Film After 11 Podcast | A View to a Kill (1985)

The Film After 11 podcast’s alphabetical marathon faced another dilemma when we hit the letter “V” this week. Put simply, pickings were very slim for this one. What I settled on was A View to a Kill, Roger Moore’s final outing as secret agent James Bond 007, but also my son Thomas’ first exposure to Moore as Bond.

Ideally, I would’ve like to start with one of Moore’s earlier (and better) pictures, but none of them start with a V. Fortunately, that didn’t bother Thomas too much and he had no complaints.

A View to a Kill (1985) - Christopher Walken & Grace Jones
Title:A View to a Kill
Year of Release: 1985
Director: John Glen
Watched On: Blu-ray
Also Available On: Various VOD rental and purchase platforms

Thoughts from the Grown-Up in the Room

A View to a Kill was the first James Bond movie I ever saw, not in the theater but on a later TV airing. I liked it when I was a kid approximately the same age as Thomas is now, mostly for that totally rad Duran Duran theme song. The movie also had action and shooting and stunts to keep me engaged, enough to not notice how tired Moore looked or how silly the obvious switches to stunt doubles were. For those reasons, I still have a lot of fondness for the film despite its shortcomings. As I’ve said many times before, I love all the Bond movies, even the bad ones.

Unfortunately, every time I’ve tried to watch it as an adult, I’ve generally regarded A View to a Kill as Moore’s worst Bond film, if not one of the worst in the franchise. Two things in particular bothered me in this viewing:

  1. Sexism has been a big problem all throughout the Bond series, but one aspect especially pronounced in this one is the way every woman feels compelled to sleep with Bond, totally unmotivated. He beds at least four in this entry, and hardly even makes any attempt to flirt with them. Any woman who sees him is automatically expected to have sex with him, just by virtue of him being in the room. Even the villainesses comply, every single time. The most ridiculous and offensive instance of that here occurs when May Day (Grace Jones), who’s been nothing but contemptuous of Bond since first laying eyes on him, opens the door to her room and finds him waiting in her bed, under the covers. Her boss, Max Zorin (Christopher Walken), gives a shrug, as if to say, “Well, I guess that’s that. You’ll have to sleep with him now.” And so she does. As far as these movies are concerned, Bond is entitled to have any and every woman he wants, regardless of their feelings on the matter. That issue is really compounded by the racial dynamics of this scene, with the white man treating the Black woman as his property.
  2. The soundtrack segueing into the Beach Boys’ “California Girls” during Bond’s ridiculous snowboarding scene both undermines the pretty good stunt work (obviously not Roger Moore) and is a desecration of the song.

Even with all these failings, I have to admit I found this watch more entertaining than I expected. It’s not a great 007 installment by any means, but Christopher Walken makes a fun villain and Grace Jones is a terrific henchwoman for him.

Poor Tanya Roberts, though… She’s just not good in this at all. If not for her career redemption in That ’70s Show later, I’d have a much lower opinion of the actress.

A View to a Kill (1985) - Roger Moore & Tanya Roberts 3

The Blu-ray

MGM brought A View to a Kill to Blu-ray in 2012, sold either individually or as part of the huge Bond 50 box set. I own the latter. At some point more recently, a 4K SDR version became available on paid streaming services. However, for this viewing, I felt I should watch the disc I already own until a proper 4K HDR remaster (hopefully) comes to physical media. I haven’t purchased or rented the streaming version, so I can’t compare the Blu-ray to that.

When MGM started rolling out the James Bond movies on Blu-ray starting in 2009, the studio hired a firm called Lowry Digital to fully remaster all the Sean Connery entries and a select later few from new film scans with proprietary processing to minimize grain and sharpen the image. Although those Lowry remasters were a little controversial among some fans, for the most part they look decent and have held up pretty well. Nevertheless, MGM freshly remastered the Connery movies once again for 4K Ultra HD without the Lowry processing.

Due to budgetary concerns, the remainder of the series did not receive new film scans for the Bond 50 box set. Rather, they were recycled from older home video masters, with some Lowry processing to clean them up as much as possible. The difference between titles with full remastering and those without was often stark.

A View to a Kill is one such instance of a halfway clean-up job. The 2.35: image quality is clearly dated, with a soft picture not helped much by obvious attempts at artificial sharpening. Grain moves in strange patterns and sometimes freezes in place in the background of shots. The picture in general looks a little too bright and has very flat contrast.

For all that, the disc is watchable enough, much more so than the total failures of the GoldenEye or Die Another Day Blu-rays. I’m not thrilled with it, but I can live with it for now.

Bond 50 Blu-ray box set

Released to theaters back in 1985 with Dolby Stereo audio, the primary soundtrack on the View to a Kill Blu-ray is a 5.1 remix in DTS-HD Master Audio format. I doubt many viewers will complain about that. (Keep in mind that, despite the confusion of its name, Dolby Stereo was always a 4-channel surround format.) A 2.0 option closer to the original mix is also available, but only in lossy Dolby Digital.

The 5.1 mix has lots of fun discrete panning to the surround speakers on both sides of the room, usually handled in a naturalistic and not too gimmicky manner. On the other hand, despite the track being authored with a very loud default volume, it doesn’t actually have much dynamic range. Gunfire and explosions are underwhelming. Regardless, the audio sounds good in general.

Assuming you can find them buried in the confusing menu system, bonus features on the Blu-ray consist of two audio commentaries, a few vintage Press Kit featurettes, deleted and alternate scenes, a so-called “original documentary” (37 min.) that mostly consists of old interview footage, a couple newer featurettes, a Duran Duran music video, trailers and TV spots, and a still gallery. The only of these I felt like watching was the pretty terrible music video, which has way too many movie and other sound effects obscuring the song, which the bandmembers don’t even bother trying to lip sync to.

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