Review of Never Say Never Again (1983) by Vidyabum — 21 Oct 2021

I watched all 25 from Dr.No to Spectre, I would place Never say Never again at 21/25.

Thunderball, the source for this movie, is easily the worst Bond, for many reasons, but mainly three: terrible logic, terrible dialogues, and a poor villain.

For Never Say Never again, there is one great positive to write: despite Connery's very visible age, I think the movie manages to rejuvenate the series in interesting ways. Connery is treated as some old relic of the 60s by a young M that wants him to follow the "new methods". It's an interesting angle, which applies beautifully to Connery.

The movie doesn't suffer from the abysmally slow scenes and overly leisurely direction of Thunderball, nor does it make stupid decisions like 5 minutes long underwater battles in realistic conditions (5 minutes of slow motion without a word said or a face seen, what a bore).

It has a somewhat different style and feel to the EON productions Bonds.

It is, overall, not a bad movie, really.

For half of it.

Because everything I just said, more or less lasts for 1/3rd to half the movie.

And the rest...is Thunderball all over again.

The same nonsense decisions, the same poor ideas, the same absurdities, the same kind of wtf moments, the same terrible villain, the same everything that made Thunderball the worst Bond.

Never say Never again isn't the worst movie. But it bases itself on it. Connery's age, the general directing, acting, or plot, it was all more or less decently handled, somewhat cleverly sometimes even.

But it all falls apart in about an hour, and just like with Thunderball, there is nothing to say before the utter failure that follows. No need to watch this movie, except to be impressed at how well Connery handled himself at his age.

Oh, except for the videogame battle though.

If you've ever wanted to see Sean Connery fight some mediocre Bond villain in a giant videogame where lasers shoot the players when they lose, sure, that's a scene to see.