The Spy who loved me (4½ Stars)

Ever since the 1970's, especially since the 1980's, there have been heated discussions about who's the best and the worst James Bond. It's not just about who's the best actor, because everyone who's portrayed James Bond on screen is a competent actor. The discussions are about which actor best fits the role. If it means anything, Roger Moore is the only actor who claimed of himself that he was the worst James Bond actor. He said that when he died the inscription on his gravestone would be "A loving husband and father and the worst James Bond". I sincerely hope his family treated this as a joke and didn't follow this wish.

I try to stay out of the arguments. I listen to what others have to say, and I might sometimes express an opinion, but I don't insist that I'm right. I prefer to judge the individual films, and even then I can't be sure I'm right. My opinions on the James Bond films change every time I watch them. I'm set in my opinion that "Live and let die" is the weakest film, but I can't say for certain which one is best. If you ask me now I'll probably give a different answer to what I said last year.

This is the tenth James Bond film, made in 1979, three years after "The man with the golden gun". It has the biggest budget of the films so far, which is obvious when you see the abundance of explosions in the final twenty minutes. It's one of the standard features of the James Bond films that they end with an explosion, but there have never been as many explosions as in "The Spy who loved me".

The film's villain is Karl Stromberg, played by the German actor Curt Jurgens. (His name was actually Curd Jürgens, but it was spelt differently for English language films). He steals two nuclear submarines, one British and one Russian. His intention is to fire nuclear missiles at New York and Moscow to start a third world war. He wants the majority of the human race to be wiped out, so that he can found a new perfect civilisation beneath the sea. All the Bond villains are insane, but I have to say that Stromberg is the maddest of them all. He thinks of himself as an ecologist. He wants nuclear destruction to make the surface of the world beautiful again.

The Good Bond Girl is Anya Amasova, played by Barbara Bach. That's to say, she's almost good. She's a Russian agent, a Communist counterpart to Bond, but the KGB and MI6 are working together to find the missing submarines. James Bond is 007, and Anya's code name is XXX. There must be a joke in there somewhere. Bond is responsible for killing Anya's lover, so she says she'll shoot him as soon as their mission is over. Will she kill Bond or fall for his charms? I think you can guess the answer.

The Bad Bond Girl is Naomi, played by Caroline Munro. What a body! She's much more beautiful than the anorexic Bond Girls in the last two films. Naomi is Stromberg's personal assistant. When they meet her, Bond and Anya are pretending to be husband and wife. That doesn't stop Naomi flirting with Bond, and he flirts back.

Anya doesn't need to say a word in this scene. Her thoughts are obvious. "Stop making eyes at my husband, even though he's not really my husband!"

But in my opinion, the film's most beautiful woman isn't either of the Bond Girls, it's an unnamed hotel receptionist played by Valerie Leon. It's frustrating that we see so little of her.

Everyone has different opinions as to who's the most beautiful. This woman is the closest the film gets to an objectively beautiful woman. She's Eva Rueber-Staier, who won the Miss World title in 1969. Yes, she's gorgeous, and it's a shame she only gets 20 seconds of screen time as the personal secretary of the head of the KGB. The film makers must have realised their mistake, because they brought her back in two of the subsequent films. She isn't named in "The spy who loved me", but in the other two films she's called Rublevitch. 

Always in the background is Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny. Her heart beats faster every time James enters the room. She longs for the day when James will sweep her off her feet, or at least take her out for a meal.

I like this film a lot, but it's not quite perfect. The musical score is cheesy, intended to amuse the audience rather than make the film more dramatic. The theme from "Lawrence of Arabia" is even played when we see Bond in the desert. That's overdoing it.

Success Rate:  + 11.7

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