Never Say Never Again (1983) | Thunderball: The Producer's Cut

This is a weird one. Part of me was inclined not to include Never Say Never Again because it’s technically not part of the franchise, but I also watched the piece of garbage Casino Royale from the 1960s, so I might as well discuss it. It might have Sean Connery back as Bond, but it’s considered an unofficial entry because it was not made by Albert Broccoli’s Eon Productions.

I mentioned this in my review of For Your Eyes Only, but I’ll repeat it here. This film is the product of Kevin McClory, who had creative differences with Broccoli and ended up winning the rights to Thunderball’s plot, the characters Blofeld, Largo, and Domino, and S.P.E.C.T.R.E. in a court case against him. This is part of the reason there were no Bond films involving Blofeld or S.P.E.C.T.R.E. after Diamonds Are Forever until well after Broccoli’s death. It’s also why there was the somewhat petty scene at the beginning of For Your Eyes Only in which Bond drops the faceless version of Blofeld into a smokestack. At some point, the rights to this movie and its characters were acquired and pulled back into the official Bond franchise, but I don’t know if it’s really considered “official.” Regardless of all the backstory to why Never Say Never Again exists, “Does it deserve to exist?” is the question.

Pros

The relationship between Largo and Domino is more nuanced than in Thunderball
Fatima Blush is a fun villain with wild outfits
Rowan Atkinson brings a bit of humor to the movie without wearing out his welcome
Decent motorcycle chase sequence
Fewer underwater battle scenes than Thunderball to slow stuff down

Cons

Monneypenny’s personality and relationship with Bond falls flat in this film
Video game scene is stupid and doesn’t make sense
The method of stealing nuclear devices is still pretty unbelievable
Opening sequence is undermined by its bait-and-switch
Theme song is an annoying earworm
Kim Basinger seems lost most of the time
Villains just refuse to kill Bond when they have the chance
More shark abuse

Plot & Thoughts

It feels a little redundant to summarize the plot of Never Say Never Again since it’s partially identical to Thunderball, but I might as well.

The film opens with a mozaic of 007 and zooms into some tropical local to the tune of the crappy theme song that will get stuck in your head immediately. As the opening credits roll, James Bond (Sean Connery) is infiltrating a secret military base. He kills a few guys quietly before throwing a flashbang into a crowded room and taking them all out by swinging in on a rope and shooting them with a machine gun. He makes his way into a prisoner’s bedroom where a woman is tied up. He fist-fights a guy and headbutts him before making his way over to her. He releases her and she immediately stabs him in the side. However, instead of keeling over, Bond just looks disappointed in himself. That’s because this was a training mission; it was not actually real. This is just kind of stupid because all the people he “killed” either actually had to get hurt during this sequence or just acted it up really hard. Needless to say, getting stabbed means that Bond failed the mission and M chastises him for it while revealing that Bond is a retired agent, rather than an active one. Though the opening was kind of cool, it was probably just inserted into the film to acknowledge Connery’s age.

As punishment for failure, or just to make sure he’s able to perform when needed, Bond is sent to a rehabilitation center where he can get in shape and get daily massages. Also conveniently at the rehab center are agents of S.P.E.C.T.R.E. Fatima Blush (Barbara Carrera) and Jack Petachi (Gavan O’Herlihy). Blush is a high-ranking member of S.P.E.C.T.R.E. hoping to facilitate the mission in which Jack will manage to steal some nuclear weapons from the U.S. during a guided missile demonstration. Jack is a member of the military but has had surgery on his eye to perfectly match the President of the United States for this specific mission. Why is he doing this? His main payment is heroin, apparently. In Thunderball, they facially reconstructed the infiltrator’s face to match another individual so he could get onto a plane that had the missiles and he just wanted a large sum of money. I’m not sure which is less believable, but either way, S.P.E.C.T.R.E. ends up in control of the weapons when it’s all said and done and the infiltrating agent (in this case, Jack) is killed to cover up their tracks. In both films, the disposable agent happens to be the brother of Domino, but we’ll get to her in a second.

Once S.P.E.C.T.R.E. is in control of the nukes, they hold the West ransom and it’s up to Bond to track down the nukes before the time is up. Following the trail from the dead brother leads Bond to find Domino (Kim Basinger) and her lover: a man called Largo (Klaus Maria Brandauer). Bond travels to the Bahamas to meet up with his old friend Felix Leiter (Bernie Casey) and continue the investigation, while also being distracted by the plethora of vaginas in the region, including Fatima Blush’s. There are a few attempts on Bond’s life, some agents get killed, and Bond starts moving in on Domino to get more information. There’s the obligatory scene in which Bond must play a game with the villain so the two of them can size each other up, but this is the 1980s so they have to play a video game instead of something more traditional. It’s a very dumb scene involving a game that looks a little like Tempest, but I’m not sure how it works. Regardless, you know who wins in the end.

The rest of the movie plays out in pretty predictable Bond fashion. He manages to avoid death due to skill, luck, or villainous ineptitude. Fatima Blush has the most opportunities to kill him but would just prefer to play with her food, that is until Bond finally eliminates her in one of the more entertaining ways a villain is killed in these movies. Largo makes his share of mistakes as well but stops short of completely filling out the Bond Bingo card by only divulging the location of one of the nuclear bombs when Bond has been captured, instead of telling him about both bombs.

I’m more inclined to like this movie over Thunderball for a few reasons. One of which is the weakest argument of all: nostalgia. For one reason or another, this happened to appear on TV a lot when I was a pre-teen, and it is one of the Bond movies I have seen the most as a result. It wasn’t out of desire I saw it, just opportunity. I wouldn’t watch Thunderball until I was older, and when I finally saw it, I was underwhelmed. Since I saw Never Say Never Again first, I am a little more biased toward it, even if I still think it’s one of the worst Sean Connery Bond movies.

The real reasons I prefer Never Say Never Again have more to do with the action and with the villains. The motorcycle chase scene in the middle of the movie is a decent section with some cool stunts and fast action without resorting to the editor trick that Thunderball used to speed up its action. The opening scene, even though it’s supposed to be fake, is a cool sequence of Bond doing some assassin work. The fight scene that takes place in the rehabilitation center is fun, though, the way Bond wins is kind of stupid. I guess what I’m saying is there are a lot of silver linings to the action and it manages to be just a little bit better than Thunderball. The most significant improvement to the action and pacing is that there are far fewer scenes that take place underwater, so we don’t have a climactic battle of a bunch of goons slowly punching and kicking each other at the bottom of the ocean. Never Say Never Again is only 4 minutes longer than Thunderball, but it feels a lot shorter simply because not so much time is spent slowly moving through water.

As for the villains, dumb as they are, I like them over Thunderball’s. Fatima Blush and her exotic outfits always manage to capture your attention and Carrera hams it up exceptionally well. Blush may be a little stupid and narcissistic, but it suits the character’s personality and she’s far more memorable than other Bond villains. I also prefer Largo in this movie because of a few reasons. For one thing, Brandauer’s performance makes the character stand out, even without the eye patch. He comes across as a typical Bond villain with his quiet confidence, but he also seems like a real psychopath in the way he talks or tries to hide his wounded pride. Eye-patch Largo is just your standard Bond villain without much personality. The added menace of a real nutjob makes this Largo far more memorable to me, even though there’s nothing striking about his physical appearance. He is also far more involved with Domino in this movie. She’s still a possession to him, but there’s more of a relationship between the two of them and she cares about him at the beginning of the film before she learns about her brother’s death. It’s not the most impressive love story told on film, but it at least adds a little complexity to the characters that wasn’t present before.

As for Domino herself, well… I’ll give Kim Basinger the benefit of the doubt because this was her first role in a big film and helped catapult her career as an actress. I can’t say I know why it did as I don’t think she’s very good in this movie—Barbara Carrera simply outshines her. She either seems a little stiff or completely lost in her scenes, as though just the possibility of something happening might cause her to cry out of anxiety for being so confused. This could just be the result of bad direction and I suppose if you compare her performance to other Bond girls, both past and future, she’s somewhere in the middle in terms of acting ability. Regardless, Basinger would go on to have a lengthy and successful career after Never Say Never Again and she definitely got better at her craft by the time L.A. Confidential came out.

Looking at Never Say Never Again as a whole package, it’s just okay. It’s not the worst Bond movie, but it’s far from the best. The fact that it’s a complete remake of an existing film makes it only as worth watching as the original. Though the villains and pacing are an improvement, it still comes across as a cheap version of the weakest Sean Connery film. Frankly, the trivia for this movie on IMDB is more interesting than the movie itself. Even though I prefer this movie over Thunderball, I’m more likely to just watch Thunderball and skip Never Say Never Again in a marathon simply because Thunderball is official and part of my Blu-ray collection—it’s more convenient.

TL;DR

While Never Say Never Again has some qualities that make it better than Thunderball, I still don’t think it manages to justify its existence or stand above many of the other James Bond movies in terms of quality. It’s a very mediocre entry with a few highlights that make it slightly less forgettable. I know it goes against the motto of the film, but I think I’ll never watch Never Say Never Again again.

Hair of the Dog Drinking Game Rule

There’s a lot of material retreaded in this movie. And while I would probably make a rule about any time you feel like you’re getting deja vu, let’s have a rule that celebrates one of the movie’s better aspects: Fatima Blush. She is a villain with a ton of personality and loves to make an appearance in every scene with her crazy outfits.