Plot: James Bond is called upon to try to recover nuclear bombs stolen by Spectre, but he will have to get rid of a professional assassin, hired especially to eliminate him.
I realized recently that I had never covered Never Say Never Again on the site; I haven’t seen it in many years, so I figured over the past weekend it was time for a rewatch.
As we all know this wasn’t part of the official James Bond franchise; Kevin McClory, who was a producer and co-writer of Thunderball (1965), won a legal battle against Ian Fleming to make his own Bond movie. According to IMDb the settlement stipulated that it had to effectively be a remake of Thunderball which is exactly what this is.
Sean Connery returned to the role of 007 despite Roger Moore’s Octopussy coming out the same year; in Never Say Never Again they couldn’t use the iconic Bond theme, so instead we got a mostly horrendous jazz score from Michel Legrande which for me is the weakest aspect of the film. There were several moments where you’re just waiting to hear the Bond Theme and when it doesn’t happen it’s hard not to be disappointed.
The pacing is also a little off where it really drags at times and the finale is underwhelming where we can’t even see what is going on. I didn’t even know that was the main villain Bond was fighting underwater in the finale as we never saw his face until the end. Speaking of the villain I did enjoy Klaus Maria Brandauer as Maximilian Largo; he had an unsettling presence and when he smiled there was just a sense of threat to him.
I also thought Barbara Carrera was wonderfully unhinged as Fatima Blush who has one of the best deaths of the entire 007 franchise (official or not).
Sean Connery definitely looks his age here, but he is still Bond and this manages to feel like a 007 movie with some choice one-liners like “can you give me a urine sample, please? To which he responds, “From here?”
There are also some decent action scenes too with a stand-out being the fight between Connery and Pat Roach who you’ll remember Indiana Jones fought twice – once in Raiders and again in Temple of Doom. It’s a great fight with Bond getting thrown around like a ragdoll.
Kim Basinger is one of my all-time favourite Bond girls mostly because like everyone else I was totally infatuated with her growing up.
This was Rowan Atkinson’s first movie role and although it’s not huge he does provide a few laughs and it paved the way for his Bond parody Johnny English many years later.
Action movie legend Gavan O’Herlihy (Death Wish 3) plays Captain Jack Petachi and I wish his role was bigger as he always made for a great villain. In this he isn’t really bad but being forced to work for SPECTRE. For some reason I never knew that Max Von Sydow played Blofeld in this movie but he of course wasn’t able to use the name, so he was just “Number 1”. He also wasn’t used enough which is a shame as he was always magnetic whether a hero or villain.
An interesting tidbit about this movie is that apparently one Steven Seagal was the martial arts instructor and he ended up breaking Connery’s wrist which was an injury that would bother him for years. I was also reading on Wikipedia what Connery himself thought about the film as there was apparently tension on set between producer Jack Schwartzman and Connery, who at times barely spoke to each other. Wikipedia stated “Connery was unimpressed with the perceived lack of professionalism behind the scenes, and was on record as saying that the whole production was a “bloody Mickey Mouse operation!” That sounds very much like Connery…
Overall, Thunderball is definitely the superior movie as the underwater sequences were some of the best committed to film and it just feels sleeker, but after many years I expected to hate Never Say Never Again more than I did. It was great to see Connery back even if he does look considerably older as he will always be my favourite iteration of the character. Hey, at least he doesn’t give up and die at the end…