THE SPY WHO LOVED ME

James Bond has gone through a number of phases. There was the Sean Connery phase, suave and sophisticated and wearing a rather obvious toupee. There was the Timothy Dalton phase, darker and brooding and ever so slightly psycho. Then there was the Roger Moore phase, in which Bond was a total twat and I will hear no argument. I mean, this is the guy who, on a whim, shags some chick in Live And Let Die, causing her to lose her psychic powers and disappoint her murderous boss. I don't think it even occurred to him at any point that that was a really, really shitty thing to do to the poor girl.

Anyway, The Spy Who Loved Me. Saw it last weekend, and I'm going to review it 'cos it really is the most generic James Bond film ever made. Every single James Bond cliche I can think of pops up here, and I'll be checking them off as I go through.

Right, we start off with a nuclear submarine being nicked by a mysterious ship. That's two checks right there and we've hardly even started.

Nuclear weapons being nicked
Submarines

It transpires some mysterious organisation is pinching both British and Russian submarines, so both governments decide to send in their best agent to investigate. The Russians send in the slightly appropriately-named 'Agent Triple-X', an incredibly hot woman, who is in the middle of sex when they call. MI6, meanwhile, predictably decide to send James Bond, who by Some Extraordinary Coincidence is also smack in the middle of shagging some nondescript bird in a log cabin somewhere.

Shagging

It's a safe bet that James Bond will generally be interrupted mid-shag by a call from his superiors to come back to England, but what he then does indicates how much he thinks of the shag partner in question. If this is towards the end of the film, he'll generally throw the phone in a fishtank and carry on in a manner that makes one wonder how he hangs onto that job. Since this is the start of the film, and we don't even know who the girl is, he breaks off from coitus unceremoniously, pulls on a hideous yellow ski suit and hurls himself out of the door directly into snowy hillside. This is the cue for a bunch of generic bad guys to emerge from the woodwork and give chase.

Ski chase

The scene intercuts between a stuntman doing amazing ski stunts and Roger Moore making vague skiing movements in front of a poorly bluescreened scrolling snowy backdrop. He shoots a couple of the bad guys, then hurls himself off a cliff, opening up a parachute decorated with a Union Jack. That's our cue to begin the title sequence!

It's exactly what we've come to expect from James Bond title sequences:

Naked chicks
Guns
Naked chicks with guns
Silhouettes of James Bond himself

In this case, the silhouettes of ol' JB seem to be bounding merrily up and down on a trampoline for reasons I confess I can't fathom. Anyway, it turns out that an incredibly wealthy evil overlord fellow with a big base in the middle of the sea - hold on.

Incredibly wealthy evil overlord fellow
Big secret base

Anyway, he's the bloke who's nicking the submarines, but some cheeky chap has nicked the microfilm -

Microfilm

- which contains documents pertaining to his submarine detecting machine, so he calls for his henchman, Jaws, who is ordered to kill everyone who comes into contact with the microfilm. He smiles to indicate how much he approves of this policy, revealing his lovely metal teeth.

Henchman with metal body part

Jaws retrieves the microfilm from the aforementioned cheeky chap, biting open his jugular vein in a Hickey of Death, a scene which I suspect the actor enjoyed just a little bit too much, but Bond and Triple-X are in hot pursuit! Bickering constantly, a situation which, as we all know, never EVER blossoms into affection EVER, they corner Jaws and cheekily nick his microfilm and run away. They hop onto a boat to take passage to some other place, whereupon Triple-X actually starts putting out. James Bond feels he's in there, so drops his guard long enough for her to put him to sleep with sleepy powder. The bitch.

Meanwhile, nondescript big evil bloke congratulates a couple of nervous-looking scientists for their sterling work on the submarine detection device. He lets them watch while he has his secretary thrown into a pool for selling the microfilm. I'm not sure if she was guilty or not, but it hardly matters since a shark (for there is only one) swiftly arrives to kill her in the most half-hearted feeding frenzy I have ever seen.

Evil bloke throws someone to carnivorous aquatic creatures

Then the scientists go off in a helicopter, which the evil bloke explodes in mid-air.

Evil bloke kills own henchmen for the sake of being evil

Meanwhile, Bond reports to his superiors to find - shock horror! - that Agent Triple X is waiting with her own superior! Yes, the Soviets and the British have decided to join forces. The Soviets smugly wave the microfilm in front of Bond's superior, whereupon Bond smugly announces that he's already looked at it and that it's useless. The smug is thick enough to cut with a knife as they all pop down to Q's workshop to take a closer look.

Q's workshop:

Dummy gets decapitated
Something blows up
Q gets pissed off

Taking a closer look at the microfilm, the team find a logo for some sealife research centre which happens to resemble a huge secret base in the middle of the ocean, so I guess the microfilm wasn't useless after all and Bond was talking out of his arse. Anyway, the superiors decide to team up Bond and Agent Hot Chick together to investigate. No-one sees any problems that may arise from teaming up a beautiful woman with the biggest mysognist cunt on Earth.

Bond teams up with beautiful enemy agent for the greater good

They head for Sardinia to this research base by train -

Train

- and are attacked in their cabin by Jaws -

Attacked in train cabin by henchman

- who fails to kill them spectacularly before being hurled out of a window. Agent Boobs decides to reward James Bond's quick thinking in the usual way.

Shagging on train

Arriving in Sardinia, James Bond, using the incredibly original assumed name of Robert Sterling -

Assumed name with thoroughly British connotations

- makes an appointment with evil bloke, pretending to be a marine biologist come to have a look at the establishment for some unknown reason. He's met on the shore by a beautiful woman in a bikini -

Bond left somewhat irresponsibly in the care of a beautiful woman in a bikini

- who takes them both to the big base in the middle of the sea, where Bond meets with the evil bloke for all of two seconds to be shown around, demonstrate how much he knows about fish, then buggers off again. Jaws appears and is told to wait 'til they get to shore, then kill them.

Bond given guided tour of bad guy base and inexplicably not killed

Back on dry land, Bond and Agent Hootchie-Mama pile into Bond's flashy new car and go for a drive, only to find themselves victimised by the aforementioned bikini woman in a helicopter. Bond responds by driving into the sea, since his car can turn into a submarine.

Go Go Gadget Car

Then he uses missiles to take out the helicopter and a couple of enemy divers. Divers? Yes, apparently the evil bloke allows for every eventuality.

Car shoots missiles
Divers

Arriving back at their love shack, Bond makes the mistake of letting on that he murdered the love of Agent Hot's life. Yes, apparently she was still grieving her head off around the time she was letting Bond touch her hoo-ha, and now she's so cross she says she's going to kill Bond as soon as the mission is over. If you believe for one second that she will, you are an idiot.

Anyway, they borrow an American submarine and its crew to take a covert look at the base, but are captured by the bad guy! Oh no! They find themselves in a huge modified aircraft carrier thing crewed entirely by hordes of men in orange jumpsuits -

Men in orange jumpsuits

- whereupon the bad guy reveals his plan to blow up the entire world with nuclear warheads launched by the stolen submarines, and has Agent Hot Cheeks brought with him back to his base, where he dresses her in a very revealing outfit and ties her to a chair.

Villain wants to destroy world
Villain is a date rapist
Villain dresses hot chick in very revealing outfit for no apparent reason

Bond, as Bond does, frees all the captured seamen (snigger snigger) who quickly overthrow the orange jumpsuit guys and take the control centre, whereupon he has the two submarines deploy nukes at each other! The nukes explode in a display of highly obvious stock footage and Bond congratulates himself, obviously choosing to ignore the massive ocean contamination and fallout drift he has just created.

The American submarine crew have orders to blow up the evil bloke's base, but Bond cannot allow that! Agent Boobies is still aboard and he wants another chance to violate her hot ass! So they give him an hour to do the job. He climbs aboard, throws Jaws to the sharks - sorry - shark, and confronts the evil bloke in his dining hall. He invites Bond to have a sit down and a chat.

Villain treats Bond to dinner

But oh no! Twas subterfuge! The villain fires a crossbow bolt under the table, but Bond is able to dive out of the way at lightning speed and shoot the villain about five times in the chest! Then one more time just to make sure! Then he rescues the girl and they get into an escape pod just before the whole place explodes.

Base gets blown up with Bond and a hot chick getting away in an escape vehicle

So, they're there in the escape pod floating in the middle of the sea, and Agent Cleavage picks up a gun and says she's going to shoot James Bond. Thirteen seconds later, they're shagging, like you didn't see that coming.

Bond shags hot chick in escape vehicle

Oh, and then the escape pod gets picked up by some ship and is greeted by both Bond's and Agent Vagina's superiors, who are startled to find them screwing like bunnies.

Bond embarrasses superiors

And that's it. So, in summary, then, submarines Roger Moore twat skiing hot chick microfilm secret base bikini gadget car orange jumpsuits explosions. Very silly film. And about as far removed from the text of the original novel as my arse is from Barnard's Star.

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