MOONRAKER [1979] [GUILTY PLEASURES]

Moonraker (1979)
Directed by: Lewis Gilbert
Written by: Christopher Wood, Ian Fleming
Starring: Lois Chiles, Michael Lonsdale, Roger Moore

HCF GUILTY PLEASURES:MOONRAKER [1979]

AVAILABLE ON DVD AND BLU RAY

DIRECTED BY:Lewis Gilbert

WRITTEN BY:Christopher Wood

STARRING:Roger Moore, Lois Chiles, Michael Lonsdale, Richard Kiel

RUNNING TIME:121 mins

REVIEWED BY:Dr Lenera, Official HCF Critic

A Drax Industries Moonraker space shuttle on loan to the United Kingdom is hijacked in mid-air and  James where he bumps into Goodhead again and discovers a secret laboratory where a lethal gas is being tested………Bond is told to investigate.  His first port of call is the Drax Industries shuttle manufacturing complex in California, where he encounters female astronaut Holly Goodhead and Sir Hugo Drax, who offers no conclusive answers.  After surviving an attempt on his life, Bond seduces Corinne Dufour, one of Drax’s assistants and breaks into Drax’s safe, where he photographs blueprints for a small electronic device and a larger pod of some sort, both made by a glass company located in Venice, Italy.   The following morning Corinne is killed and Bond heads for Venice…….

 There seems to be a general consensus amongst both critics and [though perhaps to a slightly lesser extent] 007 fans, that the serious, more down to earth and more Ian Fleming-derived Bond films like From Russia with Love and Casino Royale are automatically better than the lighter, more humorous and/or more fantastical efforts like You Only Live Twice and Die Another Day.  Well, I say “down with that”!   As a huge fan of the world’s most visable secret agent for many years I love both types of Bond film and actually find myself sticking on the sillier films more often to relax to.  I’ve never understood the snobbery some have about these movies; why should Bond always be serious, be believable?  If certain movies in the series do contain things like character development and artistry that’s fine, but it’s not what they are generally about, and comments that they should be like the books don’t really hold water to me; I mean they diverged from the books right from the beginning where they immediately added humour.  The film most often held up as an example as the series at its most idiotic and juvenile seems to be Moonraker, and you know what, I love it!  It’s ridiculous, childish and corny, but it’s also fantastic escapism, a non-stop parade of gorgeous locations, crazy stunts, unbelievable gadgets, lovely women, funny quips; in short, everything I watch Bond films for.

The origins of Moonraker as a film actually go back many years.  Fleming’s third novel of the same name, which was published in 1955, was apparently based on a film script he had written a few years before, and for a while the Rank Organisation were  interested in making the movie, though it never happened.  Two decades later, the 007 franchise was on a high with the huge commercial success of The Spy Who Loved Me, so the decision was taken to make the next film even bigger, even more over the top, even more spectacular.  For Your Eyes Only was originally intended to be next, but the enormous impact of Star Wars led to the more science fiction-orientated Moonraker being put into production instead.  Christopher Wood wrote a screenplay based on a treatment by Tom Mankiewicz that hardly had anything to do with the original book at all [though elements of it seemed to influence Die Another Day, and its story of a rocket being built to destroy London would still make a pretty good Bond film] and rehashed bits and pieces from earlier Bond films, especially the previous one.   The main shooting took place largely in France due to punitive taxation laws, which perhaps accounts partially for the slightly different look of the film, and in a variety of locations all over the world including Paris, Venice, London, Rio De Janeiro and Palmdale.  It was a bigger hit than any previous Bond film, though the critics laid into it, especially criticising its slapstick and space sequences.

There’s no doubt that Moonraker has more humour than any other film in the series.  The first half an hour or so keeps it reasonably under control, though the eye popping sky diving fight that occurs in the pre-credits sequence does finish with Jaws [the steel-toothed giant who had been popular in The Spy Who Loved Me] trying to fly by flapping his arms and crashing into a circus tent.  Still, the early scenes have a certain tension and mystery to them, while a bit where Bond narrowly escapes death in a centrifuge chamber, [a device for training astronauts that spins them round and round at great speed] sees Roger Moore’s Bond look unusually shaken.  A death by Dobermans is nicely nasty and actually benefits from being photographed rather beautifully and soft focus.  Then we shift to Venice and we see Bond doing some actual spying before the silliness really takes off.  A gondola chase sees Bond’s boat become a speedboat and then a hovercraft, which goes onto the main square causing havoc and even double-taking pigeons.  A brawl in a museum [actually intended for use in The Spy Who Loved Me] ends with the Asian villain falling through a clock tower and crashing into a piano during a concert playing beneath, while Bond utters the vey politically incorrect “play it again San”.   The breathlessly paced film then relocates to Rio, where a mediocre cable car fight suffers from the usual bad back projection.  Still, one of the things about Moonraker is that there’s so much action, if one bit doesn’t quite work, in a few minutes time there will be another fight or chase that does.  The amount of action is quite astounding, I haven’t yet mentioned a second boat chase, a fight in an ambulance or an encounter with a python who develops a crush on Bond.  You could say that the film is little more than a series of globetrotting set pieces, but you could say that about many Bond films, and Moonraker’s plot, though increasingly unbelievable, is quite well structured and worked out.

It’s the final half hour in space that really seems to get people’s goat.  Loads of rockets take off from underground bases to a huge space spaceship and there’s a battle with laser guns, with the ‘good’ guys getting to their destination ridiculously quickly.  It’s not believable for a moment, but I don’t care, it’s fun and the special effects still look really impressive.  In fact, the whole film looks impressive, it has a wonderfully lush look to it, with Jean Tournier’s lovely photography really making the most out of all the locations and helping make the film such a great one to just sit back and watch and relax with.  The gadgets, ranging from a speedboat out of which a hand glider comes out, to a laser firing watch, to that gondola/speedboat/hovercraft, are almost non-stop; perhaps there are too many, and some of them are not explained before they are used, sometimes resulting in a random quality to the film when they are, but never mind. Other things that annoy me somewhat [I adore Moonraker, but even I admit it’s far from perfect] are Bond and some companions riding on horses to Elmer Bernstein’s theme from The Magnificent Seven  – yes, even I find some of the in-jokes a little much – and Jaws finding love with a small bespectacled girl which leads to him changing sides, though I’ve warmed to that a bit in recent years.  I do think Jaws was pretty much wasted in The Spy Who Loved Me too, an initially scary villain becoming a laughing stock.  Moonraker does sometimes go too far, but it is what it is, the Bond movie which dares to go where other Bond movies were headed but didn’t quite get there, and there is much in the film which really makes me laugh, such as Bond’s sexist, smutty attitude to the females in the movie; I love especially his ‘surprise’ at Goodhead being a woman, and by the way does this one have 007′s quickest ever ‘pull’ ["how do you kill three hours in Rio if you don't samba?"]?

Moore is just great, I don’t care that he’s not Fleming’s creation or is largely playing it for laughs, I just love him, though I think the star of the film is Micheal Lonsdale as Drax, he delivers his lines in a wonderful deadpan manner that makes them all the funnier, whether it’s “ look after Mr Bond.  See that some harm comes to him” or “Mr Bond, you defy all my attempts to plan an amusing death for you”.  Lois Chiles is simply stunning in my eyes as Goodhead and she does a great job with a character that is basically a variation on Anya Amasova from The Spy Who Loved Me.  Lewis Gilbert, whose third Bond film this was, directs with a steady hand and I love the way he constantly pulls back so we can view the action from a distance,  emphasising the scale and the spectacle. The theme song doesn’t seem to have endured but I think it’s quite beautiful [even if the words are as silly as ever] and this beauty extends to John Barry’s score, which is surprisingly laidback for a Bond score, almost deliberately going against the craziness of what’s occurring on screen.  His space music, replete with haunting wordless female chorus, is amazing and really evocative of the mystery of space travel.

Bond and Drax dispatching a henchman whilst pigeon shooting with Drax, with Drax saying “you missed” and Bond replying “did I?”  Goodhead crying out to Bond “hang on” whilst on top of the cable car and Bond replying “the thought had occurred to me”.    Exploding bolas.  The really atmospheric, beautiful and very strange ‘siren’ scene where Bond is lured to a pyramid.  The hysterical bit where Bond drags M and the Minister Of Defence, all wearing gas masks, into what was a secret laboratory and finds it totally changed, including its dimensions, and Drax explaining how he finds the English sense of humour hard to understand.  And of course, the funniest final scene in the entire series, you know what it is.  “My God, what’s Bond doing?” says M as Bond making love to Goodhead in their space shuttle is beamed to both Buckingham Palace and the White House.  “I think he’s attempting re-entry sir” replies Q.  Genius, simply genius.   Moonraker needs to be rehabilitated as one of the best Bond films, not stay as one of the worst.

Rating:

[pt-filmtitle]Moonraker[/pt-filmtitle]