Review of Octopussy (1983) by Tonto — 18 Oct 2021

What made this 1983 Roger Moore Bond film standout was its provocative title. In terms of plot, it's pretty standard Bond fare, somewhat convoluted and hard to follow. The movie starts with Bond infiltrating a military base in Latin America and has to escape in a minijet.

From there, 009 agent dressed as a circus clown and carrying a counterfeit Fabergé egg, crashes into the British ambassador's residence and dies after fleeing two knive-throwing twin Russian assassins.

The British suspect the Soviets, and Bond is sent to bid for the Fabergé egg to identify its seller. From there, Bond follows a Saudi prince Kamal Khan to his palace in India. Bond hooks up with an associate of Khan's, a beautiful young woman named Magda who has the tattoo of an octopus she calls her **** Bond later meets **** a beautiful and wealthy businesswoman, smuggler and Khan's associate.

She also leads the Octopus cult, of which Magda is a member, which is entirely comprised of women. Traveling to East Germany, Bond infiltrates the circus and discovers that Soviet General Orlov has replaced the Soviet treasures with a nuclear warhead, primed to explode during the circus performance at a US Air Force base in West Germany.

Bond manages to deactivate the warhead. Bond and **** return separately to India. Bond arrives at Khan's palace just as **** and her troops launch an assault on the grounds. **** attempts to kill Khan, but is captured by Gobinda.

While ****'s team, led by Magda, overpower Khan's guards, Khan and Gobinda abandon the palace, taking **** as a hostage. As they attempt to escape in their airplane, Bond clings to the fuselage and disables an engine and the elevator panel.

Struggling with Bond, Gobinda plummets off the plane's roof to his death, and Bond and **** jump off the plane onto a nearby cliff only seconds before Khan fatally crashes into a mountain. At the end, Bond is in bed with **** on her private yacht.

The movie suffers from too many cheesy one-liners, and doesn't really have a good iconic villain, though of course the **** Bond girl character is memorable. There is a lot of action and explosions, but some of Bond's exploits like when he is clinging onto an airplane mid-flight require you to suspend too much disbelief.