The Spy Who Loved Me

**The Spy Who Loved Me** is a 1977 film starring Roger Moore, Barbara Bach and Curd Jürgens, directed by Lewis Gilbert, written by Christopher Wood and Richard Maibaum and produced by Albert R. Broccoli.

The film was a financial failure as it generated a loss of $3 million.

## Plot

A British and a Soviet ballistic-missile submarine suddenly disappear. James Bond – MI6 agent 007 – is summoned to investigate. On the way to his briefing, Bond escapes an ambush by a squad of Soviet agents in Austria, killing one during a downhill ski chase and evading the others. The plans for a highly advanced submarine tracking system are being offered in Egypt. There, Bond encounters Major Anya Amasova—KGB agent Triple X—his rival to recover the microfilm plans. They travel across Egypt together, encountering Jaws – a tall assassin with razor-sharp steel teeth – along the way. Bond and Amasova reluctantly join forces after a truce is agreed by their respective British and Soviet superiors. They identify the person responsible for the thefts as the shipping tycoon and scientist Karl Stromberg.

While travelling by train to Stromberg's base in Sardinia, Bond saves Amasova from Jaws, and their cooling rivalry turns to affection. Posing as a marine biologist and his wife, they visit Stromberg's base and discover that he had launched a mysterious new supertanker, the Liparus, nine months previously. As they leave the base, a henchman on a motorcycle featuring a rocket sidecar, Jaws in a car, and Naomi, an assistant/pilot of Stromberg in an attack helicopter, chase them, but Bond and Amasova escape underwater when his car – a Lotus Esprit from Q Branch – converts into a submarine. Jaws survives a car crash and Naomi is killed when Bond fires a sea-air missile from his car which destroys her helicopter. While examining Stromberg's underwater Atlantis base, the pair confirm that he is operating the stolen tracking system and encounter a fleet of Stromberg's minisubs which Amasova obliterates by launching mines. Bond finds out that the Liparus has never visited any known port or harbour. Amasova discovers that Bond killed her lover Sergei Barsov (as shown at the beginning of the movie), and she vows to kill Bond as soon as their mission is complete.

Bond and Amasova board an American submarine to examine the Liparus as it captures the submarine. Stromberg sets his plan in motion: the simultaneous launching of nuclear missiles from the captured British and Soviet submarines to obliterate Moscow and New York City. This would trigger a global nuclear war, which Stromberg would survive in Atlantis, and subsequently a new civilization would be established underwater. He leaves for Atlantis with Amasova. Bond escapes and frees the captured British, Russian, and American sailors and they battle the Liparus's crew, but the joint US, UK, and USSR submariner coalition suffers heavy casualties just taking back the sub pen before managing to breach the control room, only to learn from the dying captain of the Liparus that the commandeered British and Soviet submarines are primed to fire their missiles in only a few minutes to ignite World War III. Bond reprograms the submarines to fire the nukes at each other, saving Moscow and New York City while destroying the subs and Stromberg's crews on both of them in the resulting nuclear explosions. The victorious submariners escape the sinking Liparus on the American submarine.

The submarine is ordered by the Pentagon to destroy Atlantis but Bond insists on rescuing Amasova first. He confronts and kills Stromberg but again encounters Jaws, whom he drops into a shark tank. However, Jaws kills the shark and escapes. Bond and Amasova flee in an escape pod as Atlantis is sunk by torpedoes. Amasova picks up Bond's gun and points it at him, but then chooses not to kill him and the two embrace. The Royal Navy recovers the pod and the two spies are seen in an intimate embrace through its port window, much to the bemusement of their superiors on the ship.