Traveling from the mountains of northeast Russia to the top of the Eiffel Tower to the towers high over the Golden Gate Bridge, this James Bond thriller is not recommended for those with vertigo. But those who relish the feeling of sweaty palms and palpitations of the heart will thoroughly enjoy the stunts in A View to A Kill, the fourteenth movie in the ongoing series about the heroic exploits of Her Majesty's Secret Service Agent 007.
In this installment, James bond (Roger Moore) must match wits with Max Zorin (Christopher Walken), a multimillionaire wheeler-dealer who is into computer technology, oil, and thoroughbred horseracing. He's a formidable opponent whose psychopathic tendencies match his high I.Q. Zorin's Amazonian lover, who is called May Day (Grace Jones), is lethal as a poisonous snake and twice as sexy.
The screenplay for A View to A Kill by Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson is right up-to-date with themes related to computer chips, steroids, Nazi war criminals, and the gap between American and Russian high-tech sophistication. The film's major glitches are the acting inability of Tanya Roberts as Bond's major love interest and the hackneyed auto wreck sequences involving San Francisco cops. Otherwise, A View to A Kill, enhanced by a spunky theme song by Duran Duran, registers as another high flying Bond adventure flick.