For Your Eyes Only (1981)

Directed by: John Glen | 127 minutes | action, thriller, adventure | Actors: Roger Moore, Carole Bouquet, Topol, Lynn-Holly Johnson, Julian Glover, Cassandra Harris, Jill Bennett, Michael Gothard, John Wyman, Jack Hedley, Lois Maxwell, Desmond Llewelyn, Geoffrey Keen, Walter Gotell, James Villiers

‘For Your Eyes Only’ is undoubtedly just like ‘Goldfinger’ a James Bond film, in which the title song is more widely known among the public than the story itself. Shirley Bassey sings the unforgettable ‘Goldfinger’ and Sheena Easton can do this for ‘For Your Eyes Only’.

The story of this film is of lesser quality than its predecessor ‘Moonraker’ and successor ‘Octopussy’. Ian Fleming has a clear preference for combining the battle between East and West with smugglers’ appearances in a second storyline. This is also the case here. By the way, the characters in this film are very superficial and caricatured. That is how it is acted. Normally the storylines and characters are nicely connected, but in this film a number of characters are even superfluous. Their performance adds nothing and is rather disruptive. Examples of this are Bibi Dahl and Jacoba Brink. Roger Moore does his best to hold the viewer’s attention with his performance of 007, but is not always supported by the acting performances of his fellow actors. As a result, the whole thing comes across as rather perfunctory. In a positive sense, Countess Lisl (Cassandra Harris), Melina Havelock (Carole Bouquet) and Milos Columbo (Topol) stand out. It should be noted about Cassandra Harris that at the time of the film she was married to Pierce Brosnan, who would later make his debut as James Bond in ‘Goldeneye’. Sadly, she didn’t get to experience this. She was already dead by then.

All 1980s Bond movies tend to get rather boring and long-winded in the action scenes. The ski chase and the mad ride in an ugly duckling are some examples of scenes in this film that are clearly too long. In addition to the action scenes, ‘For Your Eyes Only’ also has other scenes that cause the viewer’s attention to slacken, including the ice hockey scene halfway through and the climb at the end of the film.

Given the status of the James Bond films, it is a shame that several stitches have been dropped in this film, so that ‘For Your Eyes Only’ cannot really live up to expectations.