Max Zorin

Maximillian Zorin is a fictional character and the main antagonist in the 1985 James Bond film A View to a Kill. He is portrayed by Christopher Walken. Biography Zorin was born in Dresden around the end of World War II, after which Dresden became part of East Germany. He later moved to France and became a leading businessman through energy trading, eventually transitioning into the electronics industry and operating on the microchip market. According to a briefing by M and Frederick Gray, Zorin is outwardly a staunch anti-communist with high influence in the French government. However, it is revealed later in the movie that he was the product of Nazi medical experimentation during the war, in which pregnant women were injected with massive quantities of steroids in an attempt to create "super-children." Most of the pregnancies failed. The few surviving babies grew to become extraordinarily intelligent—but also psychopathic. After the war, Dr. Hans Glaub (alias Dr. Carl Mortner), the German scientist who conducted the experiments, was spirited away by the Soviet Union, where he continued his experiments with steroids. It is strongly implied that the young Zorin was raised by Mortner as his own father, who was one of Zorin's closest allies in the movie, and explicitly stated that Zorin was trained by and long-affiliated with the KGB. Among other activities, Mortner organizes a doping programme for Zorin's thoroughbred race horses, allowing Zorin to win horse races with ease by activating illegal horse steroids by means of implanted microchips; since the drugs are 'administered' during the race, they do not show up on blood tests taken beforehand, and the dose is so minute that they dissolve into the system before tests can be taken afterwards. Despite Zorin's longtime KGB affiliation, his outside activities draw attention that the KGB sees as unwelcome, and at a meeting between Zorin and KGB head General Gogol, Gogol rebukes him. Zorin responds by telling Gogol that he no longer considers himself a KGB employee. Zorin is completely ruthless and displays a near-total lack of loyalty to his own men, as shown when he oversaw the execution of a Soviet spy who attempted to sabotage his oil well operations and when he personally massacres dozens of his own mine workers with a 9mm UZI submachine gun to ensure the success of his own plans.