Never Say Never Again (1983)

The Unofficial Bond

Never Say Never Again is the strangest film in the Bond canon, because it isn’t really part of the canon at all. It was made outside the official Eon Productions series, by a different producer, with Sean Connery returning to the role at fifty-two, twelve years after Diamonds Are Forever and after swearing he would never play Bond again. The title is a joke about that vow, reportedly suggested by Connery’s wife.

Irvin Kershner, who had directed The Empire Strikes Back, directed it, and it came out in October 1983, a few months after Roger Moore’s Octopussy. The press called it the battle of the Bonds. Octopussy won at the box office, and Never Say Never Again did respectable business. I give it a 5. It has some fine performances and a few good ideas, and it’s a surprisingly flat and uninvolving film.

It’s also a fascinating piece of film history. That’s part of the pleasure of watching it now. It’s the only time two Bonds competed in cinemas at the same time, and the only time Connery returned to the role after leaving it. For anyone interested in the series, it’s an essential oddity, even if it’s rarely a good film.

The Thunderball Dispute

The film exists because of one of the longest legal fights in film history. In the late fifties, Ian Fleming worked with the producer Kevin McClory and the writer Jack Whittingham on a screenplay for a Bond film. It was never made. Fleming then used the story as the basis for his novel Thunderball, without crediting them. McClory sued, and won the film rights to the Thunderball story, including SPECTRE and Blofeld.

Eon made Thunderball in 1965 with McClory as producer, under an agreement that let McClory remake the story after ten years. He spent years trying, and finally, with the producer Jack Schwartzman, he made Never Say Never Again. It’s a remake of Thunderball: SPECTRE steals two nuclear warheads and holds the world to ransom, and Bond has to find them.

The legal battles over the rights continued for decades, and they kept Blofeld and SPECTRE out of the official series until they were finally settled. A strange history for a strange film, and it explains why Never Say Never Again feels like a Bond film reflected in a slightly warped mirror: familiar characters, familiar story and none of the usual trappings.

Connery Returns

Connery was fifty-two, and he plays Bond as an older agent, sidelined by a new M who has no use for the double-0 section. He’s sent to a health clinic to get back in shape. He finds it absurd, and it’s where he stumbles onto SPECTRE’s plan. The idea is nice: an ageing Bond, out of fashion, proving he still has what it takes.

Connery is relaxed, amused and clearly having a better time than he did in his last official Bond, Diamonds Are Forever. His Bond is wry and self-aware, and he’s convincing in the action scenes, if a little heavier than he used to be. He wears a noticeable toupee. Critics mocked it at the time. It’s good to see him in the role again, and the film is at its best when it trusts his charm.

The problem is that the film around him is so much less confident than the official films. Without Eon’s resources, and without the familiar theme, the gun barrel opening and the established style, it never quite feels like a Bond film. It feels like a well-funded imitation. More or less, that’s what it is.

Largo

The villain is Maximilian Largo, SPECTRE’s agent in charge of the stolen warheads, a wealthy, charming, jealous businessman played by the Austrian actor Klaus Maria Brandauer. He’s the best thing in the film: unpredictable, childish, arrogant and frightening, a man whose moods swing from charm to cruelty in a heartbeat.

Brandauer had just starred in the acclaimed Mephisto, and he brings real acting weight to the part. Largo is obsessed with his girlfriend, Domino, and with winning, and the film’s best scene is a game between him and Bond, a futuristic video game of world domination in which the losing player receives painful electric shocks. It’s tense, strange and clever, a modern twist on the card games of earlier Bond films.

Brandauer makes Largo one of the most psychologically interesting villains in any Bond film, official or not. That’s a pity the film doesn’t give him a better climax. After building him into a villain as unpredictable as any of the decade, it lets him fade out in a murky underwater struggle that most viewers barely remember.

Fatima Blush

Barbara Carrera plays Fatima Blush, SPECTRE’s assassin, a flamboyant, theatrical killer who loves her work and is outraged when Bond won’t admit she’s the best lover he’s ever had. Carrera is gleeful in the role, all outrageous costumes and wild laughter, and she was nominated for a Golden Globe for it. She’s having more fun than anyone else in the film.

Fatima is the film’s most memorable character after Largo, and she has its funniest moments. Her attempts to kill Bond involve a shark attack, a motorbike chase and a pen that turns out to be an explosive, and her final demand, that Bond write down that she was the greatest, is a brilliant comic touch.

Her fate, dispatched by one of Q’s gadgets in the middle of her moment of triumph, is a satisfying villain exit, better than most of the period. Carrera clearly understood the kind of film she was in better than almost anyone else involved.

Domino

Kim Basinger plays Domino, Largo’s girlfriend and the sister of a pilot SPECTRE has used and murdered. She’s the film’s romantic lead, and Basinger, early in her career, is charming but underused. The script gives her little to do beyond being desired by Largo and rescued by Bond, and she’s never given the chance to become a partner in the way the best Bond women are.

Her best scene is a tango with Bond at a charity ball. Bond uses it to tell her that Largo killed her brother. This is a clever, stylish moment. The film also includes a notorious scene in which Largo auctions her off to Arab bidders at a slave market, and it has aged very badly.

Basinger went on to a long and successful career, including an Academy Award for L.A. Confidential, and her charm here hints at the star she became. The film simply doesn’t know what to do with her.

A Different Kind of Bond Film

Without Eon, the film couldn’t use the familiar gun barrel opening, the James Bond theme or the regular cast. So there’s a different M, played by Edward Fox as a stuffy bureaucrat who dislikes the double-0 programme, a different Q, played by Alec McCowen as a scruffy, likeable technician, and a different Moneypenny. Bernie Casey plays Felix Leiter, the first Black actor in the role, and Rowan Atkinson has a small comic role as a bumbling British embassy official.

Some of these changes are refreshing. McCowen’s Q, delighted that Bond might bring some excitement back to his underfunded department, is a highlight. Others simply make the film feel less like Bond. Michel Legrand’s score, in particular, is jazzy and oddly light, and it rarely matches the action. The theme song, sung by Lani Hall, is forgettable.

The absence of the Bond theme is felt throughout. The music is part of what makes a Bond film feel like a Bond film, and without it, even the good scenes lack the familiar charge. That’s a reminder of how much of the series’ identity is carried by John Barry’s sound.

The Action

The action scenes are mixed. There’s a good motorbike chase through the south of France, with Bond on a gadget-loaded bike pursued by Fatima, and a fine fight in the health clinic, where Bond is attacked by a huge henchman in a room full of laboratory equipment. There’s also a spectacular stunt in which Bond and Domino ride a horse off a high wall into the sea.

The finale, in which Bond and Felix lead an assault on Largo’s base in North Africa to recover the second warhead, is flat and confused, and Largo’s end, underwater, is anticlimactic. Kershner was a fine director of actors, and he seems less comfortable with large-scale action. The film is always at its best in small, character-driven scenes.

Kershner had shown in The Empire Strikes Back that he could handle spectacle when the story supported it, and the difference here is the script. The action in Never Say Never Again is rarely tied to anything the characters want or fear, so it plays as a series of set pieces instead of a story building to a climax. The small scenes work because they’re about people. The big ones don’t, because they’re about stunts.

Where Never Say Never Again Falls Short

The pace, the music and the flat finale. For a film with such a remarkable backstory, and such a strong villain, it’s surprisingly low on energy, and it never quite escapes the feeling of being a knock-off of a better film. It’s longer than it needs to be, and its best moments are scattered.

On the other side: Connery’s return, Brandauer’s Largo, Carrera’s Fatima and McCowen’s Q. It earns a 5, a curiosity for Bond fans and a pleasant enough evening, and it’s worth seeing to watch Connery play Bond one last time. Just don’t expect it to feel like the real thing.

Craft Note

The Verdict on Never Say Never Again

As a curiosity, yes. It’s a 5. Watch it for Connery’s return, Brandauer’s excellent Largo and Barbara Carrera’s gleeful Fatima Blush, and for its remarkable backstory. It’s flat and overlong, and it never feels like a true Bond film.

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