or this twelfth film in the series, James Bond (Roger Moore) visits Teresa Bond’s grave, referencing her sudden death at the conclusion of “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.” Evil organization SPECTRE and its leader Blofeld (having been a nemesis for the majority of the films) have been mysteriously absent from the last four outings (largely in part due to a lawsuit over intellectual property). But, finally, a resolution is provided, though Blofeld’s name and face are still unused. The theme music marks the first time a singer is shown in the title sequence graphics by Maurice Binder (the artist being Sheena Easton, who is glamorous enough to inherit the distinction), and it’s a markedly more polished design, along with nicely crafted lyrics and a memorable tune.

The A.T.A.C. system, used to communicate with submarines by the British Ministry of Defence, was aboard the St. Georges, destroyed by a naval mine in the Ionian Sea. The Russians want it, should it enter the market (as it can be utilized to command British ships to attack friendly shores), so it’s up to Secret Service Agent 007 to retrieve it. Dubbed “Operation Undertow,” Bond heads to Spain to find out the details about the assassination of a Grecian contact, Havelock, hired to locate the sunken vessel. His daughter Melina Havelock (Carole Bouquet) arrives at the same time to dispatch her father’s killer, before then escaping with Bond.

Although the act of revenge is satisfied, Melina still wishes to pursue the man who funded the crime. After an informative visit with gadgets-man Q (Desmond Llewelyn), Bond travels to Italy to locate an enforcer in the Brussels underworld, believed to be working for Greek smugglers. Nicknamed “The Dove,” Emile Leopold Locque (Michael Gothard) is a ruthless hoodlum having excelled in contract murder, white slavery, and drug distribution – employed by a mystery man commanding a fleet of inter-coastal freighters with enough resources to be behind the missing A.T.A.C.

Moore is at his cheekiest, cracking glib remarks at the end of almost every event. Q’s lab is even hokier, topped by the integral use of “identigraph” technology to establish a crucial piece of the puzzle. The equipment is hilariously outdated and impossibly accurate in pinpointing the culprit who needs to be shadowed. This is accompanied by an incredibly poor and outrageously silly performance by Lynn-Holly Johnson as Bibi Dahl, an ice-skater and immature seductress. To counteract the influx of featherbrained character meddling, several of the action scenes have become more elaborate than ever, featuring riskier stunts and less greenscreen (reserved almost entirely for close-ups of Moore’s face). Several fights develop spontaneously without care for pizzazz, resembling a comedy that pummels audiences with jokes, hoping that the ones that miss their mark are forgotten while the cleverer ones get the job done. And the underwater segments are surprisingly impressive, despite the notably slow movements of heavy, cumbersome, submersed suits, using oxygen deprivation and time limits to heighten suspense (a few visual elements are revisited in James Cameron’s “The Abyss”).

The music has gotten a lot more funky and modern, disturbingly replacing the classic James Bond suite, which is not only timeless but grandly exhilarating. If only these productions would recognize a good thing. The Lotus gets a new paint job, brief gambling finds its way into the picture, and the villains (chiefly Topol from “Fiddler on the Roof” as top boss Columbo and Julian Glover as Kristatos) are quite forgettable – as are the supporting female players (especially Cassandra Harris as a momentary Bond girl). A stunt through shark-infested coral reefs represents a high point, as well as a harrowing assault on a sky-scraping mountaintop monastery, but by the end, “For Your Eyes Only” takes its place as one of the more unspectacular entries in the series.

– Mike Massie