Never Say Never Again (1983)
Never Say Never Again was the first Bond film I saw in a theater. I was 20, and wasn’t that into the franchise. I’d seen a couple of Connery’s efforts on TV and enjoyed them. At the time, there were still a lot of people who’d never accepted Roger Moore as Bond, and even though I wasn’t watching his films, I think I picked up that attitude by osmosis. Sir Sean was the real James Bond in my head, so I got sucked into the “Connery Is Back!!!” hype, and went to see this. I remember that I really liked it back then, and I was quite curious how it would stand up to my memory now.
Turns out, it holds up pretty well. It’s kind of a throwback to the more deliberate pacing of the earlier Bonds – which makes sense, since it’s essentially a remake of Thunderball. Apparently, for legal reasons I don’t quite understand, that was the only way the makers of this film could secure the rights to the characters.
I went back and read my review of Thunderball; it seems I enjoyed it but found it a bit bloated and over-long. I didn’t feel that way about Never Say Never Again, even though it’s 4 minutes longer. The latter felt like a tight thriller; it may not have been non-stop action, but the tension and stakes were always palpable.
As an aside, after I finally get through all of these films, I might just start over, and see if I still agree with what I’ve written about each movie here in this thread. One’s opinion of a film can be influenced by outside factors and can change over time. Anyway, I digress.
We know the plot already: SPECTRE steals two nuclear warheads and threatens global annihilation if their monetary demands are not met. It’s up to 007 to retrieve the bombs – or in this case, bomb. In what I think was a change from Thunderball, one of the bombs was discovered buried under Washington D.C. and disarmed, and Bond needs to track down the second one. But whatever, the idea is the same.
Connery seemed to be getting bored with James Bond by Diamonds Are Forever, his last official outing. His 12-year break seems to have given him a new spark for the role. He seems to be having fun again, and it’s fun to see him back.
Klaus Maria Brandauer’s Largo is a terrifying sociopath, and he nails it. Barbara Carrera is stunning as Fatima Blush, and her gleeful approach to her job as an assassin was great fun. Kim Basinger is gorgeous as well, and her character has more reason to turn against Largo than just Bond’s magical powers of seduction.
And Max Von Sydow appears as Blofeld and does, well, pretty much nothing. In a film where most of the characters had some layers to them, he was kind of wasted.
Of course, there was different M, Moneypenny, Q, and (this one’s not a shock) Felix. Of these, only Felix made much of an impression; I liked Bernie Casey quite a bit. Interestingly, the conceit that “M” is a title and not a particular person would find its way into the official franchise later on.
Even though this film is outside of the official Bond franchise, I think it still deserves a spot on the roster.
After this, I started catching most Bond movies on their initial release. So this kind of marks a turning point in my little experiment. Up until now, I was experiencing most of these movies for the first time. From here on out, I’ll be re-visiting films I’ve seen before, with only a couple exceptions. That may change the way I look at them; it may not.
Next up: A View to a Kill
