table, pressing buttons to kill off various people. What makes him interesting are his peripheries, notably Jaws, a pool full of the other jaws (sharks) to kill badly behaved employees, and the fact that we briefly see that he has webbed hands (thus his obsession with aquatic life). As Dr Evil once said, Stromberg is the "diet Coke of evil."

However, one average bad guy does not sink the epic scale classic Bond romp, that like Goldfinger, provides the Bond of that time their trademark film and tone - for Moore it was  the seamless merging of the epic with the arch humour, licence to kick back and enjoy. And where do all franchises go when they've hit their highest heights - forget the sky being the limit, for Bond it is space...