Never Say Never Again
Cast & Credits
Actor Character
Sean Connery James Bond
Klaus Maria Brandauer Maximillian Largo
Max Von Sydow Ernst Stavro Blofeld
Barbara Carrera Fatima Blush
Directed by Irvin Kershner
Original running time: 2 hours and 13 minutes
Before I begin my review, I will give you some background information on how this unofficial Bond film starring Sean Connery came about being filmed and released as direct competition to the official series. Back in the late 1950's, Ian Fleming (author of the Bond novels and creator of the character) penned a draft for a movie that was to be called Longitude 78 West along with writer Kevin McClory and Jack Whittingham. Before the production could get off of the ground, the idea was scrapped due to the astronomically high budget that would be involved. Not wanting the story to go to waste, Fleming pieced the script together and used the material to make his next James Bond novel which was named Thunderball. After the release of the novel, Kevin McClory sued Fleming for using the material which he helped write without his consent. After a long legal dispute, McClory wound up with the rights to Thunderball. This is why in the movie Thunderball McClory was involved and listed as a producer. Years went by and in the late 70's McClory decided that he wanted to make another Bond movie called Warhead since technically he owned a piece of James Bond. EON, the official Bond production studio, did everything in their power to block this move and took him to court. A few years later, it was decided that McClory could make another Bond film, but it had to be based on Thunderball and that the official series makers couldn't use the character Ernst Stavro Blofeld or the organization SPECTRE in their series. This is why a guy that looks like Blofeld was killed off in the beginning of For Your Eyes Only. Anyway, Never Say Never Again is the movie the McClory made as result of the legal battles. Also, he got Sean Connery to sign on for $3 million, a percentage of the profits, and script approval. Apparently McClory made an awful lot of money from Thunderball and saved it. Now on to the movie.
After the gunbarrel sequence... Oh wait! There is no gunbarrel sequence since this isn't an official film. I almost forgot. Well I'm sure that there's a really good pre-credits teaser. Wait! The credits are running across the screen while the movie is going on and they're red. That's right! They're red and make the whole affair look like some bad Golan-Globus production. Is this the new Missing in Action movie? No, it's James Bond. What's that sound? It is the theme song to Never Say Never Again by some lady named Lani Hall that I've never heard of. My ears are ringing, my head is pounding, and it's going to be stuck in my mind for at least two months. What did I do to deserve this? Why did I sign up for this project? Anyhow, James Bond is in the middle of the jungle approaching an enemy fortress. He throws something that looks like a frisbee and several dumb guards follow the frisbee, slides down a telephone wire like a zip line, and takes several men down in a variety of ways. 007 finds a female hostage and goes to free her. Surprisingly, she stabs him with a knife. Is he dead? Is the movie over? No it turns out that the entire thing was a training exercise that is being watched by Bond and the new and worst M ever (played by Edward Fox - what a whiny bastard). M chastises Bond for getting stabbed saying that he should have figured that the girl could have been brainwashed. Bond replies that he had played M's war games for two weeks and only been injured once before. M is outraged by Bond's insolence and orders him to go to a health farm named Shrublands to get himself in better shape since he thinks that insubordination and eating too much red meat go hand in hand. Yep, this is the new head of MI6.
Next, we see the beautiful Fatima Blush walking into a French bank. She goes into a hidden department and walks into a meeting with SPECTRE. I knew that those French bankers were scoundrels! We see Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the leader of SPECTRE, introduce Maximillian Largo who tells of his plan to hijack to nuclear warheads. He tells the nefarious group that the US plan on having a test run with two dummy warheads being transported from a British base. He also has an insider named Jack Petachi working for him who has had surgery to have his eye identical to the US President's. The eye print can be scanned in order to do an override and switch the dummy warheads for real ones. A radar frequency will make them fly off course and into the ocean where they will be picked up by Largo's men and put aboard his yacht, the Flying Saucer. Largo says that he wishes for SPECTRE number 12, Fatima Blush to look after Jack Petachi.
The scene switches to Shrublands where we see our hero checking in. This leads to him being told that he is to be put on a diet of wheat grass, given herbal enemas, and several other unspeakable things that a man in his fifties is supposed to resign himself to. He hits on a nurse, shows her that he's smuggled in vodka, caviar, quail's eggs, and fa gras. He brings her over to the dark side with extravagence and seduces her. Later James hears a ruckuss in another room and investigates. It turns out that a sexy nurse (Fatima) is kicking the crap out of some guy named Jack for gettting smoke in his eye. Bond can't quite make all of this out but that's what going on. He then does a very un-spy like move and is busted looking into the window. Fatima spots him with inrared glasses and recognizes him immediately. Uh-oh. What are the odds of Bond and them being at the same place? Not long after this encounter, Bond is working out in the clinic's weight room and is attacked by a massive SPECTRE goon named Lippe. They wind up getting into a long knock down, drag out brawl in which they destroy most of the health farm and Bond finally defeats Lippe by using own his urine sample, sort of.
Bond gets screamed at by M for what he did and Petachi leaves the hospital with his new eye. He proceeds to start SPECTRE's plan into motion which goes off without a hitch. After drivng off from his successful mission, Fatima pulls up beside him to offer him congratulations, or does she? With a little help from her pet snake and a bomb, she removes Jack from the equation. This leads into Blofeld demanding that the world's leaders give him 25% of their money and their oil or else the warheads will go off in undisclosed locations. All of this leads to M actually giving 007 a job. He hardly has time for the Double-Ohs anymore. Bond is sent to the Bahamas to investigate. But before Bond goes, he meets up with Q (Alec McCowen) who equips him with a fountain pen that shoots a projectile bullet that explodes after impact, a wrist watch with a laser in it, and promises to ship him a new motorcycle to him if he can get it to work properly.
After arriving in the Bahamas, Bond is told to investigate Largo since his girlfriend happens to be the sister Jack Petachi who was recently found dead and thought to be in on the job by British consulate member Nigel Small-Fawcett (played by Rowan "Mr. Bean" Atkinson). Largo is said to be in Nice, France. He then "coincidently" is bumped into by Fatima Blush. She makes love to him, they go scuba diving, and then she puts something on his aqualung that attacts a shark with an antenna on it's head before taking off. Bond escapes this and his room being blown up by Fatima before going to France where he meets up with Felix Leiter (Bernie Casey) who says that Largo appears to be clean. Bond ignores him and poses as a massuer in order to meet up with Domino Petachi and get more information on Largo. She tells him that he is going to have a charity for ophaned children tomorrow evening. What a nice guy! After sneaking into the event, Bond gets to meet Largo who likes playing a game called World Domination in which he always wins and gives the money to his "charity". Of course James challenges him. World Domination has pretty good graphics by 1983's standards and the game is controlled by two large joysticks. Could Never Say Never Again have influenced the dual analog control scheme? It just might have... Anywho, the object of the game is to pick out and shoot sections of a country and try to take it over. One catch, when you start to lose you get an electric shock. I'm pretty sure that you guys are smart enough to know who wins and to know how stupid this scene is. Instead of taking the huge amount of money that Largo owes him, Bond asks for a dance with Domino. He explains to her that her brother's dead, that Largo killed him, and what's going on. He tells her to stay on the Flying Saucer until he sorts everything out. Meanwhile, Largo gives Fatima another chance to kill Bond and she nearly orgasms...
This leads up to a chase scene where we see Bond's motorcycle which is fully loaded with gadgets being chased by Fatima and several of Largo's men. I like the turbo boost the best. It's a pretty well done sequence where we see him driving down stairs, into and out of the back of a truck, jumping several things, and being knocked forcefully off of his bike by Fatima who is wearing... I don't know how to describe what she's wearing. She kind of looks like a pirate with pants that MC Hammer might have worn. When she is about to shoot him between the legs, she gets infuriated at him for suggesting that making love to her wasn't the greatest rapture ever in his life. She then asks him to write out a message saying that she was the best. You can see where this is going, can't you? Boom! The bullet enters Fatima, but doesn't explode. She raises her gun, laughs maniacally, and then it finally works. Felix walks up and says that he watched the whole thing. Why didn't he do anything? Later, they decide to try and infiltrate the Flying Saucer which winds up with James being captured.
They go to Largo's home Palmyra, which is in Northern Africa. Eventually Domino freaks out and tells Largo that she knows that he killed her brother and that she hates him. Bond is chained up and left to be eaten by vultures and Largo leaves Domino to be sold to the highest bidder. There we find out that Largo should have taken James' watch from him and that as awesome as 007 is, that he cannot teach a horse how to fly. After Bond and Domino escape, he asks her what she knows about the Tears of Allah since he heard Largo talking about it earlier. She shows him a jade necklace she's wearing called the Tears of Allah. Upon further inspection, it turns out to be a map of where Largo has the warheads hidden. Bond and Leiter fly there with jetpacks for no reason whatsoever except that jetpacks are cool and then come into the hideout with several of Largo's CIA friends. Will James and Felix stop Largo? Will either or both of Kim Basinger's nipples get a best supporting actress nomination? Will the horrible soundtrack that at times sounds like a cat is running across a piano stop?
All in all this is not very good for a Bond movie. M, Q, Moneypenny, and Largo all aren't anywhere as good as the original actors and the movie pales in comparison to Thunderball which wasn't the best Bond movie as it was. Rowan Atkinson is pretty funny, but his part is so minimal that it doesn't matter. Thankfully this movie has less underwater stuff which is a big improvement over the original, but the script didn't even address the problems with the original's plot. There are way too may coincidences and much of it, like the original, seems contrived. I am going to rate this...
2 out of 5 - below average for a Bond movie. Overall I'd say that this is a bad remake and really shouldn't have been made, but there's some redeeming qualites. Sean Connery shows that he still has it and that he still was a better Bond than Roger Moore IMO. His acting was impeccable and he still was the most charming, cool, and sophisticated cat on the planet. Also noteworthy is Barbara Carrera's performance. She is the femme fatale personified and in some ways I think she was the template for Famke Janssen's Xenia Onatopp. Oh... and the laser watch was wicked. It preceded GoldenEye by over a decade. A lot of talented people labored on this movie. Irvin Kershner directed the Empire Strikes Back prior to this and much of the crew for Raiders of the Lost Ark were hired for this project, but it just goes to show you that the people that make the Bond films are the best at making Bond films.
Cool thing to know: The title Never Say Never Again was suggested by Sean Connery's wife because he responded, "Never again!" when asked if he would ever return to play Bond after Diamonds Are Forever.
Another cool thing to know: Barbara Carrera turned down the role of Magda in Octopussy in order to play Fatima Blush instead.
Yet another cool thing to know: Originally the movie was supposed to have ended with Roger Moore walking by Connery on the street and telling him, "Never say never again!" The people at EON refused to let Moore perform the cameo.
And yet another cool thing to know: Never Say Never Again did very well at the box office bringing in $160 million, but Octopussy brought in $187.5 milion. Also, NSNA had the higher budget, believe it or not ($36 million to $27.5 million).
James Bond will return next Monday in A View To A Kill.
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