Fellmans Movie Reviews

Red = Spoilers 

The Spy Who Loved Me is the tenth James Bond film in the franchise and the third to star Roger Moore. Fun fact: the Bond girl in this movie, whose real name is Barbara Bach, is the wife of former Beatles drummer, Ringo Starr. This movie, as well as the remaining four Roger Moore Bond films all have something to do with nuclear weapons, seeing as these movies are all taking place at the height of the Cold War. The Russians are always the antagonists in these movies. One way or the other. We’re working with them, but there’s always a hostile Russian who could always go crazy. You never know… 

What’s it about? The film starts on a nuclear submarine where sailors are casually sitting, and playing a game of chess when alarms start going off and calls are heard to go to alert stations. The Captain is unable to do anything about his situation, and next we see a couple lying in bed when “Agent XXX” receives a message to report for their next assignment. The agent turns out to be the woman when she confirms the message, and the man gets up to leave. Then, James Bond gets a message on his wrist-printer, telling him to report for duty. And he has to leave immediately and ski down a hill. When he leaves his cabin, he’s chased by four men. One of them he kills as he skis off the face of the cliff and releases a parachute with the British flag on it, landing safely at the bottom. The KGB General tells Agent XXX that her lover was killed by someone in British intelligence before sending her on her next assignment to find the plans for their stolen nuclear submarine. Bond heads to Cairo to meet a man named Fekkish but is ambushed in the hotel room. He finds out Fekkish is going to the Pyramids later that night and follows him there. When he gets there, he sees Fekkish talking to Anya Amasova, Agent XXX. Fekkish goes off by himself and is ambushed by Jaws, an assassin. Bond finds the name Max Kalba on Fekkish’s body and goes to meet him at his club. When he gets there, he runs into agent XXX again and they both go to talk to Kalba together. Before they get a chance to buy the plans for the submarines back, Kalba is called away and killed by Jaws. Bond finds the body and follows Jaws, quickly being followed by Anya. They recover the plans from Jaws and take them back to their superiors who are now pooling their resources and working together to find the two stolen nuclear subs. They discover evidence linking the plans to Boris Stromberg, one of the richest men in the world. On a train to Sardinia, Stromberg’s base, Anya and Bond are attacked by Jaws when Bond saves Anya’s life and the two share a romantic evening together, turning their professional relationship romantic. Later, Anya finds out that Bond was in Austria the same time that her lover died, and she asks if Bond killed him. He admits that it was him or Bond and he had no choice. Anya tells Bond that when the mission is over, she is going to kill him. The two board the USS Wayne to go view The Liparus, a huge tanker that Stromberg owns. But the USS Wayne is captured by the Liparus, which is then found out to be a three bay floating submarine dock. After getting the crew out of the Wayne, Stromberg begins the operations of his plan. He loads nuclear missiles onto the stolen submarines and aims them at New York and Moscow, planning to destroy them and collapse the rest of the world. Which Stromberg would survive, on his underwater base, Atlantis. Stromberg takes Anya and heads for Atlantis after locking all of the Americans away on the Liparus. Bond subsequently frees them, they defeat Stromberg’s crew, and escape the Liparus on the third American sub. Wayne is ordered to destroy Atlantis, but because Anya is still on there with Stromberg, Bond wants to save her first. The captain gives him an hour before he has to fire the torpedoes at Atlantis. Bond leaves to go find Anya and rescue her. He finds Stromberg and kills him. But before he can find Anya, is once again confronted by Jaws. This time he traps Jaws with a giant magnet, dropping him into a shark tank. Which Jaws then ironically bites to death. Bond then goes and rescues Anya as the Wayne is forced to fire on Atlantis because they’re over the time limit on their orders. Bond and Anya make it into the escape pod just in time to get off of the underwater facility and are found naked in the pod by the Royal Navy and the superiors of the two spies.  

What’s good? I think this one has a good plot. It’s a good story with the supervillain-like Stromberg and the nuclear subs. The Cold War thing kind of makes it go a little sideways, but that happened to a lot of things back then. I also like the design of Atlantis, Stromberg’s underwater hideout. That’s actually pretty cool. If I was some kind of billionaire recluse, I would totally do something like that. I don’t know if I would steal nuclear submarines or not… 

What’s bad? We’re getting into the era of over-acting here. The age of exaggeration. When even “Over the Top” wasn’t over the top enough. Some of these guys falling down when they get shot would make five-year-olds look Oscar worthy. It’s really, kind of ridiculous.  

The acting? You know how when basketball players flop, and the ref calls a penalty for it, because it was obvious that they were faking it? That’s what a lot of these guys look like when they get shot. They’re not good at it. It’s like an old western “Oh! You got me!” kind of thing… 

The effects? Technology was just starting to catch up with Hollywood in the idea that everybody who wanted to do special effects could. It wasn’t as hard as it used to be. It was getting to be pretty standardized by now. So, naturally, as a filmmaker, you would want to fit in as many of those special effects as you could in an action film like James Bond.  

Agent XXX is a woman. You see a man and a woman in bed together and the man says he has to leave for his mission. And then the box calls for Agent XXX and she responds, and you’re hoisted by your own petard. Because you’re so used to seeing James Bond as the one having sex and running off.  

Tell him to pull out immediately. The old double entendre. Q tells Moneypenny to call for Bond and tell him to pull out immediately and report for duty. I’m sure Moneypenny had no problem issuing that order… 

Bond had to be expecting a trap. Why would they pack a parachute like that and all those gadgets if he wasn’t expecting a trap as he was leaving the cabin? He was clearly expecting to be ambushed as he left. Or else he wouldn’t have prepared so heavily for it. Better safe than sorry, I suppose. 

The title sequences are not as good. The Roger Moore James Bond title sequences aren’t as good as the Sean Connery films are. The Sean Connery films had a theme and they had substance. The Roger Moore title sequences all just seem sort of generic. Like “here’s another James Bond film…” 

Plant the seed with agent XXX. The KGB general specifically waited to tell Anya that her lover was dead until after he gave her the mission, and then he told her that he was killed by British Secret Service. It was a pretty manipulative move on his part.  

At the height of the Cold War. So many things, so many movies and tv shows were coming out at the time involving nuclear war and Russians and Communists. It was like Nazi propaganda during WW2. Things like that were on everybody’s mind and therefore were very popular as a media vehicle.  

A shark tank tube. That’s very supervillain. A tube that leads into a shark tank. That’s like, the epitome of being a supervillain. And a surprise button that drops them down into it? The only thing that could make it more of a supervillain thing is if it was a tube that sucked them up and spit them out into a shark tank further away. 

Would you really get in the elevator? Seriously. They just watched that lady get dropped from the elevator, into a shark tank, and eaten by a shark. Would you really get into the same elevator that she just got into? Would you not go “Hey, there’s a possibility he could drop us into a shark tank…” Because that would immediately be the first thing on my mind.  

How many languages does Bond speak? It seems like Bond speaks pretty much every language. And not even a little. Pretty much fluently. He goes to every country and just fits right in and speaks the language completely perfectly. No problem whatsoever.  

The girl is what makes Bond stay the night. Bond wasn’t going to stay the night in Cairo until that girl came in with the tray and he was like “well, I guess I’ll stay and have sex with this girl for tonight before I leave…” 

The guy was going to fall off the roof either way. I don’t know why that fat guy told him where Fekkish was. It’s not like Bond was going to save him if he told him. He was going to fall either way. He gave up pretty easily, too. It only took asking him a second time before he gave him the answer.  

Why did Fekkish run towards Jaws? If Fekkish is so scared of Jaws, why did he run toward him in the first place? He was sitting in a crowd of people. Jaws couldn’t have killed him in the middle of a crowd. But instead, Fekkish ran to an empty tomb. Which is pretty much just a bad writing device to show that Jaws has metal teeth.  

Why is there no blood? And why is there literally no blood when Jaws bites people to kill them? There should be huge piles of blood all over the people AND Jaws. But there’s nothing. Not one drop of blood, anywhere. It’s the cleanest kill. Doesn’t seem like it should work that way. 

Kalba didn’t care that Fekkish was dead. Kalba didn’t really care that Fekkish was dead or that Bond knew about the submarines. He was just interested in getting paid. That is until Jaws bit him in the throat… 

Jaws kept driving. If Jaws knew they were in the back of the van, why did he keep driving? Why didn’t he just pull over somewhere and ambush them or something?  

Jaws messes that van up. Jaws tore that van up with his bare hands. That wasn’t even his teeth. That was just his hands. 

Spies should work in teams. Spies should work in teams. Because you can outsmart a spy, but can you outsmart a pair of spies? Can you trick a tag team of spies that’s been working together for a while? Who knows each other’s moves? They’d be invincible.  

Why does Jaws go so slow? Why does Jaws go into slow motion when he’s about to bite somebody? He automatically slows down to like ¼ of the speed of what he was previously at. And then he looks at them like it’s their fault.  

Anya is jealous. This is such a woman move. She’s jealous of a woman, over a man that she’s not even with, that she’s supposed to hate. 

Why let them ashore first? Why let them go ashore first? Why not just kill them while they’re on Atlantis. It just complicates things, letting them get to shore. It gives them a chance to get away. Which, of course, they do.  

Spy car. A spy car that turns into a submarine? That’s a new one. And it shoots rockets? What else does it do, Q? Oh, it has land mines as well? Oh, jeez… 

Where did he get that fish? Where did that fish come from? Did he just reach out the window and grab that fish as they were coming ashore? Was it just swimming down by his ankles or something? “Oh, look! A carp!” 

Now you’re rooting for the USA. All of the sudden, with the soldiers freed and Stromberg’s submarines destroyed, you’re rooting for the good ol’ US of A to save the world again… 

Everybody has unlimited grenades. Not only does everybody have unlimited ammo in a gunfight, but in these times of exaggeration, everybody has an unlimited amount of grenades as well. And they throw them. Everywhere. They throw them when there aren’t even people around. They throw them at walls. They throw them at piles of stuff. They throw them in the water. They throw them just to see them explode. Sometimes, they just drop them, and somebody else has to throw them for them… 

Irradiated the Atlantic Ocean. I really think we’re glossing over the fact that two nuclear bombs went off in the Atlantic Ocean and nobody seems to care. They’re just like “we should blow up that underwater facility, too” “Yeah, but what about those nuclear bombs? Shouldn’t we worry about that?” “No, it’ll be fine…” 

Jaws eats the shark. In a writer’s moment or ironic delight, Jaws getting dropped into that shark tank and then eating that shark himself is as cartoonish as it is exciting. James Bond didn’t used to be cartoonish. It wasn’t until the Roger Moore movies that they really started doing that.  

So, yeah. Go and see The Spy Who Loved Me. Definitely one of the better Roger Moore films. He stars in seven, total. And as always, keep on watching, with a smile on your face…