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Moonraker
UK / France 1979
produced by Albert R. Broccoli, Michael G. Wilson (executive) for EON Productions, Les Productions Artistes Associés
directed by Lewis Gilbert
starring Roger Moore, Lois Chiles, Michael Lonsdale, Richard Kiel, Corinne Cléry, Bernard Lee, Geoffrey Keen, Desmond Llewelyn, Lois Maxwell, Toshiro Suga, Emily Bolton, Blanche Ravalec, Irka Bochenko, Mike Marshall, Leila Shenna, Anne Lonnberg, Jean-Pierre Castaldi, Walter Gotell, Douglas Lambert, Arthur Howard, Alfie Bass, Brian Keith, George Birt, Kim Fortune, Lizzie Warville, Johnny Traber's Troupe, Nicholas Arbez, Guy Di Rigo, Chris Dillinger, Claude Carliez, Georges Beller, Denis Seurat, Chichinou Kaeppler, Christina Hui, Françoise Gayat, Nicaise Jean-Louis, Catherine Serre, Béatrice Libert
screenplay by Christopher Wood, based on the novel by Ian Fleming, music by John Barry, title song performed by Shirley Bassey, production design by Ken Adam
James Bond, James Bond (Roger Moore), EON's James Bond, Jaws (Richard Kiel)
review by Mike Haberfelner
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After a space shuttle just disappears in mid air while attached to a
carrier plane (which crashed as a consequence), the British Secret Service
sends James Bond (Roger Moore) to investigate - first to the USA, where
Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale), manufacturer of the shuttle and NASA
contractor, resides. Bond soon gets mighty friendly (the James Bond way)
with one of Drax's employees, Corinne Dufour (Corinne Cléry), who's more
than willing to show Bond the safe Drax keeps the shuttle layouts in. Drax
tries to get Bond killed but fails, but he sends his top assassin Chang
(Toshiro Suga) after him. In Venice, Italy Bond inspects a glass
manufacturer in Drax's employ, kills Chang, meets Drax's gorgeous got
scientist Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles), who turns out to be a CIA agent
and who plays hard to get, and drives a hovercraft-gondola across St.
Mark's Square, and ultimately follows a clue to Brazil. In Rio de
Janeiro, Bond hooks up with the good Ms Goodhead again (in more meanings
of the word than one), while Drax sends Bond's old nemesis Jaws (Richard
Kiel) after him, who much like Wile E. Coyote in the Roadrunner
cartoons, seems to die at the end of every chase sequence but is perfectly
fine the next scene. Ultimately, Bond and Goodhead make it to Drax's
secret hide-out in the Brazilian jungle, a secret shuttle launch facility
from where Drax wants to send the "best of the best" to his
secret space station circling the earth, then commit genocide by covering
the world in a poisonous gas that kills only humans (but all of them)
before returning "his" masterrace to earth to repopulate the
place - with him as their God. Bond and Goodhead are to die in the thrust
of one of the shuttles taking off, but instead manage to shuttlenap one of
the things, go up to Drax's space station and alert NASA to send up one of
their shuttles, manned with a bunch of marines carrying laser guns. Bond's
plot is found out of course, and Drax wants to send him and Goodhead to
outer space, but they receive unexpected help from Jaws, who has realized
that Drax's utopia has no place for him and his short-sighted pint-sized
girlfriend (Blanche Ravalec), and utlimately saves Bond's ass more than
once. And of course, in the last scene, Bond and Goodhead have a
"romantic" moment in the weightlessness of outer space ... Certainly
not one of the objectively better James Bond movies, and
nowadays the target of much ridicule, this one was actually the most
successful film of the series, box office wise, until 1995's Goldeneye
(before inflation adjustment at least). The source of ridicule is of
course easily spotted: In an effort to cash in on the success of 1977's Star
Wars, this movie threw all logic that makes a good spy thriller
overboard to get at least some of the space opera money, so for the finale
it's a space station and laser weapons, with the bad guy having an
especially evil agenda fit for an outer space overlord. The plot that
leads to it is really of little importance, merely a hanger for some
action setpieces, accompanied by cartoon violence and quite a bit of
slapstick, making the film little more than goofy ... and somehow that's
exactly what makes the movie good fun. Sure, if you stop for just a second
to think about the film's inner logic (starting with the question why
would a shuttle manufactuerer steal back one of his own shuttles while he
has just successfully produced a series of them in secret), you'll
probably hit a brick wall, let alone the film's relative neglect of laws
of nature, but if you just take this as a mindless romp and only come for
the ride, you'll quite possibly enjoy this more than your brain tells you
you should.
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