Review Detail

As with LaLD, I have only seen this before via a few clips and reading the original novel, but my overall impression is a more positive one. The book is comparatively weaker source material than that of the preceding film (at least in terms of plot), but this definitely felt more engaging and from the cutlist it again seems that a lot of silliness was removed (some unfortunately unavoidably remaining though).

The only slight thing that stuck out was the cut from Bond jumping to him face-down on the ground about 55 minutes in, don’t know if this is original or a new edit, and I do wish the car chase was left in in some capacity so the legendary barrel roll (minus the slide whistle of course) could have been kept. I think that J. W. Pepper could be trimmed down, and the car-plane conversion makes no less sense than the Solex or other bits of sci-fi technology on display!

The first Moore film I saw (and Bond film too as far as I can remember) was The Spy Who Loved Me, and that will remain for me his earliest appearance, maybe this edit could instead be slotted in before Moonraker to avoid going through two entries with similar plots in succession? There was another oil crisis in 1979, so that would not be inappropriate timing!