Moonraker

(Here be spoilers if you are yet to see the James Bond movies...)

The Mission
The Moonraker shuttle gets hijacked in mid-air and James Bond is sent to investigate it's disappearance. He stumbles upon some secret experiments being conducted by Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale), the man behind the Moonraker project, and discovers an ambitious scheme to poison humanity that leads him to a hidden space station.

Jimmy Bond Yo!
One thing I noticed about Moonraker was the bit where Bond is almost killed by a centrifugal force in an astronaut-training facility... he's visibly more affected by the experience than by anything else in his spy career so far, and for once he doesn't have a foolhardy quip. He also seems out of his depth in a space shuttle but remains cool and collected at all times, even when the Moonraker shuttle looks like it's about to burn up on re-entry. Bond does however know something about rare Orinoco plants, which stretches credibility a little.

Roger Moore breezes through the role with his trademark qualities of barely-contained mirth and a certain quizzicalness. He looks perhaps a little too comfortable in a Venetian ribbon-hat and loose open-necked shirt.

Villainy
Hugo Drax is a space tycoon who lives in a grandiose chalet that has been improbably transported from France to California brick-by-brick. He's cultured, plays the piano, enjoys hunting, and keeps highly-trained Doberman Pinschers that kill on command. His plan is to repopulate the Earth with genetically-superior humans after killing everyone with a special nerve gas whilst he and his 'children' wait the holocaust out on a space station. The character and his plans are virtually a direct retread of Stromberg from The Spy Who Loved Me, substituting space for water (and an anaconda for a shark).

The unkillable Jaws (Richard Kiel) returns but his presence is mostly played for laughs this time around. He's evidently not very bright - he tries to convert a regular speedboat into a hang glider when he sees 007 do the same with his own specially-modified boat. Jaws is working for Drax now, which is faintly ridiculous in itself - do henchmen like Jaws advertise their services somewhere? How is it that he was able to find work with yet another world-threatening megalomaniac? Most memorably, Jaws becomes an unlikely ally of Bond during the film's climax, and even gets to speak a line of dialogue in one of his final scenes.

Drax also employs the services of another henchman early on in the film, a Japanese aikado expert named Chang (Toshiro Suga). He and Bond have an entertainingly destructive fight in a Venetian museum.

Buddies and Babes
The lead Bond girl is Dr Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles), an undercover CIA agent and astronautical scientist. The dynamic between herself and Bond is playfully antagonistic and a little remniscent of his relationship with Agent XXX in The Spy Who Loved Me. Both filsm demonstrate a more modern attitude towards female capabilities, though the name 'Goodhead' and the casting of a beautiful actress in the role suggests that the filmmakers haven't really come all that far at all.

Bond also gets assistance from Manuela (Emily Bolton), a Brasillian agent, but her presence is brief and fairly forgettable. Early on in the film he also teams up with Corinne Dufour (Corinne Clery), Drax's buxom helicopter pilot.

M (Bernard Lee) is forced by Sir Frederick Gray (Geoffrey Keen) to reprimand Bond at one point by giving him a two-week suspension. Off the record however he is more than supportive of 007, and never doubts his word at any point. Meanwhile, Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell) is starting to show her age now with the haircut of an old lady.

Locations
There are four main locations for Moonraker - California, Venice, Rio de Janeiro and space. The Californian sequences may as well be anywhere (they were actually filmed in France) btu Venice, with its canals and sense of history, is used quite well. Rio is great too, lending itself to carnivale sequences, breathtaking cable car action-scenes, jungels, rivers and ancient (Mayan?) ruins.

A (mostly) realistic approach is taken to the climax set in space, with appropriate weightlessness and use of accurate vehicles. However, this all goes out the window when two floating armies noisily duke it out in space with lasers and no survival cords.

Gadgets and Tricks of the Trade
Q (Desmond Llewelyn) gives Bond a rather handy watch with a dartgun hidden inside it, operating by a flexing of the wrist. 007 also gets a special canal boat that converts into a land-skimming hovercraft and a hang glider/speedboat hybrid that ejects bombs and heatseaking mini-torpedos. Bond also carries a cigarette case that doubles as a safe-cracking device, and has a tiny reconaissance camera with '007' embossed on it.


Licence to Kill
Bond inadvertantly kills an enemy agent in the opening pre-titles sequence when he confiscates his parachute pack in mid-air. After that the action is pretty constant - he discretely shoots a sniper in a tree when Drax invites him to hunt pheasant, throws a knife into another henchman on the Venetian canals, and throws Chang through a high window. He kills a man disguised as a medical orderly by rolling him down a street in a trolley, where he lands headfirst in an advertising billboard. He also blows up two boatloads of pursuing men and ejects Drax into space without a spacesuit.

Shag-Rate
Bond 'rewards' Drax's pilot after getting some information out of her. He and Dr. Goodhead also 'pool' their resources after realising they're essentially on the same team. His sexual appetite is more voracious than usual, he also shags Manuela within two minutes of meeting her! Finally, he and Goodhead enjoy a zero gravity bonk at the film's end (this time with the Queen herself watching via a live satellite feed).

Quotes
HUGO DRAX (to Chang): Look after Mr. Bond. See that some harm comes to him.

DR. GOODHEAD: I can only hope our meeting here is a coincidence. I dislike being spied on.
JAMES BOND: Oh, don't we all.

JAMES BOND (whilst undoing Manuela's robe): How do we kill five hours in Rio if you don't know how to samba?

JAMES BOND (on seeing Jaws): I might've guessed.
DR. GOODHEAD: Do you know him?
JAMES BOND: Not socially. His name's Jaws. He kills people.

DR. GOODHEAD: Have you broken something?
JAMES BOND: Only my tailor's heart.

HUGO DRAX: Mr. Bond, you defy all my attempts to plan an amusing death for you. You're not a sportsman Mr. Bond, why did you break off the encounter with my pet python?
JAMES BOND: I discovered he had a crush on me.

SIR FREDERICK GRAY (seeing Bond and Dr. Goodhead copulating on viewscreen): My god, what's Bond doing?
Q (watching radar screen): I think he's attempting re-entry sir.

How Does It Rate?
I guess it was inevitable that the success of The Spy Who Loved Me would mean the filmmakers would try to replicate its formula as closely as possible. This means that Drax and his 'ubermensch' plot is almost identical to Stromberg's Atlantis scheme. The other big influence on Moonraker is the then-recent success of Star Wars and the resulting big budget sci-fi boom. The space sequences (with accompanying use of 2001-ish classical music) are suitably serious and well-executed, demonstrating the high production values and slickness that characterised The Spy Who Loved Me and would become an intrinsic and expected part of the James Bond series from this point on.

Moonraker is entertaining enough but it's also weighed down by some of the silliness that made The Man with the Golden Gun so unfortunately mediocre. The love story angle with Jaws (he gets a girlfriend) is stupid and his scenes lack the fright factor that previously made him such an effective presence. Also, Jaws' place in this film doesn't make sense... I can (just) buy into the fact that he has found work with another villain mastermind, but this doesn't explain why he'd be on the plane with 007 in the pre-titles sequence (which otherwise seems unconnected with the main Drax-related plot). Also, the film repeats the plane trick from You Only Live Twice and makes the same mistake again - why ruin a perfectly good plane to kill someone when you can just shoot them (or if you're going to just push them out anyway?)

I don't think it's too much to ask for consideration to be made with Bond films in relation to basic logic. I know they're largely intended as escapist fun, but some elements of Moonraker just take the piss.

Visit my James Bond page.

DIRECTOR: Lewis Gilbert
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by Christopher Wood, based on the novel by Ian Fleming.
KEY ACTORS: Roger Moore, Michael Lonsdale, Lois Chiles, Richard Kiel, Toshiro Suga, Corinne Clery, Bernard Lee, Geoffrey Keen, Desmond Llewelyn, Lois Maxwell

RELATED TEXTS:
- Loosely based on Moonraker, the third James Bond novel in Ian Fleming's series.
- Moonraker was first adapted as a South African radio play in 1956.
- A lot of this film's look and its use of space was directly inspired by the success of Star Wars. The more realistic nature of the James Bond franchise (relatively speaking) means that the space sequences owe inevitably owe a stylistic debt to 2001 as well.
- The second Austin Powers film, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, draws upon and spoofs several elements from this film.
- Some aspects of Ian Fleming's original novel were also used in the later James Bond film Die Another Day.

AWARDS
Academy Awards - nominated Best Special Effects.