Review of Never Say Never Again (1983) by Tom B — 09 Oct 2010

Even Sean Connery returning to the role never made this seem like a "real" James Bond movie. At the time, and ever since, this movie has had a reputation for being flimsy and disposable, of not being made with genuine factory-approved 007 parts and hardware. While that characterization is essentially accurate, it's not quire as pointless and forgettable a film as we always heard. But seeing it for the first time nearly 30 years later, it certainly isn't aging well.

The filmmakers had to wrestle with quite a few choices about how much to make this movie smell like a real Bond film. Right off the bat, you get the sense their intention was to make a Hollywood action movie pegged to a Bond plot with Bond characters, because everything seems different even in the opening seconds.

No matter how dorkily you insist on a franchise series like this observing canon, no matter how geekily you savor every little tradition, NSNA opens with a hard turn away from the expected, and you can't help but notice. No blaring brass, no rifle barrel, no tuxedoed operative turning to blast you from your seat. They eliminate the time-honored secret handshake that opens every Bond film, which immediately puts you in mind to asses whether they've decided to call attention to how inspired their creative improvements might be, or whether they just felt like a change of pace.

Unfortunately, the next change they make comes in the first shot, and it's not for the better. A sloppy zoom through a 007 logo pattern makes you feel like you're watching a commercial for Li'l 007s wallpaper from a kids' room decoration product line. Following this with a sped-up helicopter tracking shot over coastal lowlands that feels straight out of Miami Vice (which was quite popular at the time) gives you the impression that the filmmakers are completely adrift. At this point, the movie isn't even five seconds old. It's hard to imagine a movie looking more lost so quickly.

Deviations from Bond tradition just continue to stack up from here, for better or worse. Best just to focus on ones even the casual fan would notice--like the rifle barrel being gone, or the famously elaborate opening credits sequence being gone. By the time we get through the opening action sequence, we're pretty worried about what we might be in for, and our first view of M doesn't bode well, either. He's now just a bureaucrat rather than a spymaster. This idea was used beautifully in Goldeneye, and to some extent Judi Dench has made a mark with it--though her character has grown back toward spymaster status as her appearances have continued.

At last, before complete bewilderment overtakes us, Bond is sent into the field. He's not on a mission yet. But not only is he sent on a health retreat, as in Thunderball (the source material for this movie). He also arrives in a gorgeous old Bentley, as in the novels. This might be the only time his beloved Bentley shows up in the movies IIRC.

At this point, Connery has already gotten in a couple of quips that give Bond back the cheek Lazenby and Moore could never provide, he even looks a little defensive and wistful when someone comments on the age of the Bentley. Moore was a fiend for the merry quip, but he never projected the sense Connery did that we're all in on the joke. Moore always put the movie on pause so he could be punny, and Lazenby, with the exception of a line or two, was really a non-entity with the bon mots. His Bond, after all, was the only one who had to sit down and let panic pass--he was never as completely in control as the others. In any case, even setting aside the Bonds that came after, it's good to see Connery back in the cat bird's seat here, smirking quietly and having fun.

After this, the Thunderball plot gets thrown in a blender, but only slightly. As budgets went up with action movies in the 80s, there seemed to be almost a welcoming posture toward gaping plot holes. Were stunts and special effects really so enticing to filmmakers that they'd do ANYthing to a storyline to squeeze them in? Was the budget only coming through after the writers went home? Were they having to change the stunts at the last minute, complete with re-writes, when the first plotted stunts proved impossible? NSNA certainly doesn't escape the disease. As in Thunderball, the bad guys have to steal two nuclear warheads to get things going, but NSNA makes this out to be more like an ATM withdrawal than an act of international sabotage. They even make the computer voice track pretty campy--it's hard to believe the whole thing is as easy for them as it looks.

Once things really start rolling, it strongly resembles a Bond film in many ways. The tux is there, the locations are there. Some awkward fistfights and kooky car chases ensue. Kim Basinger cheerfully endures every corny reason they can think of to have her show up in swimsuits and leotards--even by Bond standards, you have to question sometimes where they're pointing the camera. She hasn't yet acquired the warmth and presence she showed in L.A. Confidential, but she hits her lines reasonably well. Honor Blackman and Diana Rigg can breathe easy at the top of the list of dramatically gifted Bond girls, but Basinger gets her chores done.

Klaus Maria Brandauer makes the biggest splash dramatically. He is interesting enough as a pathologically eccentric multi-billionaire in his first few scenes that you almost forget for a minute that he has to be the homicidal megalomaniac the script will be calling for later. He doesn't carry quite the same lethality as do Bond's greater arch-nemeses, but he probably brings acting chops with the best of them.

In the end, NSNA suffers from having to be different from the other Bonds. And it suffers too from trying to be different. The budget's not there, and of course the little traditions the geeks love aren't all there. It's not as funny or as thrilling as the best Bonds, and it's not as glamorous, either. There are even a few wardrobe choices (and one unfortunate swimming scene) that lean to the tawdry rather than the usual sexiness of the Bond series. As the events come to a close and more and more characters (including a horse) hurtle themselves in slow motion into the Mediterannean, creating huge splashes filmed in even slower slow-mo, you almost start to wonder if they thought about calling it Cannonball instead of NSNA. But, then, at the time, that was a Burt Reynolds movie. Sort of.