Amazon.com video review:
The second grab bag of 007 adventures features three Bonds in five films, including the legendary movie that started it all. In 1962 Sean Connery defined the cinematic James Bond as a tough, charming, and thoroughly professional cold war spy with a license to kill in the lean, hard-edged Dr. No. With Ursula Andress (as the original Bond girl Honey Ryder, who makes her entrance in a bikini), Bond battles a renegade supervillain with little more than his wits, his cunning, and his Walther PPK (this was before Q armed him with the coolest toys a superspy ever had). George Lazenby, a handsome Australian model with a self-effacing confidence, made his first and only appearance as James Bond in the underrated On Her Majesty's Secret Service, a witty and action-packed adventure that makes 007 history when Bond marries the girl (the lovely and talented Diana Rigg, fresh from her duties as the butt-kicking spy on the TV series The Avengers). Roger Moore brought a light tone and a suave assurance to the series as the third Bond, and the set features three of his seven appearances. In The Man with the Golden Gun, he battles million-dollar assassin Christopher Lee, one of Bond's most magnetic adversaries. The Spy Who Loved Me, perhaps Moore's finest hour, is a return to the extravagant set pieces and cold war thrills of Connery's pictures and introduces Richard Kiel's steel-dentured Jaws to the series. Jaws returns as a comic figure in Moonraker, a misguided sci-fi entry that takes Bond to space for a physically impressive but dramatically lackluster adventure. More of a mixed bag than the initial seven-film James Bond Gift Set, this set is aimed at the Bond completist rather than the general fan. The DVD editions of the films each feature audio commentary by the director and key members of the crew, "making of" documentaries, and a host of stills, TV spots, and trailers. --Sean Axmaker
Amazon.com video review:
This was the first James Bond adventure produced after the
success of Star Wars, so it jumped on the sci-fi bandwagon by
combining the suave appeal of Agent 007 (once again played by Roger
Moore) with enough high-tech hardware and special effects to make Luke
Skywalker want to join Her Majesty's Secret Service. After the
razzle-dazzle of The Spy Who Loved Me, this attempt to latch
onto a trend proved to be a case of overkill, even though it brought
back the steel-toothed villain Jaws (Richard Kiel) and scored a major
hit at the box office. This time Bond is up against a criminal
industrialist named Drax (Michel Lonsdale) who wants to control the
world from his orbiting space station. In keeping with his
well-groomed style, Bond thwarts this maniacal Neo-Hitler's scheme
with the help of a beautiful, sleek-figured scientist (played by Lois
Chiles with all the vitality of a department-store mannequin). There's
a grand-scale climax involving space shuttles and ray guns, but
despite the film's popular success, this is one Bond adventure that
never quite gets off the launching pad. It's as if the caretakers of
the James Bond franchise had forgotten that it's Bond--and not a
barrage of gizmos and gadgets (including a land-worthy Venetian
gondola)--that fuels the series' success. Despite Moore's passive
performance (which Pauline Kael described as "like an office
manager who is turning into dead wood but hanging on to collect his
pension"), Moonraker had no problem attracting an
appreciative audience, and there are even a few renegade Bond-philes
who consider it one of their favorites. --Jeff Shannon
