I saw this James Bond movie in the theater when I was a kid, and it was one of the DVDs I got when Circuit City went out of business. We watched it last
night.
I kind of like it, though it might be maligned as a James Bond movie (hard to say -- it has a fresh rottentomatoes rating, but Berardinelli and Ebert gave it two stars). I'm not really on board with some of Ebert's complaints (he thought Dalton was not suited as Bond and played the role too seriously).
Looking at it from a kid's perspective, James Bond's car in this movie is probably the coolest he ever had, gadget-wise. It's got lasers in the wheels, missiles, a sled, a rocket, and a self destruct button (sad to see it go, though).
It does go on a bit long, with an extremely convoluted plot. The first sequence (post-credits) was taken from a short story with the same name. So, you got that, the Gibraltar spy games, the escape through the natural gas pipe line, the attack on the manor house, the (sort of aforementioned) car scene, the sledding down a hill in a cello case (!), the fake assassination, the amusement park, the showdown in the military museum. And I almost always forget the lengthy segment in Afghanistan, which either seems like it wasn't really needed in this movie (though it does have an extremely memorable -- and to the child Crawl, even scary -- action sequence involving an airplane with an open cargo hold), or maybe it was just there to remind us this movie was made in the '80's, and what the political culture was at the time.
At least you get your money's worth.
One complaint I might agree with is that Whitaker is rather a nonentity as a villain . (Incidentally, the same actor showed up in Goldeneye as a CIA good guy) He is probably spread thin because the movie has three (cooperating) bad guys, and other two are given more screen time.
I kind of like it, though it might be maligned as a James Bond movie (hard to say -- it has a fresh rottentomatoes rating, but Berardinelli and Ebert gave it two stars). I'm not really on board with some of Ebert's complaints (he thought Dalton was not suited as Bond and played the role too seriously).
Looking at it from a kid's perspective, James Bond's car in this movie is probably the coolest he ever had, gadget-wise. It's got lasers in the wheels, missiles, a sled, a rocket, and a self destruct button (sad to see it go, though).
It does go on a bit long, with an extremely convoluted plot. The first sequence (post-credits) was taken from a short story with the same name. So, you got that, the Gibraltar spy games, the escape through the natural gas pipe line, the attack on the manor house, the (sort of aforementioned) car scene, the sledding down a hill in a cello case (!), the fake assassination, the amusement park, the showdown in the military museum. And I almost always forget the lengthy segment in Afghanistan, which either seems like it wasn't really needed in this movie (though it does have an extremely memorable -- and to the child Crawl, even scary -- action sequence involving an airplane with an open cargo hold), or maybe it was just there to remind us this movie was made in the '80's, and what the political culture was at the time.
At least you get your money's worth.
One complaint I might agree with is that Whitaker is rather a nonentity as a villain . (Incidentally, the same actor showed up in Goldeneye as a CIA good guy) He is probably spread thin because the movie has three (cooperating) bad guys, and other two are given more screen time.
