I was 10 years old in 1979, when Moonraker came out. It was, to my recollection, the first time I saw a movie in the theatres without an adult present to take me. Either my mother decided that I was responsible enough to go to the movies by myself, or she just didn’t want to see a movie where James Bond goes to space.

If it was the latter, then my mother wasn’t alone in that opinion. Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of articles and met a lot of people who dismiss Moonraker because of where Bond ends up in the film’s third act. So, before I get into the plot synopsis and my thoughts on the film, let’s take on the elephant in the room head-on. Yes,007 goes to outer space. However, he doesn’t get that far into outer space. He’s in Earth orbit. He takes a space shuttle to get there. Space shuttles were not science fiction in 1979. As a matter of fact, NASA’s first flight of its first space shuttle was originally scheduled for that year, though it would be delayed, making the film a little less timely than it intended to be. The design of the Moonraker shuttle is comparable to the actual space shuttle design, so there’s nothing unbelievable happening on that front

Then there’s the fact that the villain has a space station orbiting the earth. OK, in 1979, that might have seemed a little far fetched. However, in 2026, it’s not at all unbelievable. After all, the International Space Station has been in earth orbit since the year 2000. So, the film was a little ahead of its time, but only by 21 years. Not to mention the fact that Bond almost went into space already, in You Only Live Twice in 1967. And I must mention that there was talk at one point that Tom Cruise would be filming scenes of a Mission: Impossible movie aboard the International Space Station. So is it really that crazy that a secret agent hangs around a space station?

OK, then there’s the lasers. This movie has got a lot of lasers at the end. And now, we are getting into the realm of science fiction. However, I’ll point out that lasers have been a part of this film series since Goldfinger. That guy had a laser, as did Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever. And I think Scaramanga might have had a laser that he used to blow up Bond’s plane in the third act of The Man with the Golden Gun. It was missing an actual visual beam, but it was, for all intents and purposes, a laser.

So, personally, I don’t really have a problem with any of these elements being in the film. I do have some questions about them, especially about the orbiting space station, but they’re more about plot questions than actual objections to their presence. So, I think if you can accept the presence of these elements, you’ll enjoy this movie. However, if these elements represent, for you, a bridge too far when it comes to your Bond adventures, then this movie just isn’t for you.

The film opens with the Moonraker space shuttle attached to a Boeing 747 jet. NASA transported its space shuttles that way back in the late seventies. This particular shuttle is on its way to England to be examined by the British authorities, but two pilots stashed in it activate the shuttle and destroy the jet as they do so. I kind of question why no one was suspicious that the shuttle was attached to the jet with a full fuel tank, but this is a minor plot point in a film that has quite a few inexplicable ones coming up.

In London, M decides to put 007 on the case. However, the agent is on his way back from a mission in South Africa, making out with a pretty flight attendant on a private jet in the sky somewhere over the African continent. The pilot of the plane informs Bond that he and the attendant are leaving while the spy is staying behind on a plane whose controls the pilot has just shot up. Bond tussles with the man and manages to throw him out the door. However, before he can strap on a parachute himself, Jaws, the hulking henchman from the previous film, knocks him out of the plane without a chute. This really isn’t that big of a private plane, so you might find it a little difficult to believe that Jaws managed to hide this whole time. But, in the last film, he had managed to conceal himself in a closet of a train compartment, so I guess anything’s possible. What I wanna know is, why is the giant trying to kill 007 at this point in the film? His employer from the previous movie is dead, and he doesn’t get hired by this one’s villain until later on in the film. So is he just carrying a grudge against Bond?

Now falling without a parachute, our hero angles his body to intercept the falling pilot. The two fight and 007 manages to take the man’s parachute off of him and put it on himself. Before he can open it, Jaws skydives down to also fight the spy, but Bond escapes by opening his parachute and slipping out of the henchman’s grasp. When Jaws tries to open his own parachute, it fails to deploy but he survives when he falls into a circus’ big tent and ends up collapsing it completely. Takes a lot more to kill this guy, it seems. Cue the opening credits

The title song is the third and last in the series to be sung by Shirley Bassey. It’s not a bad song, but personally, I prefer the other two she did much more than this one.

After arriving at M’s office in London, 007 is assigned to investigate Hugo Drax, the supplier of the space shuttles to the US government. Q assigns Bond a new watch that has a dart gun attached which our hero will use several times throughout the film.

The scene shifts to California where Bond is flown to Drax’s private chateau which he had shipped from France brick by brick. This is mostly done to disguise the fact that the chateau scenes were actually filmed in France, as this film is a tandem Anglo-French production. The pilot flying him around and giving him this background information is a beautiful woman named Corinne DuFour. When the two enter Drax’s office, he welcomes Bond and allows him to question the staff at the nearby shuttle construction facilities.

It is there that 007 meets the main love interest of the film, Dr. Holly Goodhead. She gives him a cool reception but takes him to the facility’s centrifuge where astronauts are trained to withstand gravitational pressure. Our hero gets in the device and when Goodhead is called away, Drax’s henchman Chang pushes the device to spin the spy at life-threatening speeds.. In danger of passing out, Bond uses his dart gun to disable the centrifuge and barely makes it out alive. A criticism that I’ve often seen levelled at Roger Moore’s portrayal of 007 is that he never looks like he’s really in danger, being too cool and collected in most of his scenes. However, in the centrifuge scene and also once he gets out of it alive, Bond really looks shaken up, and I wanted to point out that Moore, when required, could look like the physical toil of these adventures was getting to him.

That night, the agent is poking around Drax’s chateau when he is discovered by Corinne DuFour, whom he seduces. He then finds some documents in Drax’s office safe that indicate some work being done in the villain’s facilities in Venice. DuFour sees him break into the safe but lets him get away with it. This will prove to be a fatal mistake on her part.

The next day, Drax and his entourage are on the chateau grounds hunting quail when Bond arrives to say his goodbyes. One of Drax’s goons is hiding in a tree leveling a gun at 007. Drax offers to let the hero take a shot at the birds, which the spy does and misses. However, he shot the would-be assassin instead. After he leaves, Drax informs DuFour that he is aware she let Bond break into his office the night before and that she is fired. As she leaves the hunting grounds, two Doberman pinschers are set upon her and chase her down in the woods. It’s a fairly gruesome scene for what is otherwise a rather light-hearted movie. We may not see the dogs tear the poor woman to shreds, but the chase is long and very creepy.

The story moves on to Venice where Bond pokes around the Venini Glassworks. While he does so, a pretty tour guide takes note of his presence and the spy bumps into Doctor Goodhead who is also there. He attempts to ask for a dinner date but she shoots him down. 007 is then relaxing on a gondola (the “Bondola”) when another gondola with an assassin on it kills his gondolier. Our hero  dispatches the assassin and when a motorboat arrives with a couple of thugs shooting at him, he activates the Bondola’s motor to start a boat chase through the Venetian canals. Trapped on the edge of the Piazza San Marco with the goons bearing down on him, Bond escapes by activating the Bondola’s hoverboat feature and simply driving through the square in front of a couple hundred tourists. I’ve occasionally, in these reviews, pointed out instances where 007 seems to forget the “secret” part of being a secret agent, but this is perhaps the most egregious.

He returns to the glassworks that night and finds a couple of scientists working in a hidden lab. When they step away, the spy sneaks in and grabs a vial of liquid from a small wheeled cabinet. When he steps out of the lab and the scientists return, they accidentally disturb one of the vials which breaks, releasing a gas that kills them while leaving the test animals and flora in the lab unharmed. Our hero is then ambushed by Chang who attempts to kill him with a kendo stick. All the two manage to do is destroy everything in the glass works as they fight their way through it, ending up on the top floor where Bond dispatches the henchman by throwing him through the building’s clock face. Chang falls through a piano, leaving 007 to quip, “Play it again Sam”. This is a very sub-par line, as I believe “That ended on a sour note” would have been better in this situation.

The spy ends up in Dr. Goodhead’s room where he finds a series of gadgets that prove she’s a CIA agent investigating Drax herself. She doesn’t bother denying it so the two agree to work together. Still,  she lies about her intention to soon leave Venice to go to Rio, but Bond spots her plane ticket. The next morning, our hero brings M and the British Minister of Defence to the lab’s location only to find it completely gone and Drax sitting in a tastefully decorated office instead. The Minister apologizes to Drax for having lost the Moonraker shuttle and then, once outside, admonishes 007 for having embarrassed him. After being placed on leave, the spy gives M the vial of mysterious liquid he absconded with the night before and M suggests that Bond continue the investigation unofficially.

Before the scene shifts away from Venice, however, there’s a quick scene of Drax talking to someone on the phone to mention that they need a replacement for Chang. He is informed  that another henchman is available, one whose availability comes as a pleasant surprise to the villain. This is the story’s way to reintroduce Jaws into the narrative. However, I do wonder who Drax is talking to on the other side of that phone call. Is there some kind of Dial-A-Henchman temp service in the Bond universe that I’m not aware of?

Bond makes his way to Rio where Carnivale is in full swing, because of course he’s gonna go when there’s Carnivale. He’s aided by a pretty contact name Manuela who directs him to a warehouse he breaks into. He sees that a lot of Drax’s materials are being sent to a nearby airport. Meanwhile, outside, in another creepy scene that seems to belong in a different film, Jaws approaches Manuela and almost kills her before a crowd of revelers shows up to interrupt him. They all dance around and at no point does Manuela think to tell them, “Help help, this giant man is trying to kill me”. They leave but the brute’s attempt to murder her is then interrupted by 007. Before the henchman and the spy can really get into a fight, another gang of revelers shows up and takes Jaws away. This is the last we’ll see of Manuela. She didn’t make much of an impression, but at least she ended up still alive, which is more than you can say for poor Corrine DuFour.

Now at this point, you might expect a spy to go poke around the airport warehouse where all this material is supposed to be being transferred to. But that’s not at all what bond does. Instead, he goes to a mountain top park and looks through a telescope at the airport where he sees planes leaving. I would say that this is not a great example of spycraft, except that he bumps into Holly Goodhead up there, and apparently she was doing the exact same thing. They both agree that Drax seems to be bugging out of Rio, but they don’t know why or with what. They do agree to work together again, and this time, we get the impression that they mean it.

Back at the base of the mountain, Jaws and his assistant take over the cable car that leads to the mountaintop. As Bond and Goodhead are on the way back down, their cable car is stopped midway and Jaws arrives on another cable car. There’s a quick fight on top of the cable cars where Goodhead is pretty useless. There’s some high-altitude stunt work that is impressive to watch, though it doesn’t quite equal the thrill of the opening skydiving scene. Eventually, the two spies loop a chain around the cable and slide down to the bottom while Jaws chases them in the cable car. The brute ends up crashing into the control room and is covered in debris that even he has trouble getting out of. He is helped by a Pretty Little blonde woman and as the two look at each other, the music swells and they fall in love at first sight.

Nearby, Bond and Goodhead are captured by some goons posing as paramedics. As they’re being driven up another mountain in an ambulance, he manages to escape his restraints and fight one of the goons before falling out of the ambulance in a gurney. His CIA counterpart is driven away to an unknown fate. The scene then shifts to a remote abbey which is secretly an MI6 base. Bond checks in with both M and Q before finding out that the mysterious liquid he gave them back in Venice is a deadly nerve gas derived from a rare flower that only grows in northern Brazil. 007 investigates in a riverboat and is ambushed by Jaws and some other thugs in another riverboat chase. This is the second one in the movie and I have to fault the filmmakers for not being particularly varied in their choice of action sequences. The chase ends with 007 escaping in a hang glider while the boats go over some falls, though of course Jaws will pop up again later, because it takes a lot more than that to kill this guy, it seems.

Bond ends up in the wilderness with no idea where to go except when a beautiful woman in a white dress leads him into a nearby temple where a bunch of other women are waiting for him. These are all ladies that 007 has quickly met throughout the film and they’re all dressed in exactly the same outfit. Before he can ask what’s going on, he’s thrown into a pond where a giant anaconda attacks him. He manages to kill the snake with a poisoned pen that he lifted out of Goodhead’s room in Venice. Then Jaws takes him to Drax who finally explains that he stole the Moonraker shuttle at the beginning of the movie because one of his own developed a mechanical problem and he needed the one that was being loaned out to the British.

He places Bond underneath his shuttle so that the rocket exhaust will incinerate him when it takes off. It is there that 007 is reunited with Holly Goodhead and the two escape using explosives hidden in our hero’s watch. They sneak around and manage to incapacitate the flight crew of the final shuttle about to take off. They fly the shuttle into Earth orbit where they discover that Drax has built a space station that is invisible to radar, so nobody else knows it’s up there. What I don’t understand is that one of the pilots of the shuttle goes into the deserted station to get it rotating so it’ll have power and gravity. Why is it abandoned? Did all the people who built it leave afterwards? Why leave?

Once they’re aboard and Drax has given a speech, Bond and Goodhead go sabotage the radar jamming equipment so that the base becomes visible back on Earth. There’s a quick scene of the Americans and the Soviets reassuring each other that neither one of them put that station up there and it’s a nice excuse to have General Gogol, from the last movie, reappear here in a quick scene. The Americans then launch a shuttle with a bunch of space marines aboard. This is the part that I find the most ridiculous thing in the entire movie. The fact that the Americans can launch a shuttle full of space marines so quickly, when I know darn well that actual shuttle launches are delayed all the time due to increment weather.

Back aboard the station, Jaws discovers the two spies and takes them to Drax, who explains his master plan. Having evacuated the Earth with a collection of genetically perfect humans, he will then use the nerve gas he has created to wipe out everyone back on the planet before repopulating it with his master race. It’s not too dissimilar to Stromberg’s plot in the last movie, though at least Drax has a better idea of how to get the world back on its feet after he destroys it. He also intends to let the heroes watch him incinerate the approaching American shuttle before he throws them into space. However, Bond goads Drax into admitting he plans to exterminate anyone who doesn’t live up to his standards. Jaws realizes that his diminutive blonde girlfriend, who he has brought aboard the station, does not fit into the villain’s plans. So he helps Bond and Goodhead escape captivity and they disrupt the station’s rotation long enough for the American shuttle to discharge its marines and they engage in a laser battle with Drax’s forces in orbit. Now either you’ll accept this plot development or you won’t. Personally, I just see it as a logical progression of the series’ spectacle. In You Only Live Twice, we saw a volcano lair be invaded by ninjas. In The Spy Who Loved Me, we saw a hollowed-out oil tanker bear witness to a fight between a multinational force of hundreds of sailors taking on the villain’s goons. I guess having a space battle with lasers flying around all over outer space was about the only place they could go.

The American shuttle docks with the station and some more marines get inside and start shooting up the place. Bond, Goodhead and Jaws pitch in. 007 goes after Drax and the villain gets the drop on him near an airlock. However, before he can kill our hero, the spy uses his wrist gun to shoot a cyanide-tipped dart into him. He then ushers Drax out the airlock and shoots him into space. Then, the base begins breaking up, because of course it does, and everyone evacuates. All, that is, except Jaws and his girlfriend Dolly, who end up in a piece of the station that breaks away and we’ll learn near the end that they got picked up by the Americans.

Before that happens though, Bond and Goodhead must destroy three of the poison gas globes that have been fired towards the Earth. Luckily, Drax’s personal shuttle was armed with a laser which they can use to destroy the threat. It’s kind of odd that 007 is the one who points this out. How did he know about the laser? I could have bought Goodhead, having worked on the shuttles previously, knowing this detail, but Bond? Anyway, they get in the shuttle and blow up the 1st two globes fairly easily though the last one is a little tougher. In the end though, 007 manages to destroy it before it can release its deadly cargo. Then M and the Americans set up a link to the shuttle and catch the two spies making love in zero-gravity. This leads M to ask aloud what Bond thinks he’s doing and for Q to reply, “I think he’s attempting re-entry”. Now that’s good writing! And with that, the credits roll.

This is one of the sillier of the Bond adventures. In my earlier reviews, I said that some of these movies are more fanciful and some more serious. This is definitely one of the former. About my only real critique of it is that the plot really depends on Bond being led by the nose from one place to another. For example, he really had no leads when he arrived in Rio and everything that happens there more or less leads him along with him having very little agency in finding things out. Even after he escapes the second riverboat chase, he could have just wandered through the wilderness without ever finding anything if that beautiful woman in the white dress hadn’t decided to lead him into Drax’s base. This is one of many times in the series where the villain might well have won the day had he just not had to complicate matters by bringing Bond in too close.

Because of this, I don’t count this as one of Roger Moore’s better performances as Bond. Like I noted earlier, I do like his reactions in the centrifuge scene, but overall, he does come across as a little smarmy in this one. I actually think it’s his worst performance in a Bond film, though there’s one coming up where I think he does better work in a lesser film, but we’ll get to that one later on.

As far as performances that don’t work go, I really have to single out Lois Chiles as Holly Goodhead. She’s not a bad actress, but she’s just got the wrong tone in this entire film. I think the filmmakers were looking for another Anya Amasova like they had in the last film (Chiles had actually been a contender for that role). Because on paper, Goodhead’s a competent agent, a good fighter, definitely intelligent and sure, pretty. But in the actual film, Chiles just has no chemistry with Roger Moore whatsoever. The character’s mistrust of Bond lasts a little too long and most of her scenes just drag because of it.

At least the villain gives a good performance. Michael Lonsdale was a late addition to the film, as the original idea was to cast James Mason as Hugo Drax. However, the Anglo-French makeup of the film production required a certain number of French actors be cast in the film (which also explains why Corrine DuFour and Dolly were both played by French women). So Lonsdale ended up here and really sinks his teeth into the dialogue he was given. An amusing note of trivia is that in the novel on which this film is very loosely based (as the book has a guy named James Bond, another called Hugo Drax and something called the Moonraker, but aside from that, everything else is different), Drax is described as a “Lonsdale figure”, referring to the fact that his past is a rags-to-riches story. So it’s amusing that the very actor they reference in the novel ended up playing the part in the movie. Anyway, despite the film’s plot being kind of out there, Lonsdale is very believable as an ambitious megalomaniac.

And then we come to Jaws. The character’s popularity with the previous film’s audiance meant he would return in this one, but I feel that the scary assassin from the last film was turned into too much of a comedic figure in this one. His indestructibility is treated as more of a joke then a scary feature, with the notable exception of the scene in Rio where he slowly approaches Manuela. Aside from that, he’s just never really that scary. I’ve seen many a ranking of Bond villains and henchmen on the Internet and Jaws is always near the top, but I feel it might have been better to leave him as an antagonist. But, apparently, children really like the character which is why he ended up the way he did here.

Another point in the film’s favor is the production design. Simply put, this film looks great. And while you may or may not like the idea of Bond running around on a space station, the station itself looks freaking amazing! The man who designed it, Ken Adam, designed the volcano layer and the hollowed-out tanker that I mentioned above, but I honestly think the space station is his most impressive work. It strikes the right balance between futuristic and believable. There’s never any doubt in my mind that this is a place that could actually exist someday.

As far as action sequences go, the movie is a mixed bag. The skydiving sequence at the beginning is amazing. About the only bad thing about it is when Jaws, realizing his parachute won’t open, tries flapping his arms to fly. An unnecessary joke in an otherwise excellent scene. Bond’s fight with Chang in the glassworks is good, though it helps if you like to see fragile works of art get utterly shattered. The two riverboat chases are about average, though the gondola turning into a hovercraft just gets ridiculous, if you ask me.

And one final sad note to end this review on. This film was the last in which Bernard Lee played M. He attempted to return in the next film, but was battling stomach cancer that would eventually take his life.

So overall, this is a film that is heavy on spectacle and light on plot. It’s one I liked a lot as a kid, but as I grew up, I liked it less and less. Still, I’ve certainly seen a lot worse in this series. Unfortunately, we’ll be getting to some of those low points fairly soon.