Never Say Never Again (1983) – Review

While the story of the tangled movie rights of Ian Flemming’s Bond novel, Thunderball, would probably be best left explained by someone who remotely understood it, the existence of “that other Bond movie”, Never Say Never Again, proves to be something of a fascinating example of an attempted Grand Theft Franchise. Essentially a shameless attempt to set up a rival James Bond movie that existed outside of the world of Eon Productions, Sean Connery was enticed back to a role he previous stated he’d never again portray (get it?) and Empire Strikes Back director was brought in to helm the thing.
Now, while all of that may seen immensely cheeky (if technically legal), the real brasen part is that it was released in the same year that a pink-faced Roger Moore puffed his way through the rather dire Octopussy.
Genuine attempt to bring something new to an established character, or cynical attempt to take pot shots at one of the most endearing franchises in cinema history – you decide.

With the newest M planning to shut down the Double-0 programme for good, an aging James Bond sees himself subjected to endless training exercises, but after the super spy fails one (I guess somebody does it better, eh?), he’s sent to a health clinic to get back into Bondian shape. However, while there, he stumbles across a conspiracy being carried out by sadomasochistic SPECTRE agent Fatima Blush that sees a heroine addicted American pilot who is undergoing surgery on his right eye in order for it to pass retinal scans for the President of the United States. SPECTRE’s plan is for their corrupted pilot to nab them a couple of nuclear missiles so they can do some nefarious mischief with and once the warheads have been procured, Maximilian Largo, working under mastermind Ernst Stavro Blofeld, starts to plot the downfall of the western world.
Bond gets clued in on all this after a hulking hitman tries to do him in at the health farm and after fending him off with a handy sample of urine (you read that right), MI6 let him loose to go out and save the world. To do so, Bond cozies up to Domino, the squeeze of a psychotically possessive Largo and sister to the corrupted pilot and after a trip to the Bahamas, he gets down to business. However, to thwart this latest assault on the free world, Bond will have to avoid numerous, murderous attempts by Fatima, beat Largo at a killer video game and do various other Bond-things that shows that gentlemen spies never grow old – but they don’t exactly fade away either.

Never Say Never Again isn’t actually the first time James Bond has seen a pretender attempt to square up to the official franchise with the notoriously chaotic Casino Royale spectacularly crashing and burning back in 1967, but while this do-over of Thunderball is far better, there’s still that weird feeling about watching a film that probably shouldn’t exist at all. It’s not that I have an issue about a rival Bond franchise so much as that they had to remake Thunderball to do it (got to love those Hollywood loopholes) and while the majority of the franchise is notorious for usually running off a template, it’s odd seeing scenes from a Bond film Sean Connery performed 18 years earlier, recreated with a slight, modern twist.
“You should’ve studied the plot more carefully!” yells Edward Fox’s M early on and I’m genuinely unsure if that’s a wry joke at the expense of the fact that we really have seen all this before, but while Thunderball was fairly serious (by Bond standards, anyway), Kirchner attempts to infuse it with the more campy tone of Diamonds Are Forever that ultimately comes of a bit weird. For example, it’s often genuinely unclear whether the movie is laughing with Bond or at him and is actually spoofing the very tropes it’s hoping to emulate. Barbara Carrea’s deliciously maniacal henchwoman seems like an exagerated joke at the expense of the franchise, and yet you could also suggest that she’s an obvious blueprint for Goldeneye’s similarly kinky Xenia Onatopp. Elsewhere, the early brawl that sees Connery and Pat Roach designate a health club is legitimately awesome because it takes the piss – literally, seeing as he fends off his attacker with a well placed cup of wee – but then we get the standard scene where Bond and his villain size each other up with a spot of gambling reimagined as two mature men playing a video game in front of an audience and it just feels like the wrong side of silly. Also, the random appearance of Rowan Atkinson throws you right off as for a brief second you think you’ve blundered into a Johnny English origin story…

Still, whether your Bond related OCD demands that you can never accept this movie as legitimate, or if you’re simply cool with it, it’s honestly nice to see Connery rock the tux one last time. Sure, his best days are behind him (despite numerous hints at his advancing years, Bond essentially leave the film’s first third as invulnerable as he’s ever been), but the actor still knows his way around a one liner dryer than the dryest vodka martini you’ve ever tasted.
“I need a urine sample, could you fill this beaker for me?” naively asks a nurse at one point, “From here?” is the razor sharp reply.
So, is Never Say Never Again successful in its attempts to hijack Bond? Depends on how you look at it really. While I’d argue it’s worse than the original Thunderball, it’s certainly better than Octopussy, the movie it was in competition with, although Moore’s grossed more – but taken on its own merits there’s some issue you just can’t get past.
It’s far too long, for a start and at times a bit slow and the lack of a more Bond friendly score means some of the action scenes lack some needed oomph. But as the rights didn’t include Monty Norman’s vital theme, we have to endure odd blasts of jazz when we need some John Barry to push us over the top. Also, I couldn’t help but feel that Klaus Maria Brandauer’s Largo and Kim Basinger’s Domino are fairly dull and both are far outshined by Carrera and a pussy fondling Max Von Sydow as Blofeld.
Nowhere near as bad as some Bond purists would have you believe, but far too awkwardly Bond-adjacent to be out and out fun, Never Say Never Again just feels like a strange variant that’s somehow tumbled into our universe from a neighbouring dimension that looks like Bond, sounds like Bond and certainly moves like Bond, but yet resolutely isn’t Bond for the most subtle of reasons.

In future, I would humbly suggest that any studio that has a legal claim to a popular franchise would kindly cease and desist – but you know Hollywood – never say never.

🌟🌟🌟