1979 | Dir. Lewis Gilbert | 126 Minutes
"Well, I'd heard that Hugo Drax is obsessed with the conquest of space. Now I can believe it."
James Bond's investigation into a stolen space shuttle leads him to its manufacturer, billionaire industrialist Hugo Drax. To thwart Drax's apocalyptic plan, 007 teams up with undercover CIA Agent Holly Goodhead on a mission that eventually leads the spies to a secret space station orbiting Earth.
The James Bond film franchise is at its worst when it desperately chases the zeitgeist and it is dreadfully obvious Moonraker was fast-tracked to ride the coattails of massive box office smash Star Wars. However, despite shifting the series to a genre in which it clearly does not belong, it is a whole lot of campy fun. For his third and final Bond picture, director Lewis Gilbert dials the corniness and slapstick humor all the way up. This movie is best enjoyed taking the action and comedy in stride as to take its plot seriously would be a mistake. The chase sequence in the canals of Venice aptly represents the tone of the film, beginning with a Bond dispatching a knife throwing assassin conveniently hiding in a coffin that turns out to be his own and ending with Bond's gondola-turned-hovercraft casually gliding through the square as various onlookers, including a pigeon and a dog, perform double-takes at the sight of it. Other notable action sequences include the picture's high flying cold open, a mindless smash-everything-in-the-room fight in a glass museum, a brawl on a suspended gondola lift, and an explosive boat chase on the Amazon River.
The featured third act space scenes are technically quite impressive, though the excessive use of laser guns and the notion that the U.S. military is ready to dispatch a squadron of soldiers trained for space combat at a moment's notice is absolutely ludicrous. The film's depiction of zero G is also hilariously inept, amounting to little more than slow motion movement for the lead performers while extras awkwardly leap and fall in the background.
Moonraker is a gold mine for Roger Moore as he excels at delivering cheesy dialogue. Nearly every other line or action for Bond in this one is played for laughs. Lois Chiles is charming, convincingly tough and capable, but unfortunately less than memorable as undercover Agent Holly Goodhead. As run-of-the-mill evil mastermind Hugo Drax, Michael Lonsdale is fine but perhaps a little dry considering how he could have really chewed the scenery. Completely overshadowing aikido master Toshiro Suga's unspecified Asian henchman Chang, Richard Kiel returns as the lovable relentless Jaws with more screen time, a final act heroic turn, and an adorable little girlfriend named Dolly played by Blanche Ravalec. French actress Corinne Cléry plays Drax's doomed personal pilot, while Emily Bolton leaves a strong impression as Bond's decidedly not-so-doomed fellow spy Manuela. Amusing as ever, Lois Maxwell, Bernard Lee, and Desmond Llewelyn appear once again as M, Moneypenny, and Q, at one point operating out of a secret MI6 base in a Brazilian Monastery. Returning from The Spy Who Loved Me, Geoffrey Keen and Walter Gotell briefly appear as Frederick Gray and General Gogol.
Moonraker may be the most absurd Bond film but under the appropriate mindset it is a lot of fun. Full of sight gags and one-liners, the movie simply refuses to take itself seriously. While the concept of 007 in space is patently ridiculous, the visual effects aren't half bad all things considered.
THE COLD OPEN
While the explosive hijacking of Moonraker shuttle is pretty standard for a Bond movie cold open, Bond's midair fight for a parachute with Jaws on his tail is really great stuff.
THE THEME SONG AND OPENING TITLES
Shirley Bassey's dreamy "Moonraker" isn't her best song for the franchise but it's still better than most of the other opening theme songs. I much prefer the uptempo disco version that plays during the end credits. The Maurice Binder designed opening title sequence is as stylish and silly as the film itself with nude women bounding through the clouds and among the stars.
THE BOND GIRL
Holly Goodhead is one of the better love interests in the series. She is an intelligent, skilled, and highly competent spy who manages to do a better job than Bond infiltrating Drax's operation. Best of all, not once is she captured or held hostage by the villain. In disguise as a doctor working for NASA, it's actually kind of ridiculous that Bond is surprised to learn a doctor can be a woman when he is first introduced to her. It's 1979 for crying out loud.
THE BOND VILLAIN
Scheming to kill everyone on Earth so that he may repopulate it with a master race of his handpicked physically perfect people, Hugo Drax's plot feels merely like an elevated version of Karl Stromberg's from The Spy Who Loved Me. Ambitious though he may be, Drax doesn't display much of a personality to standout from other Bond villains.
FEATURED HENCHMEN
Chang practices Japanese martial arts though is name is Chinese or Korean, so clearly the writers didn't care enough to name their character accurately. His uninspired, frankly stupid-looking costume says as much. It ultimately doesn't matter as Bond easily kills him and he is quickly replaced by Jaws, the best henchman ever, as Drax's top enforcer. Jaws' redemption motivated by his love for the short and bespectacled Dolly, counter to Drax's standard for perfection, is actually pretty sweet.
FEATURED GADGET
Bond's wrist dart shooter introduced during the mission briefing at the top of the film is more practical than the other nonsensical tech presented in this movie and takes the nearly the entire movie to pay off, but it's an awesomely punny moment once it does.
FLEMING FIDELITY
The film takes only its title and the villain's name from Ian Fleming's third James Bond novel Moonraker published in 1955; the plot of the picture is entirely unrelated to the source material. In the book, Hugo Drax is a secret Nazi posing as an English war hero. He collaborates with SMERSH in a scheme to destroy England using a missile rocket called "Moonraker" while playing the stock market to profit from the impending disaster. With help from fellow agent Gala Brand, Bond foils Drax's plan and annihilates him and his Soviet cohorts with the nuclear warhead they had plotted to use against England.
FRAGMENTS
- The score features several cheesy musical references: the first three notes of Richard Strauss' "Also sprach Zarathustra" prominently featured in 2001: A Space Odyssey is played on a trumpet to announce Bond's arrival in one scene, the love theme from Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet Overture" plays when Jaws meets Dolly, John Williams' theme from Close Encounters of the Third Kind is the key-code for a security door to the hidden lab where Drax's scientists manufacture the lethal poison for his scheme, and Elmer Bernstein's theme from The Magnificent Seven plays when Bond rides on horseback in gaucho clothing to MI6's secret base headquarters in a Brazilian monastery
- Crew member Victor Tourjansky makes a cameo appearance as the man with a bottle of wine in Venice who reacts humorously to Bond's gondola/hovercraft gliding through the square; he previously appeared in The Spy Who Loved Me and would go on to appear in For Your Eyes Only
- John Barry's 007 theme plays during the chase sequence on the Amazon River
- At the bottom of the end credits, the film advertises that "James Bond will return in 'For Your Eyes Only'"
