Every Bond Girl Ranked - Worst To Best

Kara Milovy is the picture of naive innocence, an element that works well in combination with Timothy Dalton’s steely, colder portrayal of Bond. “The girl with the cello” is part of a complex plot initially positioning her as a dummy assassin to strengthen the veracity of slippery villain Georgi Koskov’s ersatz defection.

With Kara set up to be killed by 007, Bond sees through the ruse and misses the shot, laying the foundations for her use as a pawn to unearth Koskov’s true intentions. She’s sadly oblivious to what’s truly unfolding around her, as Bond manipulates her trust while posing as Koskov’s friend, adding a sense of genuine depth to the role of the Bond girl, sorely missing from certain past entries.

Their relationship, while built on lies, nonetheless feels not so shallow, as trust has to be earned on both sides. After Koskov is later unmasked as a true rogue in front of her eyes, her loyalty shifts fully to Bond, their mutual affection now real. From this point, Kara gets to enjoy several heroic moments, from using a steel bucket to knock out a security guard to defying Mujahadeen leader Kamran Shah in her insistence that they rescue Bond from potential Soviet captivity.

Kara is a fairly underrated Bond girl, and one that’s rarely remembered. Despite her host of strong character scenes, though, certain intangible qualities of the best Bond girls as icons of cinematic entertainment are non-existent in her.

Best moment: After Bond whisks her away with a ploy that’ll temporarily fool the enemy assigned to track Kara’s movements, she insists that they turn back for her prized Stradivarius cello. “No way!’ he adamantly declares. Next shot, Bond is exasperatedly sitting in the car as he waits for Kara to emerge from her apartment, cello in tow. “Women!”

Worst moment: Near film’s end, Bond gives Kara one job: don’t crash the plane. After besting the deadly henchman Necros in an airborne battle and then defusing a bomb, Bond walks into the cockpit to discover Kara seconds away from flying their plane directly into a mountain. Again, she had one job.