Octopussy (1983) - film review

Sickened by the concessions his leaders have made to Western governments, renegade Soviet General Orlov concocts a diabolical plan that will enable the Soviet Union to expand its territory using conventional forces.  By allying himself with Afghan price Kamal Khan and wealthy circus owner Octopussy, he intends to smuggle an atomic bomb into a military base in West Germany.  When the bomb is detonated, public outrage will lead the countries of the world to dismantle their nuclear arsenals, leaving the West weakened for a military attack.  The discovery of a fake Fabergé egg in East Berlin puts British secret agent James Bond on the path to unravelling Orlov’s dastardly plot.  If he fails this time, the show will certainly go with a bang...

After For Your Eyes Only saw a healthy jolt of gritty realism being injected into the flagging Bond franchise, it was business as usual with the next outing for 007 - back to the outlandish comic book campery of previous years.  Octopussy may be one of the more enjoyable films of the Roger Moore era (despite its tangled, multi-tentacled plot), and it certainly offers some of the series’ more spectacular action sequences, but it clearly has no intention of taking itself too seriously.  Indeed, you could easily be forgiven for thinking this was intended as a send-up of the classic Bond movie, either that or a partial rip-off of Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove.  

One’s suspicions that the production team may have had their tongue firmly in cheek are aroused as soon as we hear an Indian snake charmer pipe Monty Norman’s Bond theme to attract the attention of a passing 007.  Roger Moore is, as ever, well serviced with a quip for every occasion and has plenty of opportunity to flex those eyebrows (which is just about the only exercise he gets as all of his action scenes are performed by a stunt double).  Unfortunately, things do get a tiny bit embarrassing when Bond starts doing impressions of Tarzan and regales us with his quick change routine, appearing variously as a crocodile, a gorilla and a clown.  Apparently, the British secret service are demanding an awful lot from their employees these days.  All that Moore’s predecessors had to do was hold a gun, drink a few dry vodka martinis and look impossibly cool in a white texedo.

The fun doesn’t stop there, oh no.  This time we have two Bond villains for the price of one, and both are clearly hankering after having their own TV comedy series if their bid for world domination fails.  In the red corner we have Steven Berkoff as comical commie general who thinks he can avoid a nuclear war by, er, exploding a nuclear bomb in Europe, and opposite him, on the pink sunlounger, is Louis Jourdan as a camp Afghan prince with a suspiciously French accent and a nice line in Gallic petulance.  Bond aficionados (well, those with a sense of humour) will be glad to know that Q isn’t overlooked in all these laugh-a-minute shenanigans.  Desmond Llewelyn has ample opportunity to show that, beneath that dour crotchety exterior there lurks a red-nosed, horn-honking vaudevillian just itching to get out.

Octopussy is much more of a guilty pleasure than a bona fide classic.  It’s a lousy Bond film from the point of view of plot and characterisation (any resemblance to anything that Ian Fleming ever wrote in his lifetime is purely coincidental) but that does not stop it being a lot of fun.  It is every bit as daft as the reviled Moonraker but it just about manages to keep its feet on the ground, and it helps that there are no silly laser gun battles in which Bond’s most fearsome adversary inexplicably switches sides.

Roger Moore turns in quite a respectable performance for someone who had to be persuaded to stay with the role after he had firmly decided to quit.  The EON production team decided to stick with Moore when they learned a rival Bond film, Never Say Never Again, was to be released the same year, with Sean Connery returning to the role he said he would never, repeat never, play again.  Despite all the hype surrounding this latter film, Octopussy fared moderately better at the box office, although that was almost certainly down to Roger Moore’s homage to Johnny Weissmuller.

© Chris Alderton 2010

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