Reviewing Bond: The Spy Who Loved Me

Settings & Story

The settings of The Spy Who Loved Me are extremely well utilized and memorable, most notably the villain lair of Atlantis in the middle of the sea, which is villain Stromberg’s research facility. it is among the most elaborate designs ever accomplished by Ken Adam. It’s a spaceship like exterior with a palatial interior fully equipped with panoramic ocean or sea/marine life views (depending on whether it’s submerged or not). It of course has a shark tank trap too. It’s as if Dr. No’s base were set at sea.

Our pre credits ski scene in Austria is breathtaking not only for its visuals but the incredible ski-jump stunt (more on that later).

The use of Egypt is incredibly well done, especially for its tribute to Lawrence of Arabia with Roger Moore doing his best Peter O’Toole along with score from the 1962 epic. I think it’s lovely the way they show a varied Egypt, not just the pyramids and the city streets of Cairo, but also the Nile Delta, which is an essential part of Egypt’s economy dating back to ancient times. The scene in the pyramids at night was a suspenseful, almost horror-movie like introduction to Jaws. The daytime scene in the ruins of ancient pillars where our two spies encounter Jaws in the high desert is thrilling, providing a memorable encounter through use of its environs. Egypt feels really lively and colorful in this film, giving the first half of our story a distinct adventure vibe almost like an Indiana Jones film.

After Egypt we go to Italy, specifically Sardinia. I think that the Lotus car chase that takes place there really utilizes the beautiful, stunning countryside and winding roads effectively.

The ending of the film is pretty much contained to a large tanker ship. This is definitely another standout piece of set design by Ken Adam. However, it’s not quite as iconic as the Atlantis sea lab. That said it’s still convincingly done and memorable. It doesn’t just feel like another oil tanker, it genuinely feels like a floating forward operating base fir for a Bond villain.

Overall 10/10 for settings. The settings are iconic and well utilized throughout.

Story

The story to A Spy Who Loved Me is a pretty interesting premise: Bond is sent into the field to meet his match in a female Soviet agent, XXX, a.k.a Major Anya Amasova (played by American actress Barbara Bach). I really like this dynamic between the two of them, and I think it’s what sets this film apart from a lot of other outings where bond has a girl trying to act as his equal. I especially love how they’re always revealing how much they know about each other and their respective country’s intelligence, which is a fun nod to the spy games they are both part of. There is an almost comedic exchange between the two, where Bond tries to one up her at all times, and she keeps up, even outmaneuvering him at times. It’s not clear at first that she is an ally, but rather a friendly adversary. When they are allies, Bond still tries to assert his masculinity as the dominant. It feels like a playful game, with delightful chemistry between Moore and Barabara Bach— who is just absolutely stunning in this role. While some fans bemoan the fact she is captured, so is Bond. I don’t think you can say she failed, or ever felt like a damsel in distress, she is perfectly capable as a sexy super spy who knows how to manipulate a situation to her advantage. I also think Anya Amasova has a very good back story, unlike some other Bond girls given a tremendous amount of agency and ability who don’t have as much character development. Not only are Bond and Amasova equals, creating a very inserting dynamic but in the pre-credits sequence Bond kills her lover, and that comes back to bite him later in the story when Amasova wants to kill him in revenge. Of course she puts their professional differences inside and creates a bit of an international scandal by sleeping with Bond as the two are discovered by their respective nations in a compromised position.

So what is our main plot to this film? Two nuclear submarines, one British, one Soviet, go missing. Our secret service and intelligence gathering agencies determine that someone is selling military tracking technology on the open market, allowing Soviets or others who come into possession of this technology to track nuclear submarines, rendering defense capabilities useless. Of course, James Bond is sent into the field to investigate who might be selling this information, and so is Anya Amasova for the Russians.

Before our spies learn anything, the audience already knows that a man named Karl Stromberg, who lives out at sea in an elaborate lair, is the one who has commissioned the submarine theft and has himself developed the illicit tracking technology as one of the richest men in the world. The fact that anyone is selling this technology is only due to a betrayal of him, and he sets out to have Jaws, the iconic henchman, kill anyone who has come into contact with the blueprints for this submarine tracking technology.

We later come to learn that Stromberg is stealing the submarines for their nuclear capabilities. Specifically, he plans to use the submarines to start nuclear war, or mutually assured destruction, to bring about the end of civilization above sea. He is so obsessed with sea, like Drax in space, that he wants to colonize the underwater world and make his own Atlantis society. Stromberg sees himself as a sort of God, a man who is such a megalomaniac that he wishes to write history, not just create it.

Naturally Bond and Amasova are on to him, and after they zoom in on the details of his stollen blueprints, they’re able to put together the pieces of who is actually behind this tracking technology. They learn that a large vessel of his is the one abducting the submarines, similar to the way the giant spacecraft of SPECTRE is abducting other spacecraft in You Only Live Twice. It’s a very similar concept of craft abduction, and for similar ends: bring about mutually assured destruction between the super powers to benefit the villain’s goal. So a little bit of derivativeness here. But then again, these are based on Fleming’s works, albeit the novel The Spy Who Loved Me is a very different story to the script we get here.

Bond boards an American submarine with Amasova, presumably to be used as bait. After the submarine they are on is captured by Stromberg, the two are captured and separated along with the entire crew of the submarine. Amasova is taken by Stromberg to Atlantis while James is left to escape from the ship with the help of the US Navy captives. It leads to a really great and explosive gun battle finale aboard the vessel, where Bond, with the help of his fellow captives, blows open the mission room to prevent the nuclear missiles being launched at Western and Eastern European cities. With the help of his American allies, they instead reroute the missiles to blow up the nuclear subs themselves, which at this time are filled with Stromberg’s henchmen. 

It’s a really good story, simple and easy to follow. It’s not over-baked or convoluted, and the real standout is the fact that we get Bond with a true equal with a pretty great backstory. Despite the fact that you have the Soviets and the British working together on this mission, which is unusual in itself, it’s got a lot of really good stuff going for it, including some great score and one of the best henchmen in the entire series at his most menacing. I happen to think it’s one of the more engaging stories of the franchise. It still has a ridiculous villain plan at the end of it all, but it’s presented in a very grounded way. 

I also think that, similar to a lot of other later Moore films, this film has terrific dialog. I really love the bit where Jaws breaks into the train that Bond and Amasova are on. After Bond sends Jaws through a window and out the train carriage, he goes back to the room where Anya was knocked out. As she wakes, James quips “he was just stopping by for a bite.” Absolutely hysterical. I think I laughed for 30 seconds straight. It’s just really good stuff, and it’s what makes it a standout Bond film, it not among the very best of the series. 10/10

A very strong perfection score of 10/10 for setting and story.

Gadgets & Vehicles

A lot of fans bemoan the Lotus submarine car as one of the more outrageous Q-lab contributions. It is often compared to the invisible car of Die Another Day. However I don’t think that’s fair. The invisible Aston Martin makes the mistake of trying to explain itself, and that sets it up to be picked apart. The writers of The Spy Who Loved Me don’t make that mistake, they present it and don’t explain how it works. You’re simply led to embrace the fantasy of it. That’s why it works and in my opinion it is one of the standouts of the entire series. It gets a great car chase and underwater sequence with some excellent tradeoffs between Bond and Amasova. The scene where it exits the water to stunned Italian holiday makers is just quintessential Roger Moore Bond. I love it!

Another vehicle, although only briefly used, is the Little Nellie JetSki. Q delivers the package to be assembled to the US Submarine where Bond is on mission. He later uses it to breach the Atlantis lair for the final villain showdown.

Our gadgets in this one are pretty light, but that’s expected when your hero is in a literal submarine car. Bond has his watch, and a microfilm device used to analyze the stollen blueprints. We get some throw away gags too with Q in the field in Cairo: a hookah gun, tea tray guillotine and cement sprayer.

Overall it’s a pretty iconic outing, 9/10 only for being a little light on gadgets apart from our iconic vehicle.

Action Sequences

Beginning with our pre-credits sequence and through to the finale, our film has some truly great varied action. A lot of the Bond films tend to over-utilize one style of action, i.e too many vehicle chases in Live and Let Die or ramped up to ten outlandish to the point of unbelievable action in films like Die Another Day. This film manages to strike the perfect balance.

The opening credits sequence here is probably the greatest stunt in Bond cinematic history. It features stuntman Rick Sylvester, who base jumped off Mount Asgard in Canada before deploying a parachute patterned in a Union Jack flag. He had to not only base jump off a cliff, but remove his skis midair while managing to not be knocked out by them and then deploy a parachute. This stunt absolutely could have killed him. Even the audience has its breath taken away, as we stay with the stuntman/Bond for several agonizing seconds as he falls through the air with no score, just windy silence. Finally, after what feels like forever, he pulls the cord and we are sent floating away into Carly Simon’s top tier Bond song, Nobody Does it Better. This scene is just unbelievable and it wasn’t cheap either, as they needed several cameras to capture this feat, with only one capturing the final take. It was reported to have cost $500,000, making it the most expensive stunt in cinema history at the time (1976). 

Bond is otherwise pretty grounded in much of the action throughout. The film is mostly concerned with spy-fare, and sneaking around Cairo and greater Egypt. This sets up some great hand to hand combat between Bond and henchmen, most notably Jaws.  Unlike Moonraker, where he is no less lethal but rather a comedic relief character, Jaws feels terrifying here. He is a physical unit, capable of machine like destruction, such as when he pulls apart the van Amasova and Bond seek to escape in.

The car chase in Sardinia is outstanding, providing both inventive vehicle uses in addition to some great comedic relief (such as when the henchmen car falls through the country cottage roof to the disdain of a wine sipping Italian local as Jaws exits uninjured). The scene builds upon itself like a video game level with tiered difficulty of villains as Bond’s Lotus climbs higher into the countryside mountain: we get a motorcyclist, then several cars, concluding with a helicopter. The last henchman, flown by femme fatale Naomi forces Bond to put the car into water where we conclude our chase under the sea in submarine combat mode. While some fans bemoan this lack of realism, this is exactly the sort of action I watch Bond films for!

The finale aboard the oil tanker Lapidus features some great sound stage work. An additional stage was built at Pinewood studios for this great sequence that sees Bond and the US Navy battle for control of the tanker. We get gun battles, hand to hand combat, grenades, and impossible feats of creativity to exploit the control room in the end. It feels quite a bit like the finale in the volcano lair in You Only Live Twice and that’s a high compliment. 

The action of this film is balanced and blended with variation and creativity while managing to strike the Bond formula perfectly right. 10/10

Bond Villain & Bond Girls

Our primary villain is the other richest guy in the world, not Drax, but his sea-faring counterpart: Karl Stromberg played by German-Austria actor Curd Jurgens. Like Drax, he is a megalomaniac who wants to write human history only after destroying much of it. His dream is to live in his Atlantis lair, while creating broader Atlantis itself. He envisions a seafaring community free from the excesses of corrupt modern life on land. While he doesn’t go as far as Drax in selecting how to populate that world, he does at least come close to envisioning it. He’s got a great lair and arguably the series’ best henchman, but as a villain in his own right he doesn’t have enough screen time to be memorable in the way some other larger than life megalomaniacs of the series are. He is underutilized in our story, as he is absent in much of it. When we do see him, he is appropriately callous and narcissistic. He just feels underdeveloped and therefore a cookie-cutter Bond villain compared to the incredible film around him. 6/10.

While our main villain is not a scene stealing show stopper, our henchman very much is. This is our first of two films featuring Jaws, and in this film he is practically a horror movie monster despite a lot of comedic relief employed around him in this outing as well. His imposing physical presence and unique execution style with his metallic mouth full of serrated steel teeth make for the most memorable of all Bond henchmen. Not only do we see him take down men, but he even bites through sharks (probably my favorite scene with him in the film). In addition to his steel teeth, he is strong enough to rip through steel himself and survive what would kill most mortal men. He is an outrageous concept played to silent, menacing perfection by Richard Kiel. 10/10

The primary Bond girl here is Anya Amasova, played by American actress, model and Beatles wife, Barbara Bach (she has been married to Ring Starr since 1981). Unlike many female agents Bond will team up with throughout the series, Anya is perhaps best suited as his well developed equal. Sure some Bond women kick more ass (Jinx, Wei-Lin), others may seem more smart (Dr. Goodhead), or even more varied in talents like Bond (Pam Bouvier and her ability to fly). However, Anya is the most completely developed equal to Bond, while still feeling feminine. I love that we get this playful exchange between her Russian allegiances and his British, and how they know things about each other along with their operations. Watching them compete for the same MacGuffin is unique as well as their later unconventional alliance. The subsequent film tries to build on the success of this competitive partnership between Bond and Amasova with Bond and Goodhead. However I personally like the chemistry between Bond and Amasova more, and it gets bonus points for being the first film to do this and do it well. Unlike Goodhead who doesn’t really have all that much character development outside her reveal as a CIA agent, Amasova loses her lover at the hands of Bond in the beginning of the film. This creates a subtle tension until this fact is later revealed, making the audience wonder whether Amasova will take revenge. Ultimately they accept the result of their professional pursuits, and that the death of her lover was not personal. The ending of the film causing a bit of a scandal as both Western and Eastern intelligence partners find them post-coital is terrific. She is among the very best in the series if not also the most stunning. 10/10.

With possibly the greatest henchman of all time, an outstanding Bond girl who is the first to try and be Bond’s actual equal, and in spite of a lackluster main villain, this category earns an impressive 9/10.

Wildcard!

This film is not only supremely entertaining, it’s gorgeous as well. Especially the scenes in Egypt, which are beautifully shot and color-graded. The scenes there really pop, and not only when they are trying to emulate the Oscar-winning epic Lawrence of Arabia. This cinematic style allows for greater immersion and appreciation of film as an art form not just entertainment. You compare this film to that of For Your Eyes Only and you can see why many feel the latter looks made for TV. 10/10

Conclusion.

I think a case can be made that The Spy Who Loved Me is possibly the greatest James Bond film ever made. Without ruining the final ranking post which will come later this week, probably by the weekend, this film deservingly ties Goldeneye for the coveted perfection score of 10/10. Nobody does it better!