Most realistic of all Moore's Bonds

Really I want to like 'For Your Eyes Only' more than I do. After 'Moonraker' there really wasn't anywhere else for the Bonds to go in terms of the wit and spectacle that Roger Moore specialised in, you were never going to top 'The Spy Who Loves Me' and 'Moonraker' with hijacked nuclear submarines and laser battles in space. So instead we have a much more back to basics Bond, announced very succinctly when the Lotus from 'The Spy Who Loves Me' gets blown sky high and Bond casually just tosses the keys away (a shame as it would surely have come in useful if it still turned into a submarine). Instead we have the slightly incongruous sight of James Bond fleeing the bad guys in a Citreon 2CV? This time Q-branch won't be there to come to his rescue.

One of the most realistic Bond plots ever, the loss of a British spy ship and its' Enigma style decoding device off Albania is a headline that could be ripped from a Cold War newspaper. The background story of two friends, comrades in the Greek resistance against the Nazis who are now committed enemies on opposite sides of the East/West conflict could have been truly great especially considering the high quality actors portraying them. That Bond originally takes one to be his ally only to discover that actually he's backed the wrong horse is an interesting touch, we don't normally see him make such misjudgements, the villain is usually much more obvious and not one who has been previously decorated by her Majesty's government. Beautiful Bond girl with some real motivations, some great underwater sequences, especially with the extremely scary ultra-deep diving suit and as always we can rely on Roger to bring the humour, especially the opening sequence, byebye Blofeld and it's nice that we see Bond visit his wife's grave (you wonder will Tracy ever feature in Daniel Craig's Bond films?). Plus did you spot Charles Dance as henchman?

But somehow it just doesn't all hang together, the Austrian scenes go on far too long. We have Bond demonstrate his steel by kicking the main henchman over the cliff in his car (great scene, apparently Roger was reluctant to do it as he felt it wasn't the thing for his version of Bond but he pulls it off with elan). Yet then he tries to warn off the Bond girl from avenging her parents, after he avenges his wife in the first scene? The subplot with the gymnast is awful and the climax not up to much. We don't need the scenes on the beach and why couldn't he have got the Bond girl to work on salvaging the ship whilst he tried to track down the hit-man?

So it could have been great but just needed to have been leaner