UK-France (1979): Spy/Adventure/Romance/Sci-Fi

Ian Fleming's 1955 James Bond novel concerned itself with an experimental spaceship controlled by a megalomaniac. The 1979 film version pays lip service to the original plot, adding an up-to-date space travel wrinkle. This time, Bond (Roger Moore) must thwart the plans of Sir Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale) to destroy the earth with an atomic-powered rocket. On surface level, Drax's scheme seems self-defeating, but he intends to raise a race of supermen on a distant planet. The girl in the case is American secret-agent Holly Goodhead, intelligently played by Lois Chiles. "Jaws," the steel-mouthed henchman played by Richard Kiel in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), makes a return appearance, turning good-guy (complete with a girl friend of his own) in the process. Bernard Lee makes his last appearance as "M" in this most costly ($34 million) of James Bond's 1970s escapades. Lewis Gilbert directs for Danjaq-EON/U-A. (Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide)

 View the theatrical trailer for this film on YouTube.com.

1 nomination