[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-6ZeTE0igM]
Ah, the fake mustache: for a pale British spy hoping to pass as a Hispanic military officer, it’s the most effective weapon in the arsenal. A horse show is for some reason being held adjacent to a military air base in this unnamed Latin American country, allowing Bond — disguised as a horsing enthusiast and later as the mustachioed Col. Luis Toro — to infiltrate the base and plant some explosives. All goes swimmingly until the real Col. Toro shows up, at which point Roger Moore is forced to gamely utter the line, “I see you’re a Toro too.”
Luckily, Bond’s accomplice Bianca (the underutilized Tina Hudson) is there to come to the rescue. After watching Bond being taken away in a jeep she gives chase with his horse trailer, and springs him by distracting his captors with a display of leg and décolletage that is extremely, well, distracting.
Bond then makes use of what I consider one of the most controversial gadgets in franchise history, in which the trailer’s fake horse hindquarters and tail rise up into the air to reveal a very tiny jet. Bond zooms away just before Toro’s cavalry arrives. How you feel about this scene — one in which his escape is literally pulled out of a horse’s ass — says a lot about how you feel about Bond movies in general. Do you prefer the sly, sex maniac Bond of the Connery/Moore years or the flintier Timothy Dalton/Daniel Craig variety? It’s a Coke vs. Pepsi question, but in this case I’d have preferred my Bond straight and cold.
GRADE: C