Oh dear. This film came out when I was 12 and I remembered it being terrifically exciting. Zorin seemed more evil than it was ever possible to be, Mayday the coolest henchwoman of the series and the high tech plot was spot on for its day.

And then, after perhaps five or ten years of not having seen it, we watched it again last night. Not good.

The plot is almost non-existent, and when you compare it to the latest Bonds there’s so much chat and so little ‘doing’. The computers, which crop up frequently, are so very very outdated for a film 23 years old, and the plot’s dependence on them makes it look even more of a dinosaur. It looks even more out of date than older films like Goldfinger or On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

The characters are entirely one-dimensional, the lines are corny and Roger Moore is very old. Nothing wrong with that, unless you’re bedding a woman young enough to be your daughter (he was 28 years older than Stacey Sutton with whom he had his wicked way in the shower and 29 years older than Pola Ivanova, whom he had pressed up against the side of a Jacuzzi). And don’t get me started on the names. Jenny Flex. Monsieur Aubergine. May Day…

Even the soundtrack sounded recycled. You could easily have cut it into Octopussy and nobody would have known, and the noise on Stacey’s computer when she’s pinpointing the epicentre of the earthquake is the same as is made by the globe in the Liparus control room as it tracks the nuclear missiles in The Spy Who Loved Me.

This was Roger Moore’s last film, and not before time. The franchise was looking tired by 1985, and it needed to be reinvented. He should have stopped after For Your Eyes Only.

A View to a Kill (with retrospect):

Speaking of The Spy Who Loved Me, anyone who knows both it and Goldeneye well (and the soundtrack to The World is Not Enough), will appreciate this very clever bit of editing: