(4 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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Rent Movie.com movie reviews presents The Spy Who Loved Me movie review a 1977 film starring Roger Moore, Barbara Bach and directed by Lewis Gilbert Agent 007 must work with his female Soviet counterpart to find the answer to the disappearance of nuclear missile carrying submarines. The British discover that someone has perfected a way of tracking submerged submarines and is offering the technology to the highest bidder. An international crisis breaks when a Royal Navy Polaris submarine equipped with sixteen nuclear warheads disappears while on patrol. The British send agent James Bond to secure the tracking device and locate the missing vessel before its missiles are launched at the West. Roger Moore had a decent start as James Bond in “Live and Let Die,” then faltered in “The Man with the Golden Gun.” In “The Spy Who Loved Me” Bond roars back with one of his best and one of the best in the Bond series. Karl Stromberg (Kurt Jürgens) is attempting to cause the superpowers to destroy each other so that he can become the controlling force in a world that will live on the ocean’s floor. James Bond and Major Anya Amasova (Barbara Bach) play cat and mouse with Stromberg’s henchmen as they try to find out who is stealing Soviet and American nuclear submarines, how they are being stolen, and why they are being stolen. In the course of their search they meet up with Richard Kiel as Jaws in his first Bond appearance, and the beautiful Caroline Munro as Naomi. Munro has played in a variety of B-movies such as “Dr. Phibes Rises Again!” and “At the Earth’s Core.” Moore’s previous two Bond films minimized gadgetry in an attempt to focus on Bond the spy, but in this movie the gadgets are back. The best gadget is the coolest Bond car since the Aston-Martin DB-5, a Lotus Esprit Turbo. This car can go underwater, is generally bullet proof, has underwater mines, missiles (poor Caroline Munro) and several other interesting gadgets. At the beginning of the movie Bond escapes from assorted Soviet assassins by skiing off a cliff and then parachuting to safety. He is aided in that getaway by a ski pole gun. Bond also has a type of jet ski. In one of the more interesting scenes in the movie Bond uses an electromagnet in combat against Jaws. You would also have to include Stromberg’s underwater fortress as part of the gadgets in the movie, along with a ship that eats submarines. I think you get the drift. There are a lot of gadgets in this movie. The movie unfolds in a variety of exotic locations. The best are in Egypt where pyramids and excavations form a backdrop for several scenes. The locations also include a mountainous Mediterranean island along with the beautiful beaches of that island. The score keeps up the tradition of having an outstanding theme song with Carly Simon’s rendition of “The Spy Who Loved Me,” one of the best theme songs to any Bond movie and a hit for Simon in the 70s. This movie is quite interesting in that Stromberg in the central antagonist, and yet the majority of the action is between Bond and various Stromberg henchmen. Richard Kiel gets a lot of film time, including a rather interesting battle with Bond and Amasova in a desert excavation, and then another battle with Jaws on Stromberg’s underwater fortress, ending with Jaws in a brief, ironic battle with a shark. The wimpy captain of the tanker also gets quite a bit of film time, unfortunately. The captain is one of the wimpiest Bond bad guys ever. Naomi, on the other hand, is in the tradition of the beautiful, strong and evil women that Bond has had to face often, particularly in newer Bond films. The comedy in this movie was significantly subdued after the near parody of “The Man with the Golden Gun.” Thank goodness. The humor had become overwhelming and distracting. Moore’s Bond is relatively serious in this film, with the fewest one-liners and double entendre’s of any of the previous several Bond films. The result is a much more serious and effective spy movie. This movie succeeds with a solid plot that is a throw back to the earliest Connery films, a solid cast, excellent locations, and plausible gadgets. One of the best of the series and perhaps Moore’s best. - Lonnie E. Holder