There's something a little off about Never Say Never Again. It's like peering into an parallel universe. Sean Connery still wound up playing Bond, but the entire rest of the cast is different and the music is decidedly worse. It is a strange duck of a film, produced by Kevin McClory, who won the rights to the Bond novel Thunderball after suing Ian Fleming, along with Jack Schwartzman to create their own rival Bond film. In the process, they managed to land Sean Connery back in the role of James Bond after a 12 year absence from the role.
The film itself is more or less a remake of Thunderball, beginning with Bond being sent to a health clinic outside London to get in shape after failing a series of routine training exercises. While there, Bond encounters a mysterious nurse, Fatima Blush (played by Barbara Carrera), who is treating another patient, Jack Petachi (played by Gavin O'Herlihy). He later sees him using a machine that scans his eye. Bond is seen witnessing this and later an assassin attempts to kill Bond in the clinic gym, but Bond defeats him after a lengthy fight through half the clinic ("I send you there to get in shape and you destroy half the place!" retorts M, when later confronting Bond). M (played by Edward Fox) is begrudgingly forced to put Bond back into active service when it is discovered Petachi and Fatima work for SPECTRE and Petachi was getting his eye worked on to pass a retinal scan to steal to nuclear warheads. Bond's investigation leads him to Domino Petachi (played by Kim Basinger), Jack's sister and her wealthy lover, Maximillian Largo (played by Klaus Maria Brandauer), another SPECTRE agent. With assistance from Felix Leiter (played by Bernie Casey), Bond's friend and CIA counterpart, Bond has to figure out Largo and SPECTRE's plans for the two nukes and recover them.
Never Say Never Again marks Sean Connery's return to the role that made him famous after a twelve year absence and by all indications, the break did him good. It's also interesting to see an older Bond, who is close to the end of his career. It's something we haven't seen explored with the character. Bond's heart is still in it and not willing to admit he's getting older. Yet, for the most part he's able to keep up in this film, so he's not out of it yet. I also have to give a special notice to Klaus Maria Brandauer as Largo. He creates a much more grounded, insecure and even perhaps neurotic villain than we typically see in a Bond movie. Both sides of the coin work well because both are playing far more grounded characters and that helps add more layers to the film Kim Basinger does pretty well in her turn as Domino and is certainly more tolerable than many Bond girls.
The film has a nice tongue in cheek sensibility to it, even down to it's title which references Connery's vow never to play James Bond again after Diamonds Are Forever. They also have, among other things, Q telling Bond that now that he's back he hopes there will be some gratuitous sex and violence. ("I hope so too," replies Bond.) Even though the movie is a pretty straightforward remake of Thunderball, the filmmakers managed to learn from the mistakes of the previous film and find ways to make it feel at least a little fresh. The action fight scenes, especially the one between Bond and the Assassin in the Health Clinic, are relatively well staged and filmed. The film largely does away with the underwater fight scenes that bogged down the original film and keeps the majority of the climax above water, thankfully. The one area that the film struggles is with it's music. One of the things the Bond series is known for is it's title songs, whereas this film is straddled with the musical equivalent to listening to someone strangle a cat. Luckily it's a short song and over fairly quickly.
Still, Never Say Never Again is a triumphant return for Connery to the role of Bond and of the two James Bond films to come out in 1983, the other being Octopussy, this one definitely reigns supreme for me.
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