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...one of the best of Moore's Bond flicks, complemented by its exotic locales and outer-space motif.
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"Moonraker" was the eleventh regular installment in the 007 series, discounting the several aberrations along the way, and the fourth one to star Roger Moore as secret agent extraordinaire James Bond. By this time, 1979, Moore was getting the hang of the role and had not yet fallen into the habit of going for easy laughs.
"Moonraker" is one of the best of Moore's Bond flicks, complemented by its exotic locales and outer-space motif. The Bond producers always tried to make their films timely, and this one capitalized on the launching of the U.S. space shuttle and the tremendous success of "Star Wars" and "Close Encounters" a couple of years earlier. It became the biggest-grossing of all Bond films to that point. Now, MGM have reissued "Moonraker" in a Special 007 Edition DVD that includes a number of laudable bonus items to make it all the better.
In this adventure, Bond is assigned the job of investigating the disappearance of an American space shuttle on loan to the British. He uncovers the dastardly plot of one Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale) to engineer a perfect race of people in space. Needless to say, Drax wants to kill everybody else on Earth in the process. On his mission, Bond meets fellow agent Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles), trifles with another beautiful woman in the person of Corinne Dufour (Corinne Clery), and, of course, sees old standbys "M" (Bernard Lee in what would be his last appearance), "Q" (Desmond Llewelyn), and Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell).
He also runs into his old nemesis Jaws, the steel-toothed heavy from the previous movie, "The Spy Who Loved Me," and does battle in a spectacular space station climax. Other locations include parts of France, England, Brazil, Guatemala, and the Mojave Desert, and the cities of London, Venice, and Rio de Janeiro. Oh, yes, and the movie begins with an amazing free-fall sequence in which Jaws brings down the house. It's worth the price of admission in itself.
Video:
The picture is presented in a 2.17:1 ratio anamorphic widescreen that is just short of its Panavision release size. As usual with MGM's transfers of the Bond series, the image quality is excellent. There is some slight flutter to an occasional line or stripe, but otherwise the picture is well detailed, colors are strong, and digital artifacts are nonexistent.
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