If Roger Moore wasn’t the best James Bond, he was at least the most honest. No other actor leaned into the sleaziness of the screen character like Moore did, especially in one of his best installments in the franchise: The Spy Who Loved Me.
Much like Sean Connery’s From Russia with Love, this pits Bond against a female, Soviet counterpart—Barbara Bach’s Anya Amasova—in an equality-of-the-sexes gambit that is promptly dropped for the final act. Unlike Daniela Bianchi in Russia, Bach’s Amasova is conscious during the climax, but she does need rescuing from a rogue megalomaniac (Curd Jurgens) and his underwater lair (a brilliant piece of Bond set and production design).
Compared to Connery, Moore doesn’t seem to care if we find him charming; he just slurs his way through his dialogue (he definitely has the best Bond voice) and blithely glides across the set pieces—while still able to nail an important line when he needs to. When asked by Amasova if he caused her lover’s death, he cruelly says, “The answer is yes: I did kill him.” There’s no hypocrisy to this Bond. (He’s also smart, picking up clues that would have sailed over Connery’s himbo head.)
As director, Bond veteran Lewis Gilbert (You Only Live Twice, Moonraker) makes this one of the more visually interesting installments. Real care has gone into the widescreen compositions (not just the exteriors, but even the bureaucratic desk shots), while a chase sequence during a light show at the Egyptian pyramids—involving Bond, Amasova, and infamous henchman Jaws (Richard Kiel, making his series debut)—employs enough colored lighting and jarring camera angles to nearly register as abstract.
Aside from Jaws—who has a great showdown with an actual shark—this hits on all the other essential Bond tropes. Carly Simon’s swooning theme song, “Nobody Does it Better,” lends more class to the proceedings than they probably deserve, given the rampant sexism still on display. There are at least four great gadgets—including a Lotus Esprit that conveniently converts into a submarine. And though Moore likely wasn’t as involved as the stuntmen, Bond’s introduction is a classic: escaping bad guys by sailing down a ski slope, launching off a cliff, and sailing away to safety thanks to a parachute imprinted with the Union Jack. What a smug bastard.
