The 007 Project: For Your Eyes Only

Synopsis in 3 sentences or less:
A British ship carrying a device that controls nuclear subs is sunk, and the device is stolen. Bond is sent to recover the device and teams with Melina Havelock, the daughter of a murdered marine archaeologist. They travel to the Italian Alps and then to Greece, where they battle the perpetrators for the device in a monastery atop a high cliff.

Memorable Quote:
Forgive me father for I have sinned  ~Bond

That's putting it mildy, 007  ~Q

Highlight:

Melina Havelock is one of my favorite Bond ladies -- beautiful and a bad-ass, but also seems relatable and kind.  

Lowlight:

In contrast to the Moonraker opening which was amazing, this opening leaves a lot to be desired. It starts out with a good hook of Bond visiting his former wife Tracy's grave, but it goes downhill from there. The villain controlling the plane is meant to be Blofeld, but they couldn't call him that because of the copyright dispute with Kevin McClory over the rights to Blofeld. Regardless, while the idea of revenge on Blofeld is promising, the Blofeld here is not the menace of old and instead is a bumbling fool with ridiculous lines of dialogue. 

Most interesting piece of IMDB trivia:

Sir Roger Moore was not happy about the scene where he cold-bloodedly kills Locque by pushing his teetering car off of a cliff. Although Moore acknowledged that this was a Bond thing to do, he didn't feel that it was a Sir Roger Moore Bond thing to do. Michael G. Wilson also added that he and Richard Maibaum, along with John Glen, toyed with other ideas surrounding that scene, but ultimately everyone, even Moore, agreed to do the scene as originally written.

Other thoughts, observations, and questions I didn’t ask when I was in fourth grade:

• Some of the stars in this movie include:
• Cassandra Harris as the Countess. She was married to Pierce Brosnan at the time of filming, and Brosnan visited the set and caught the eye of the producers.
• Julian Glover as Kristatos. You might remember him as Walter Donovan from the best movie of all time. He gives a good performance here, although his accent sounds more Irish than Greek to me. 
• Lynn-Holly Johnson as figure skater Bibi Dahl. You might remember her as Soviet agent Ingrid Bannister in the MacGyver episode The Enemy Within. Just as in that episode, I find her likable but not a great actress. Before she got into acting, she was an accomplished figure skater.
• Bill Conti as composer. You might remember him as the composer of Rocky. The score here is decent, but there's not enough of the traditional Bond music for my liking, especially during the ski sequence.
• Speaking of the ski sequence, it's great, and I like how they creatively incorporate the Winter Olympics venues, in particular the ski jump scene. It is funny how the bad guy who follows him down the ski jump screws it up for the other bad guys, who had Bond pinned perfectly from all directions. 
• We're past the point in the series where Roger Moore just looks too old to be a secret agent, and he still has two more movies left. The ages of the actors during filming were:
• Roger Moore: 53
• Carole Bouquet: 23
• Lynn-Holly Johnson: 22
• Thats a big age gap and even too much for Bond when it comes to resisting the advances of Bibi Dahl. 
• 53:20 -- the same dude again as in the last two movies, looking at Bond with surprise and then at his drink. Interesting also how all three scenes with him are in Italy. 
• There aren't too many guards on the mountain monastery, so why not just approach by helicopter? Also, shouldn't there have been a guard or two at the base of the mountain?

Final Analysis:

I believe I had only seen this movie once before, and so watching it now was kind of like watching it for the first time. Overall I enjoyed it, and other than the opening it was solid throughout. Ranking it 4 out of 12.