Back to Connery: Never Say Never Again

NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN is one of those movies where the behind-the-scenes stuff is almost as interesting as what’s onscreen.
In brief: Kevin McClory many years earlier had worked on a never-produced Bond script with Ian Fleming, introducing SPECTRE and centering on a nuclear blackmail scheme. Nothing came of the movie, so Fleming turned it into the novel Thunderball, which then became the disappointing film. McClory sued and won the right to make his own version, which proved trickier than expected (a court refused to let him make an earlier draft on the grounds Warhead was really a new movie). As to the film itself:
Plot: The current M (Edward Fox), who’s mothballed the double-O section as an outdated anachronism, sends Bond off to get in shape at a health farm. While there, Bond discovers SPECTRE agent Fatima Blush (Barbera Carrera) dominating a US pilot SPECTRE has already gotten hooked on heroin. Using the pilot, the cartel steals a couple of warheads and demands 25 percent of NATO’s GNP not to set them off. Undeterred by M’s skepticism, Bond begins the hunt for Largo (Klaus Maria Brandauer), the jovially murderous SPECTRE agent in charge of the project (in contrast to the theory I discussed in reviewing The Spy Who Loved Me, Brandauer plays a much bigger role than his lover Domino (Kim Basinger) does)
Despite being written by Lorenzo Semple Jr. (who in addition to the Batman TV show contributed such campy big-screen productions as the eighties Flash Gordon)the result is really good, moving much faster than the original. It helps that the underwater battles are minimized and there’s much more action going on at the health farm in the start. And one of the nukes is close to detonating at the climax, which ramps up the tension over just finding them (as was the case in the first film)
It also helps that the cast is great. Max von Sydow plays Blofeld with an amiable grandfatherly air. Brandauer is malevolently gleeful. Basinger does okay (she’s not got much to work with) and Carrera’s Fatima is glorious, dancing with glee when she gets the assignment to kill someone (her meltdown before Bond’s victory is annoying, but until that she’s on a par with Onatop from Goldeneye). Semple’s lines for M could have made him into a buffoon (the stereotype of the stuffy bureaucrat out of touch with what Bond faces in the field) but Fox makes them work: He comes off like someone who expected to be in a LeCarre or Deighton novel and is disgruntled at having to supervise agents with licenses to kill and dealing with villains who use absurd tactics such as an implanted eye designed to fool a retina scan.
And of course, we have Connery back. After watching so many Roger Moore Bonds in a matter of months, it’s a welcome relief: Connery’s just a better Bond. I like Moore and I love his turn as The Saint on TV, but Connery looks and acts tougher, and that works for 007.
Now, things I didn’t like:
•Bond meets Domino by posing as a masseuse and giving her an er, extensive massage before the real masseuse shows up. Domino’s response: Kind of intrigued. I know it’s Bond but still, I think “Ugh, creepy!” is a more believable reaction.
•When Largo learns Domino betrays him, he has his henchmen auction her off to a bunch of desert Arabs lusting for pretty white-woman flesh. Much like the voodoo scenes in Live and Let Die, this plays too heavily on racial stereotypes for me. And it’s not as if the Arabs have anything to do with the plot—Largo could just as easily have turned her over to his henchmen.
•The climax involves Bond and Largo going mano-a-mano. I like Brandauer as the villain but Oddjob he ain’t—no way can I take him seriously as a physical threat to Bond.
Despite the flaws, an excellent series entry—even if not technically in the series.