For Your Eyes Only Contains Roger Moore's Darkest Kill As James Bond
https://screenrant.com/your-eyes-only-movie-roger-moore-darkest-kill/
For Your Eyes Only contains possibly Roger Moore's most ruthless kill as James Bond. The critical and commercial response to The Man With The Golden Gun - Roger Moore's second outing as 007 - was so tepid that there was serious consideration about retiring the series. It bounced back in a big way with the next entry The Spy Who Loved Me, which was filled with the action, exotic locales, memorable villains and romance audiences loved about the franchise.share
Moore's fourth entry Moonraker was shot for almost twice the budget as its predecessor and in its attempts to compete with Star Wars, sent Bond into space. The producers behind the franchise realized trying to top themselves with more elaborate action and gadgets would be a mistake, so a concentrated effort was made with For Your Eyes Only to bring the series back to reality a little. It features a relatively grounded spy story and setpieces, with gadgets and outlandish henchmen being kept to a minimum.
It's probably the most down-to-Earth of the Moore era of Bond as a result, though it does suffer somewhat from sluggish pacing and a weak villain. In keeping with For Your Eyes Only's grittier tone, it even featured Bond's coldest kill. This comes around the midway point, where 007 is pursuing assassin Locque (Michael Gothard), who is escaping following a shootout at a warehouse. Moore's James Bond wounds him and the car crashes near a cliff edge. 007 soon approaches and after throwing one of Locque's pins into the car - which the assassin left at the scene of a killing of a Bond ally - he kicks the car over the edge, sending Locque plummeting to his death.
Roger Moore's James Bond is considered more tongue in cheek and goofy than other actors who took the role, though he had some dark moments too. These include his rough interrogation of Maud Adams' character in The Man With The Golden Gun or his cold-blooded execution of Stromberg in The Spy Who Loved Me. Even by those standards, his killing of Locque in For Your Eyes Only is especially icy. This was an attempt by the filmmakers to give Moore's 007 more grit, and it turns out Moore himself had issues with the scene.
He didn't feel his killing of Locque was in keeping with his version of James Bond. There were other ideas considered for the scene, such as Bond's flicking of the pin into the car being enough to unbalance it, but in the end, they stuck with Moore kicking it over the edge. It is worth noting that Locque was a vicious killer himself in For Your Eyes Only, having also murdered Countess Lisl von Schlaf, one of Bond's love interests. While it's not quite in keeping with Moore's portrayal, one of the reasons it stands out is precisely because it was so out of character, which made it all the more impactful.