The Spy Who Loved Me

The Mission
James Bond (Roger Moore) is sent to investigate the disappearance of a British nuclear submarine amid worries that the Russians have developed new tracking capabilities that may help them win the Cold War. It turns out that a Soviet submarine has also gone missing, and Bond teams up with Russian agent XXX (Barbara Bach) to determine and stop the diabolical plans entrepeneur Karl Stromberg (Curd Jurgens).

Jimmy Bond Yo!
Roger Moore's James Bond is bigger and bolder than ever, the actor is clearly loving a role that has now truly become his own. He's a confident, capable and more romantic Bond, exemplifying the quintessential British-ness of the character like never before (he even has a parachute that opens up to display a giant union jack) and playing up 007's loverboy side with playful exuberance.

James Bond is shown in The Spy Who Loved Me with several more previously unseen skills - he can ride a camel, speak Egyptian Arabic, and disarms a nuclear missile (his first time, apparently). He's a man of the world in every sense of the phrase, demonstrating enough knowledge of Islamic customs to greet a Muslim in a traditional and friendly fashion. He's competitive with his Soviet counterpart (Agent XXX), and has a practical and unapologetic attitude to killing (interpretint his life as a 'kill or be killed' scenario). He's visibly horrifed by Jaws' ability to bite through chains, and is a bit sensitive when the name of his dead wife is mentioned (the first time in the series thats he's mentioned at all since she was killed).

Villainy
The mastervillain of the piece is Karl Stromberg, a Blofeld substitute who love sthe sea so much he wants to wipe civilisation from the surface of the Earth so he can rebuild it underwater as a New Atlantis (why do these guys insist on courting outright war at the risk of disrupting their noble schemes? He simply could've gone underwater and lived there with his people without thrusting the rest of the world into nuclear armageddon). The original intention for The Spy Who Loved Me was to feature Blofeld and SPECTRE as the main adversary but rights issues led to a rethink. Stromberg's webbed fingers, reclusive nature and touching issues all put one in mind of Donald Pleasance's slightly freakish performance as Blofeld back in You Only Live Twice, and Curd Jurgens' cultured and restrained performance certainly makes him feel like an imitation.

The real star of the film is without a doubt Richard Kiel as Jaws, one of the most memorable henchmen ever seen in the entire series. With his lack of dialogue, 7-foot stature and sharp metal teeth, he's like the ultimate cross between a vampire and Frankenstein's monster. Kiel gives a scary, sadistic performance, using his physicality and expressiveness to convey more than most henchmen get to say with dialogue. The character is near-indestructable too, even surviving at the end of the film to fight another day. Stromberg's other henchman is Sandor (Milton Reid), a bald-headed bowtie-wearing goon who gets disposed of fairly early on in the film.

Buddies and Babes
Anya Amasova is both Bond's main ally and the Bond girl for this film, a Soviet agent codenamed XXX. She's a lot more capable than previous Bond girls, and is every bit 007's equal for most of the film. Their relationshup fluctuates between romance, rivalry, and even revenge. Barbara Bach gives a decent enough performance to make the character stick, but there have been better 'Bond girl' performances (EG. Diana Rigg, Honor Blackman).

Bond also has a rendezvous with a British-educated arab named Hussein (Edward de Souza), an Egyptian MI6 contact and one-time classmate from Bond's university days. Bond gets further support later in the film from a naval captain named Benson (George Baker). The Spy Who Loved Me also makes the first appearance of Sir Frederick Gray (Geoffrey Keen), the British Minister of Defence who will go on to appear in several more Bond films as a Super-M-like character (EG. The 'bigger' MI6 boss).

There's also a bikini-clad henchwoman named Naomi (Caroline Munro), but her screentime is only fleeting.

Locations
The film starts out in the Austrian Alps for a ski-heavy action pre-credits sequence before shifting the main action to Egypt. Cairo is one of the more memorable and effectively-used locations in the series so far, showcasing pyramids, ruins, Cairo streets, bars and bazaars. Bond even dons sheik-like desert clothes to do a Lawrence of Arabia routine. The second part of the film takes place in sunny Azure-watered Sardinia, in the mediterranean .

Gadgets and Tricks of the Trade
The big gadget for this film (and one of it's best gags) is a car that turns into a submarine with torpedo capability. It also delpoys limpet mines and an ink cloud. Bond also has a ski pole that doubles as a gun, a watch that spits out emergency ticker tape messages from MI6, and gets to use a high-powered jet ski. For unexplained reasons, Q (Desmond Llewelyn) is working on a levitating drinks tray that can decapitate people... these scenes of Q working on gadgets that have nothing to do with the main narrative will become a staple of the series from this point on.

Bond gets to 'impersonate' someone again, this time he poses as a marine biologist in order to infiltrate Stromberg's lair. This extends to just being able to name an exotic fish.


Licence to Kill
007 shoots a pursuing Russian agent with a ski pole-gun, callously drops Sandor off the top of a building after getting information out of him, and blows up Naomi's helicopter (while she's in it) with a torpedo. He also blows up one of Stromberg's men whilst underwater, and runs another over with his scuba-car. He machine guns at least four more henchmen during a full scale battle on Stromberg's ship, re-programs two submarines to annihilate each other with nuclear missiles, and shoots Stromberg several times to make sure that he's dead.

Shag-Rate
Our man is mid-business with an undercover Russian agent when he gets called away by MI6, and it's implied that Hussein offers him a woman (!) for the night when Bond stops over at his tent in the desert. Bond puts on all his charm to get a leg over on Agent XXX. They finally shag on the train after he saves her life, and do so again at the film's end whilst in Stromberg's escape pod.

Quotes
M: Where's 007?
MONEYPENNY: He's on a mission, sir. In Austria.
M: Well, tell him to pull out. Immediately.
(Cut to Bond getting cosy with a beautiful woman)

RUSSIAN AGENT: But James, I need you.
BOND: So does England.

BOND (referring to Jaws): He just dropped in for a quick bite.

BOND: Maybe I misjudged Stromberg. Any man who drinks Dom Perignon 52 can't be all bad.

STROMBERG: Goodbye Mr. Bond. That word has a welcome ring of permanancy about it.

BOND (lifting Jaws into the air with the aid of a giant magnet): How does that grab you?

How Does It Rate?
Fantastic. This is pure Roger Moore Bond without the drawbacks that plague most of his films... the humour comes less from goofy characters or parody bits and more from contrasting Bond tropes with the real world (such as the scene where Bond emerges from the sea in his scuba-car whilst beach goers look on in amazement). This film is the comic book version of James Bond - using bold shorthand versions of all the franchise's hallmarks to work in it's favour as an extra-confident, proud and slickly-produced 10th entry in the series. We get gadgets galore, a risky disco-funk version of the theme music, and one of the most iconic credits sequences in the whole series (this deftly constructed montage of iconic Bond images, coupled with the song Nobody Does It Better, is better than some entire James Bond films)

The Spy Who Loved Me also goes behind the Iron Curtain to exploit current cold war tensions for pure escapist entertainment, and builds on renewed fears of nuclear destruction that came with the invention of the Polaris missile . The character of Agent XXX is a more than effective new variation on the Bond format - Bond finally meets his match and it isn't a megalomaniac! Richard Kiel is another great find as Jaws, not only is he unnaturally large but he also has a wonderfully expressive face that helps the director use intriguing lighting effects to pay homage to the Universal horror films of the 1930s.

It's not without it's faults though, Stromberg is fairly cliched as far as Bond villains go (and we get that cliched Bond scene where 007 and the villain meet under the assumption that the other doesn't know who the other really is, though they both really do know). It's pretty easy to overlook this sort of thing though when the rest of the film is just so damn fun, easily one of the Top 5 James Bond films

Visit my James Bond page.

DIRECTOR: Lewis Gilbert
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by Christopher Wood and Richard Maibaum, based on characters created by Ian Fleming.
KEY ACTORS: Roger Moore, Barbara Bach, Curd Jurgens, Richard Kiel, Edward de Souza, Bernard Lee, Desmond Llewelyn, George Baker

RELATED TEXTS:
- Jaws (and a lot of the plot of The Spy Who Loved Me) would feature again in the next James Bond film, Moonraker.
- The mediterranean setting would be used again in the later Bond film For Your Eyes Only.
- The Spy Who Loved Me was the 10th novel in Ian Fleming's James Bond series, but aside from the title it has nothing to do with this film (Fleming actually specified that this particular novel should not be adapted directly into a film)
- The title provides the inspiration for the second Austin Powers film - Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.

AWARDS
Academy Awards - nominated Best Art Direction, Best Score and Best Original Song (Nobody Does It Better).
BAFTAs - nominated Best Score and Best Production Design/Art Direction.
Golden Globes - nominated Best Score and Best Song (Nobody Does It Better)