For Your Eyes Only (1981)

Revenge and duty can make for strange allies, especially when nothing is quite what it seems. John Glen's "For Your Eyes Only," his first Bond film as director, brought Roger Moore's 007 back down to earth after the space-age excess of "Moonraker." It opens with Bond visiting the grave of his late wife before surviving a deadly helicopter ride piloted remotely by a bald, wheelchair-bound villain with a white cat. When a British spy ship carrying a top-secret device that controls Britain's nuclear submarines sinks off the coast of Greece, Bond races the Soviets to recover it. He's joined by Melina Havelock (Carole Bouquet), the crossbow-wielding daughter of a marine archaeologist murdered while searching for the wreck, who is bent on revenge. Julian Glover plays the cold, cunning Greek businessman Aristotle Kristatos, who steers Bond toward his supposed enemy, the colorful smuggler Milos Columbo (Topol), while his icy hit man (Michael Gothard) does the dirty work. Highlights include a ski chase in the Italian Alps, a wild car chase in a tiny Citroën, a deep-sea dive to the wreck, a harrowing scene in which Bond and Melina are dragged behind a boat over jagged coral and a hair-raising climb up a Greek mountaintop monastery. It ends with a playful comic cameo spoofing Britain's prime minister at the time, Margaret Thatcher. Sheena Easton's title song earned an Oscar nomination.