Never Say Never Again (1983)

Never Say Never Again is a British-American thriller film first released in 1983, directed by Irvin Kershner.  The film stars Sean Connery, Klaus Maria Brandauer, Max von Sydow, Barbara Carrera and Kim Basinger.  Our overall rating for this film is: good.


James Bond is not the man he used to be.  When he under-performs in a training exercise, M sends him to a health clinic to rid himself of all those harmful free radicals.  Meanwhile, SPECTRE, led by the venal cat-loving Ernst Stavro Blofeld, is up to no good.  With the help of a brainwashed air force pilot, Jack Petachi, this consortium of evil masterminds successfully steals two cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads and issues an ultimatum to the world: pay up or be blown up.  Bond is soon back on the job and finds himself in the Bahamas, on the tail of Blofeld’s chief accomplice, Maximillian Largo.   With the help of Domino Petachi, Largo’s mistress and the sister of the man who stole the missiles, Bond establishes Largo’s connection with SPECTRE and sets about recovering the missiles.  Unfortunately, Largo is a very powerful man and Bond is not as young as he once was...

1983 was a vintage year for 007 aficionados, seeing the release of two blockbuster Bond movies within the space of a few months.  Having savoured Roger Moore’s attempts to save the world from nuclear Armageddon by recovering and disarming a stolen atomic bomb, audiences could then salivate at the prospect of Sean Connery saving the world from nuclear Armageddon by recovering and disarming a stolen atomic bomb. 

Plot similarities aside, there is really not much to differentiate Moore’s Octopussy from Connery’s Never Say Never Again.  The two films even had about the same budget ($35 million) and grossed roughly the same amount (Moore did slightly better, earning $187 million to Connery’s $160 million, probably because the former film was released in the busier summer months).  The independently produced Never Say Never Again was a golden opportunity to offer a radically different vision of a Bond movie, but it failed hopelessly to break out of the formulaic groove in which EON’s Bond films had been stuck for well over a decade.

Of course, the film’s appeal was greatly bolstered by the unexpected return of Sean Connery to his most celebrated role.  The actor has been adamant he would never play the part of Bond again when he quit the role in 1971 after appearing in Diamonds Are Forever.   Twelve years later, seduced by a five million dollar paycheque, Connery is back, but looks and acts more like Roger Moore than his former 007 self.  In fact, you can easily convince yourself that Never Say Never Again was scripted with Moore in mind, particularly as Bond’s sardonic wit is reduced to asinine one-line quips.  With their penchant for tacky innuendo, the screenwriters do a damn good job of recasting Connery’s Bond as a dirty old man.

Never Say Never Again was the culmination of a twenty-year long battle by Kevin McClory to get one over on EON, the company that produced the original Bond movies.   McClory cooperated with EON on Thunderball back in 1965 but insisted on retaining the rights to the story, which he had written in collaboration with Jack Whittingham.  A decade later, McClory set about raising the finances to remake Thunderball, only to end up in a protracted legal battle with EON over who owned the rights to what.   Despite EON’s best efforts, McClory fought off an aggressive lawsuit and was free to proceed with his dream project. 

McClory achieved a spectacular casting coup when Sean Connery agreed once more to don the mantle of Britain’s most famous fictional secret agent, in return for a generous fee and a large donation to a charity of his choice.  The film gets its title from the riposte that Connery’s wife, Micheline Roquebrune, proffered after the actor told reporters he would never play Bond again.   It was directed by Irvin Kershner, the veteran filmmaker who had recently scored a major commercial and critical success with the second Star Wars movie, The Empire Strikes Back (1980).

If Never Say Never Again was intended to take us back to the Golden Age of the Bond movies, it can only be considered a total failure.  It has much more in common with the jokey comic book escapades of Roger Moore’s Bond films, complete with a ramshackle plot, interminable action sequences, over-reliance on gadgets and some truly hideous attempts at humour.  Q division looks all the worse for wear, presumably after some pretty vicious Tory cutbacks, and Edward Fox plays M as though he were offering an over-enthusiastic audition piece for an undergraduate end-of-term revue.  Kim Basinger deserves her place as the blandest Bond girl of them all and the less said about Rowan Atkinson’s grotesque proto-Bean intrusion the better.

The film’s one saving grace is Klaus Maria Brandauer’s characterful portrayal of the principal baddie, Largo.  Brandauer manages to be both charming and despicable, a cut above virtually every other Bond villain.  His intelligent, nuanced performance puts every other actor in the production (including Connery) to shame - with the possible exception of Max von Sydow, who is subtly sinister as the feline stroking Blofeld. 

Never Say Never Again is by no means classic Bond but it is entertaining enough, despite its abundance of corny jokes and the protracted and pretty dismal denouement.  Sean Connery for once looks as if he is enjoying acting the part of Bond and plays the nostalgia card for all it is worth, leaving us in no doubt that he was and will always be the definitive 007.   Will he return for an eighth Bond movie?  Only time will tell...

© Chris Alderton 2010

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