Never Say Never Again (1983)

Director:

Irvin Kershner

Writers:

Kevin McClory (story) &
Jack Whittingham (story) ...

Release Date:

7 October 1983 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Adventure | Comedy | Drama | Thriller

Tagline:

If you haven't seen Sean Connery in 'Never Say Never Again' then you haven't seen James Bond 007!

Plot:

A SPECTRE agent has stolen two American nuclear warheads, and James Bond must find their targets before they are detonated.

Plot Keywords:

France | Theft | Coral Reef | Terrorist Group | Casino Royale

Awards:

Nominated for Golden Globe. Another 1 win & 2 nominations

Cast

Sean Connery	...	James Bond
Klaus Maria Brandauer	...	Maximilian Largo
Max von Sydow	...	Ernst Stavro Blofeld (as Max Von Sydow)
Barbara Carrera	...	Fatima Blush
Kim Basinger	...	Domino Petachi
Bernie Casey	...	Felix Leiter
Alec McCowen	...	Q 'Algy' Algernon
Edward Fox	...	'M'
Pamela Salem	...	Miss Moneypenny
Rowan Atkinson	...	Nigel Small-Fawcett
Valerie Leon	...	Lady in Bahamas
Milos Kirek	...	Kovacs (as Milow Kirek)
Pat Roach	...	Lippe
Anthony Sharp	...	Lord Ambrose
Prunella Gee	...	Patricia Fearing

Also Known As:

James Bond 007 - Sag niemals nie (West Germany)
James Bond of the Secret Service (UK) (working title)
James Bond, Secret Agent (UK) (working title)
Warhead (USA) (working title)

Runtime:

134 min | Germany:121 min (cut version)

Country:

UK | USA | West Germany

Language:

English | French | German

Colour:

Colour (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.20 : 1

Sound Mix:

70 mm 6-Track (70 mm prints) | Dolby (35 mm prints)

Certification:

Canada:G (Quebec) | Canada:PG (Ontario) | Netherlands:12 | West Germany:12 (f) | Canada:A (Nova Scotia) | Iceland:12 | Canada:PA (Manitoba) | South Korea:15 | Finland:K-16 | France:U | Norway:15 | Sweden:15 | USA:PG | Australia:M | Singapore:PG | UK:PG (cut)

Filming Locations:

Alpes-Maritimes, France

Company:

PSO International

Trivia:

When the project was first announced, the title was "James Bond of the Secret Service" and Orson Welles was going to play a villain.

Goofs:

Continuity: When Domino is being rescued by Bond from the bidders, she's not wearing her "Tears Of Allah" pendant. However, inside the naval vessel, she produces the pendant when asked for it by Bond.

Quotes:

Blofeld: I am Supreme Commander of SPECTRE, the Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion. Yesterday morning, the American Air Force launched 2 cruise missiles from Swadley Air Base in Great Britain. Through the ingenuity of SPECTRE...

Movie Connections:

Spoofed in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)

Soundtrack:

Never Say Never Again

Ringing the Changes on a Familiar Theme

The year 1983 saw a strange phenomenon; two rival Bond films. "Octopussy", starring Roger Moore, was part of the official Cubby Broccoli Bond franchise. "Never Say Never Again", made by a rival producer, is, apart from the awful "Casino Royale", the only Bond movie which does not form part of that franchise. Its big attraction was that it brought back the original Bond, Sean Connery; its title reputedly derived from Connery's remark after "Diamonds Are Forever" that he would never again play the role. Some have complained that Connery was, at 53, too old for the role, but he was in fact three years younger than his successor Moore, who not only made "Octopussy" in the same year but went on to make one further Bond film, "A View to a Kill", two years later.

The film owes its existence to the settlement of a lawsuit about the film rights to Ian Fleming's work. It is perhaps unfortunate that the terms of the settlement included a clause that the new film had to be a remake of "Thunderball", as that was perhaps not the greatest of the Connery Bonds. (A remake of "Dr No" or "Goldfinger" might have worked better). The plot is much the same as that of the earlier film; the terrorist organisation SPECTRE, acting together with a megalomaniac tycoon named Largo, have stolen two American nuclear warheads and are attempting to hold the world's governments to ransom by threatening to detonate them unless they receive a vast sum of money. It falls to Bond, of course, to save the world by tracking down the missing missiles.

The film is fortunate in that it has not just one but two of the most beautiful Bond girls of all, Barbara Carrera as the seductive but lethal Fatima Blush and Kim Basinger as Largo's girlfriend Domino who defects to Bond's side after learning of her lover's evil plans. A number of the Bond films have a plot that hangs upon the hero's ability to win over the villain's mistress or female accomplice- there are similar developments, for example, in "Goldfinger", "Live and Let Die" and "The Living Daylights". In the official series, Bond's ally is normally regarded as the female lead, but here Carrera, playing the villainess, is billed above Basinger, who was a relatively unknown actress at the time. Basinger, of course, has gone on to become one of Hollywood's biggest stars, whereas Carrera is one of a number of Bond girls who have somewhat faded from view.

Of the villains, Max von Sydow makes an effective Blofeld, the head of SPECTRE, but Klaus Maria Brandauer seemed too bland and nonthreatening as Largo, except perhaps during the "Domination" game, a more sophisticated variant on those violent computer games such as "Space Invaders" that were so popular in the early eighties. Brandauer can be an excellent actor in his native German, in films such as "Mephisto" and "Oberst Redl", but he does not comes across so expressively in English.

One of the film's features is that it both follows the normal Bond formula and, at times, departs from it. There is the standard world-in-peril plot, chase sequences, a series of exotic locations, glamorous women, sinister villains and a specially written theme song based on the film's title. There is, however, no extended pre-credits sequence, and we see some familiar characters in a new light. For example, Bond's boss M becomes a languid, supercilious aristocrat, his American colleague Felix Leiter is shown as black for the only time, and the scientist Q is portrayed by Alec McCowen as a disillusioned cynic with (despite his characteristically upper-class Christian name of Algernon) a distinctly working-class accent. There is also an amusing cameo from Rowan Atkinson as a bumbling British diplomat. Although Connery was perhaps not quite a good here as he was in some of his earlier films in the role, this ringing the changes on the familiar theme makes this one of the more memorable Bonds. 7/10

A goof. Rowan Atkinson's character states that he is from the British Embassy in Nassau. As, however, the Bahamas is a Commonwealth country, Britain would have a High Commission in its capital, not an Embassy.