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Forums - Movies & TV - Octopussy Review

Octopussy

 

 

Cast & Credits

 

 

Actor                                                 Character

 

Roger Moore                                  James Bond 

Maud Adams                                  Octopussy

Louis Jordan                                   Kamal Khan

Kristina Wayborn                         Magda 

 

Original running time: 2 hours and 11 minutes

Directed by John Glen

 

After completing work on For Your Eyes Only, Roger Moore decided that it was time for him to end his tenure as 007 since he believed that he was getting too old for the role.  This left the folks at EON in quite a predicament.  They started a worldwide search for the next Bond and eventually decided on crappy American actor, James Brolin.  If you think that I'm picking on the guy, look at some of his performances...  Why they would decide to go with this guy is beyond me.  To make things worse, Kevin McClory (who held the rights to Thunderball) was going to put a competing Bond film against them starring Sean Connery.  This made the people running the official Bond franchise panic.  Believing that there was no way that they could compete with the Connery movie otherwise, they did everything in their power to get Roger Moore to return.  He was offered 4 million dollars and a percentage of Octopussy's earnings.  Thankfully, he accepted.  I'll take a 175 year old Roger Moore over a young James Brolin as James Bond in a heartbeat.  How would the public feel about it though?  How would Moore fare vs. Connery?

After the gunbarrel sequence, we see 007 infiltrating a base in an unspecified country in South America.  Putting on a military uniform and a mustache, he makes his way to an airplane hanger filled with weapons and a satellite dish.  Bond gets busted as he plants a bomb on the dish.  Promptly he his taken away in the back of a jeep.  Thankfully, his extremely sexy contact Sarita drives up along side the jeep and makes the googly eyes at Bond's captors.  Then she shows a little leg.  Then she shows her panties and... Boom!  James pulls the cords to their parachutes and they fly off the back of the jeep.  Why they are wearing parachutes is anyone's guess.  Anyhow, 007 makes it into the back of the horse trailer that Sarita is driving and we find out that he has a one man Acrostar jet in the back.  All looks well as Bond starts to fly off, but wait!  A missile has just been fired at him.  The jet ascends to enormous heights and dives down into a canyon below a bridge, but James cannot shake that blasted heat seeking missile.  What to do? What to do?  He decides to take the missile back to where it came from.  That's right.  He flies toward the hangar and directly into it.  Navigating the mini jet barely through the doors which are quickly closed, he goes out the other side and the weapons depot is blown to bits.  Whew, that was close.  Wait, he's out of gas and needs to land.  He does so and coasts into a gas station which leads into the credits.

The credits are pretty standard for the Bond series and are what we have grown used to.  Naked models with thteir privates barely obscured from view.  That sort of thing.  One thing that I noticed is that the sexual innuendo has been kicked up several notches.  When a pistol shoots credits across a ladies face, what's one supposed to think?  While I'm all for the double entandre I thought it was a bit much.  It was more like a single entandre.  The theme song is called "All Time High"  and is sung by Rita Coolidge.  It's really well written and a good song that's still played in grocery stores everywhere, but being that this is the 4th Bond song in a row that sounds like it should be on the Lite FM, I think that the lack of variety is starting to show.  This is why Alice Cooper should have done the theme to The Man With The Golden Gun.  By now the filmmakers would have done something really ballsy.  Could you imagine Iron Maiden doing the theme song to this?  Bruce Dickinson belting out Octopussy's name would be marvelous, but alas...  The soundtrack is very good though.  Legendary John Barry has returned and does his normal, fantastic job.  This would rank somewhere in the middle of his Bond soundtracks which is to say that it's great.  The sound varies from romantic to pulse pounding.  Top notch stuff as usual.

After the credits, we see a man dressed as a clown being chased by twin knife throwers outside of a circus in East Germany.  The clown scurries down to a river and makes it there with a knife in the back.  Doggedly determined, he makes his way into the British Embassy and drops dead.  A Fabrege egg rolls out of his hand across the floor.  This leads into a scene in which were see Russian leaders having a meeting.  General Gogol discusses how they are going to continue to have disarmament talks with NATO.  This outrages one General Orlov (Steven Berkoff) who shows the advantage in troops that they have along the Russian border and how if they trick the NATO nations into disarming that they could swiftly take over Europe.  The other Russians in the conference tell Orlov that he's out of line and needs to sit in the naughty corner.  Next, we see Bond talking to the new M (Robert Brown).  He shows Bond the egg and explains that 009 (dressed as a clown) got the egg to them and that it's actually a fake.  He tells Bond that the real one is being auctioned at Sotheby's and that he needs to find out who the buyer is.

At Sotheby's, Bond is told that the egg shouldn't fetch any more than 250-300 thousand pounds and that anything less would be ridiculous.  It turns out that a man named Kamal Khan who is usually a seller is driving up the price.  Of course Bond decides to get involved in the auction, looks at the egg, and everything.  Finally James backs off after Khan bids for a half a million pounds.  When Bond returns to MI6, he is chastised by M for what he did.  When asked what he would have done if he had to buy the Fabrege Egg, he said tha he would have told them that it was a fake.  Apparently, when Bond asked to look at the egg he did a sight of hand and replaced the real one with the fake that he was shown earlier and supposed to have left at MI6.  Wow!  Those people at Sotheby's just let people touch diamond encrusted eggs made by Carl Fabrege and are too stupid to notice when they are stolen from.  I need to go to one of those auctions.  Where was I?  Oh yeah...  It turns out the Khan lives in a place called the Monsoon Palace in New Dehli and Bond is sent to investigate why he wanted the egg so badly.

James arrives in New Dehli and meets an agent named Vijay.  He informs him that Khan will be playing backgammon at the local club.  As Khan is beating a gentleman repeatedly, Bond notices that he is using loaded dice that always come up double sixes when he needs it.  Eventually Bond makes a bet with Khan and puts the "real" egg up as collateral.  When Kamal tells James that he needs luck, Bond who needs double sixes says that he wishes to use Khan's lucky dice.  This is a pretty cool scene where he says "What do you know? Double sixes. Imagine that?"  What makes it so cool is that Bond doesn't even look at the dice.  Khan's henchman Gobinda gets angry and crushes the dice in his hand just like Oddjob did the golf ball.  After leaving with the money, Kamal Khan sends Gobinda to kill him which leads to a chase through the streets of New Dehli which includes sword swallowers, a bed of nails, and hot coals.  Bond and Vijay escape through a back alley behind a poster to a place where they meet Q and see a bunch of his gadgets.  Yep, sounds realistic to me too.

Later, Bond is approached by the gorgeous Magda who we saw earlier at the auction with Khan.  She says that Khan wants to make  a deal.  If he gets the egg that Bond can remain living.  Soon James makes love to Magda, sees her little Octopussy tattoo, and before you know it she escapes with the egg.  Gobinda then knocks out James from behind.  He wakes up in the Monsoon Palace and is treated to a disgusting dinner in a scene that was shamefully ripped off in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom a year later.  He explains to Bond that through drugs he will get him to talk later.  Why not then?  Who knows?  Bond soon leaves his room with ease and hears a conversation between Khan and psycho General Orlov.  There is a scheme going on where Khan is giving Orlov fake jewelry which is funding something that we don't yet know about...  It also turns out that Khan is working with a mysterious woman known as Octopussy that runs a jewel smuggling ring.  Also, we hear something about a base in Karl Marxstadt. Bond winds up in a room with dead bodies and eventually is taken out in a body bag with the others.  Gobinda notices that Bond is gone and Khan has hids men go on a hunt for James.  Instead of waiting to see where they are going and avoiding this, Bond pops out of the bag and kicks the guy in the face.  Next he tells a tiger to "Sit", a snake to "hiss off", a does the Tarzan yell while swinging from vines.  This ridiculous scene ends when he comes across a boat full of tourists that I guess are viewing the Monsoon Palace.  Ugh.

Bond fnally goes to the Octopalace in a sub that looks like an alligator and meets Octopussy.  She has an army of bodacious looking women in tight red outfits.  She says something about resarting the "Octopus Cult" and taking in these women to be in her circus and help her smuggle jewels.  I would tell you more, but this is all we get.  Kamal comes to the palace and sees him.  He's not to happy and hires assassins to kill Jame including a guy with a saw on a yo-yo.  She offers James a job, but he refuses.  She gets angry and then makes love to him because that's how things work in real life.  Afterwards there's an attack by the yo-yo guy and the others.  After getting away, Bond disguises himself as one of Octopussy's circus performers and hears the plot between Khan and Orlov.  Khan was selling Orlov the phony jewelry which he was selling in order to get enough money to buy an atomic bomb that he is going to blow off in the American military base in Karl Marxstadt where Octopussy's circus is performing, unbeknownst to her.  It willl be looked like it was a mistake and the Russians will take advantage of the confusion to take over Europe.  Orlov's found out by Gogol who takes care of him, but Bond needs to stop the bomb from going off.  Action sequence after action sequence happens and they all are wonderfully done.  We see James driving a car on train tracks to catch the train, running on top of and fighting the train, confronting the knife throwing twins, racing a car to the miltary base to try and stop the bomb (He dresses just like 009 did earlier in the movie.  What are the odds?), an attack on Khan's palace by the bodacious Octoarmy, and Bond hanging on the top of a plane for his life.

All in all this movie is very much a mixed bag.  While the script is extremely sloppy and there are several plot holes it brings a smile to my face when I watch it.  The action sequences are all fantastic.  They are so good that you forget the ridiculous story is.  This movie is a 5 out of 5 if you turn your brain off, but I have to give it...

3 out of 5 - Average for a Bond movie.  While the story is completely outlandish, all of the action sequences are phenomenal.  Trust me, there is so much well directed action in this movie that you are willing to forgive the badly written script and that terrible Tarzan scene.  I can see why someone could love or hate this movie.  I'm in the middle with it.  Also, Maud Adams does well in the part she is given and it's nicer to see an attractive "older" woman with Roger Moore.

 

Cool thing to know:  The new M was British General Hargreaves in The Spy Who Loved Me.  I guess that he got promoted.

Another cool thing to know:  Octopussy did better at the box office than Never Say Never Again, but both were big successes.

 

James Bond will return next Monday in Never Say Never Again.

 

 

 



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Great review but I kinda wish I wasn't reminded of that stupid stupid Tarzan scene. Truth be told I don't remember much from Octopussy, just that I thought the Faberger eggs switching by Bond was brillant (even if somewhat unbelievable).



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I just watched this one a couple of weeks ago, and I think it's pretty good. Lots of nice locations, cool action scenes, and Roger Moore is back to his usual humorous self.

I'm kind of surprised that you'll be reviewing the unofficial Never Say Never Again.



Misleading thread title.



d21lewis said:
Misleading thread title.

I had the same problem but in reverse. I rented Octopussy thinking it would be a Bond flick but it ended being a very disturbing porno. I think it's one of the reasons I'm gay actually...



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Good review. Good movie. As you said not a great bond movie, but a solid one.



DixieKong said:
I just watched this one a couple of weeks ago, and I think it's pretty good. Lots of nice locations, cool action scenes, and Roger Moore is back to his usual humorous self.

I'm kind of surprised that you'll be reviewing the unofficial Never Say Never Again.


When I first started doing these reviews, I decided that I should include all of them.  I even did a review for the original Casino Royale television movie starring Barry Nelson and the Casino Royale parody featuring Peter Sellers and David Niven. 



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Tag "Sorry man. Someone pissed in my Wheaties."

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spurgeonryan said:
Wonderful review Amp! I felt like I was actually watching the movie at some points.

Was never say never again really released after Octopussy?


Yes, Octopussy was released in June of 1983 and Never Say Never Again was relesed in October of 1983.  As a kid, I remember Octopussy still being at the cheap theatres while Never Say Never Again was released.

So what do you think?  I'm thinking about naming the next thread "OMG!  I justed watched Never Say Never Again and it's not what I wanted.  Bond fans express your displeasure (no trolling allowed)".  Do you think that this will get me more responses than this one?



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RolStoppable said:
amp316 said:

Yes, Octopussy was released in June of 1983 and Never Say Never Again was relesed in October of 1983.  As a kid, I remember Octopussy still being at the cheap theatres while Never Say Never Again was released.

So what do you think?  I'm thinking about naming the next thread "OMG!  I justed watched Never Say Never Again and it's not what I wanted.  Bond fans express your displeasure (no trolling allowed)".  Do you think that this will get me more responses than this one?

If you make illogical arguments and go into brickwall mode, then yes. Yes, absolutely.


I did that intentionally with my "I'm not buying this 3D thing thread" and didn't get anywhere near 500 replies.  I must not be very good at it.



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RolStoppable said:
amp316 said:

I did that intentionally with my "I'm not buying this 3D thing thread" and didn't get anywhere near 500 replies.  I must not be very good at it.

It's because people know that you are intelligent, so even if you are good at pretending to be stupid, they'll realize that you are just messing around.

Fair enough. 

I know that you are not a big Bond fan, but have you ever seen Octopussy or Never Say Never Again?  NSNA is the one where Connery returns as Bond and is 115 years old.  Octopussy is the one where Roger Moore is still Bond and is 118 years old.



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"There are like ten games a year that sell over a million units."  High Voltage CEO -  Eric Nofsinger