The spy who loved me - 1977

A pretty standard Bond movie of the times. The one where Jaws is introduced.

A nice moment was when the Russian wanted to call their best agent, Triple X, and we see a man and a woman in bed but when the phone rings he moves away and she answers :-) too bad that in the film she didn’t really do much. She was there all the time, daring and determined, but she didn’t really do anything.

Only at the end she shows she’s as good as Scaramanga when she opens the bottle by shooting at the cork… she was much closer than he was, but she wasn’t even looking…

It starts with both a British and a Russian nuclear-submarine going missing, the Ranger and the Potemkin. Bond was in Austria - with a girl, that’s how his missions go - when a message comes out of his watch and he leaves immediately. “James, I need you” - “so does England” …

She lets the men outside know and they chase Bond on skiis. One of them is the agent that was with TripleX. It’s a fast and acrobatic chase but of course Bond wins.

The opening titles show “Roger Moore in Ian Fleming’s James Bond 007 in The spy who loved me” and the theme song this time is not the title, the song is “nobody does it better” … :-/

I mean, Carly Simon:ok, the song: no.

TripleX is Major Anya Amasova. When the Comrade General tells her that Agent Sergei Barsov has been killed she’s very hurt, and he’s very sympathetic. 

Bond has the same mission, and they both start from Cairo. The villain this time is Karl Stromberg who has a laboratory in Sardegna’s waters. We see him kill a girl, his secretary or something, because she “has bee attempting to sell the plans of our tracking project to competing world powers”, by dropping her in water among sharks. Since Dr Bechmann and Professor Markovitz have finished developing the submarine tracking system, he kills them, thus saving himself the 20 million dollars payment. He orders his men, Sandor and Jaws, to recover “the microfilm copy of the tracking system”. 

Jaws is very tall and big, with metal teeth that he uses to crash locks and stuff, and also to kill. He bites them to death.

He’salso very very strong, he can wreck a car with his bare hands with ease, and he can keep one still equally easily. Sandor is ordered to obey him… so I guess jaws can talk… I don’t think I ever heard him utter a single word…

Bond gains somem starting information from a man he knows in Egypt, and even though he was in a hurry he accepts to stay the night when the man presents him with a girl at his disposal, as a gift Bond has no trouble at all accepting.  :-/

Bond is to meet with Fekkesh and eventually Kalba. At Fekkesh’s place he tells the woman there he lives much longer by being suspicious, and yet he never is, is he? Or careful, he’s never careful as well. He’s still living only because he’s got an infinite reserve of luck and a long queue of girls ready to die for him. Like here, Bond kisses her, she sees a man ready to shoot him, she yells no and covers him with her body dying in his place. He throws her body down (well, on a bed because there’s a living actress there) and chases the assassin without a second’s hesitation. He fights Sandor and kills him. Fekkesh is later killed by Jaws.

Bond and Amasova meet at the Mujabor Club: he knows she drinks Bacardi on the rocks, she knows he drinks vodka martini, shaken not stirred. They’re spies so of course they know all about ech other (still, secret services shouldn’t also have, and keep, secrets?)

“Commander James Bond, recruited to the British Secret Service from the Royal Navy, licensed to kill, and has done so on numerous occasions. Many lady friends, but married only once. Wife killed…” and he stops her there, acknowledging she does know her stuff but not wanting to talk about it, sensitive about certain things.

Mr Kalba is the man with the microfilm and they both want it, but Jaws gets him first so they follow Jaws, hiding in his van. Jaws is a professional killer, and they both know him from their records. She warns Bond from an attack, and helps stop his and Jaws fight, saving his life. Bond makes continuous remarks about women drivers while if she can’t move is because Jaws is holding the van…

Just when Bond thinks she escaped with the microfilm, he finds her and General Gogol with M (his “opposite number in the kgb”). Both Governments agreed to work together “to find out what happened to our submarines”. She has the microfilm but Bond examined it already. A deeper examination leads them to Stromberg. Jaws attack Anya - I guess because she got the microfilm from him before - and Bond helps her throwing him out of the train. When they arrive there’s a car for them - thanks to her we know Q is Major Boothroyd.

They have a hotel booked as Robert Sterling, booked by Moneypenny with two bedrooms. They visit Stromberg as a marine biologist and his wife. Stromberg is fascinated by the sea. “Why do we seek to conquer space when seven-tenth of our universes remains to be explored? The world beneath the sea”.

Of course Bond also knows everything about fish to pass as a biologist…

Stromberg plans to have “an underwater city”, “the only hope for the future of mankind”. 

Jaws is there so Stromberg knows who they are. Once ashore, our duo is followed by a motorcycle, then a car then a helicopter. Bond stops them all and drives the car into the sea; the car turns submarine and Anya uses the car’s button against those that attack them now: “I stole the blueprints of this car two years ago”, and it turns car again when they come out on a beach.

When it comes out that Bond was in Austria, so it was him who killed Sergei, “the man I loved”, she says she’ll kill him “when this mission is over”, but of course she won’t.

They use a submarine to reach Stromberg, but they’re taken like the first two: a huge tanker got it.

Anya “has never failed on a mission” just like Bond. Stromberg caught the submariines, of course, but the crews are still alive. The first two submarines, with a new crew, are sent to attack New York and Moscow, and “global destruction will follow, the new era will begin”.

This is not blackmail, he wants  “to change the face of history” by creating a new world beneath the sea. When Stromberg goes there - he called it Atlants of course - he takes Anya with him, then ties her up after giving her a more succint dress to replace her uniform.

Bond frees himself and the detained crews and they all fight; Bond takes a detonator out of a missile to get into their “impregnable” operaitons room. Bond and the others change the submarines target so they destroy each other. They escape with their own submarine: orders arrive to “destroy Atlantis fast” but Bond wants to go save Anya. He gets there, avoids the sharks trap easily, avoids being shot by Stromberg’s long-table-length-gun and shoots him through it himself. This time Bond wants to make really sure because he keeps shooting him…

Jaws attacks him, and Bond stops him by using a huge magnet to raise him up - attached to his teeh - and drop him with the sharks… not enough to kill him though, Jaws bites the shark!

Bond goes to free Anya whose outfit at least seems to have pants. 

We see Jaws swimming away, but I have no idea of his fate at this point (but we’ll meet him again)

Bond and Anya have sex but are surprised in bed by both their superiors…

James Bond is Roger Moore

Major Anya Amasova is Barbara Bach

M is Bernard Lee

Q is Desmond Llewelyn

Miss Moneypenny is Lois Maxwell

Stromberg is Curt Jurgens

Jaws is Richard Kiel

General Gogol is Walter Gotell

Sandor is Milton Reid

Naomi is Carolilne Munro (the girl on the helicopter)

The end of the spy who loved me, James Bond will return in For your eyes only

ITA agente 007 la spia che  mi amava