Tag Archives: james bond

Octopussy

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Octopussy (1983) Director: John Glen

★☆☆☆☆

The thirteenth canonical Eon James Bond film, or the scandalously titled “Octopussy,” is also the sixth Bond film to star the silly and dapper Roger Moore. The film takes its title from Ian Fleming’s short story found in Octopussy and The Living Daylights -a short story collection published in 1967. The film’s plot borrows very little from the original short story.

Once again, John Glen direct’s the film (he worked on On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, The Spy Who Loved Me, and Moonraker; and then he directed For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, A View To Kill, The Living Daylights, and License To Kill).

There was a background controversy underlying the release of the film. Sean Connery had signed on to reprise his role as James Bond in the non-Eon film Never Say Never Again, much to Albert “Cubby” Broccoli’s chagrin. The two films locked horns in competition for revenue, and derailed Roger Moore’s plans to retire from playing James Bond (thus ending Josh Brolin’s chance to appear as Bond) and ultimately Eon’s Octopussy ($187.5M) beat out Warner Bros.’s Never Say Never Again ($160M). Nevertheless, Octopussy is another mostly forgettable Bond movie rife with campy jokes and a really ridiculous plot that takes Bond on an adventure chasing Faberge eggs dressed as a circus clown through locales like East Berlin and India.

The film opens with a slapstick-riddled action sequence with Bond undercover at a communist military establishment, perhaps in Cuba, but Bond escapes thanks to an attractive woman at his side. However, the central plot of the film is driven by the assassination of 009 while serving as an undercover clown escaping the Soviets while moving from East to West Berlin. He crashes through a window carrying a Faberge egg, a jeweled egg created by the Russian House of Faberge as a gift for the Russian Empire. However, the egg is proven to be a fake. Bond is sent by MI6 to an auction for the egg where he quickly identifies the purchaser, Kamal Khan, the former Afghan prince (played by French actor Louis Jourdan). Amidst an affair with Magda, a new Bond girl, James Bond is captured and brought to Khan’s palace where he discovers that Khan is working with Orlov, an expansionist Soviet general (played by British actor Steven Berkoff). Bond escapes and is led on an adventure through India where, in a particularly cheesy scene, Bond meets his contact, Vijay on the street who is playing the famous Bond theme while disguised as a snake-charmer. Vijay is played by Vijay Amritraj, the famous tennis player, and his scenes in the film are filled with amusing tennis jokes.

Bond tracks his way to a floating island palace occupied by an ‘Octopus cult’ led by a jewel smuggler named Octopussy (played by Maud Adams who also starred as a Bond Girl in The Man With The Golden Gun). He learns about the smuggling operation between Orlov and Khan via fraudulent circus troupe. Bond infiltrates the circus and uncovers a plot to detonate a nuclear warhead and spearhead a war between Europe and the United States. Bond trails the bomb to a train headed for West Germany, kills the assassins, including Orlov, and escapes dressed as a clown in yet another silly stunt. In the end, he persuades Octopussy to join him and disable the nuclear warhead and defeat Khan. They do so in a plane over India where Khan finds his ultimate demise.

Rita Coolidge performed the theme song for Octopussy, “All Time High.” It is a decent but melodramatic ’80s theme song for such a poor film.

For Your Eyes Only

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For Your Eyes Only (1981) Director: John Glen

For_Your_Eyes_Only_-_UK_cinema_poster

★☆☆☆☆

For Your Eyes Only has often earned itself a reputation as one of the less goofy Roger Moore Bond films, but that isn’t really much of a statement. After the science fiction-themed and at times cartoonishly produced Moonraker, the production team wanted to bring the next James Bond film back down to earth. For Your Eyes Only is the twelfth James Bond film, and the fifth starring Roger Moore. It essentially saved United Artists after the notorious box office bomb Heaven’s Gate which nearly bankrupted the whole company.

The film begins with an unusual prologue. James Bond visits the gravesite of his one-time wife, Tracy Bond (who was murdered at the end of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service), and when he departs, he enters a helicopter that is quickly and remotely hijacked by an unnamed villain on the ground –we are strongly led to believe this assassin is Blofeld (he is in a wheelchair, with a white cat, and a bald head in a grey suit). However, the studio executives were unable to acquire the rights to Blofeld at the time. Nevertheless, Bond somehow regains control of the helicopter, and he flies it, attaching it to the Blofeld-esque character and Bond drops him down a massive chimney which apparently kills him (both literally and symbolically for the studio).

Meanwhile, a British Royal Navy vessel is attacked and sunk off the coast of Greece. It was carrying an Automatic-Targeting-Attack-Communicator (ATAC) which communicates with the British fleet of submarines. James Bond is assigned to retrieve the ATAC before the Soviets can find it, since the device can order coordinated attacks by the fleet of submarines. At the same time, a British archaeologist locates the sunken boat (the St. Georges) but before he can send in his report, he and his wife are killed by a Cuban hitman named Gonzales. Their daughter is left alive on their family boat. James Bond trails Gonzales to his Spanish villa (shot at a real abbey of monks who tried to obstruct the film at every turn), where he spies on a payment transaction but Bond is quickly captured and saved when a mysterious crossbow shoots and kills Gonzales in his own pool. Bond escapes and discovers the hidden attacker, Melina Havelick (played by Carole Bouquet), the daughter of the murdered British archaeologist. They escape together, and, somehow using archaic British technology, Q is able to help Bond identify the man who paid Gonzales. Bond trails the man to Italy where he is attacked while skiing and then he is also attacked by a hoard of goons while on an ice-skating rink. It is revealed to Bond, by his ally named Kristatos (played by the famous English actor, Julian Glover) that the initial attempt at the ATAC was conducted by the KGB, but when Bond and Melina successfully recover the ATAC, Kristatos reveals himself to be a double-crosser. The plot was his all along. They climb up to his secret rendezvous point at an abandoned mountaintop monastery to kill Kristatos and recover the ATAC. However, when Bond does so, the Soviets arrive, and instead of either giving the Soviets the device or keeping it for himself, Bond decides to lob it over the cliff, destroying the ATAC so no one can use it. In the end, Bond and Melina receive a call from Margaret Thatcher from her kitchen, but Bond lets Melinda’s parrot take the call.

The story is drawn from a combination of plot and characters taken from two Ian Fleming short stories from his “For Your Eyes Only” story collection. In truth, For Your Eyes Only should really be watched by no one’s eyes. The only impressive parts of the film are the beautiful shooting locations. Otherwise the opening scene wherein Bond essentially kills Blofeld is an awful sign of things to come. The tone is amusing, but the plot and villains are forgettable, the Sheena Easton opening song is likely one of the worst, and the ’80s background music is just as cheesy and terrible.

The Spy Who Loved Me

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The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) Director: Lewis Gilbert

The_Spy_Who_Loved_Me_(UK_cinema_poster)

★★★★☆

The Spy Who Loved Me is the tenth Eon James Bond film, the third and by far the best of the Roger Moore Bond series. The title is derived from the Ian Fleming novel -apparently Fleming disliked this novel so much that he refused to release it in order to prevent it from being made into a film, so studio executives simply created a whole new plot but kept the title. They also wanted to re-introduce the infamous Blofeld character, after the somewhat lackluster villains in the previous two Roger Moore Bond films, but, once again, they were unable to acquire the rights for either Blofeld or SPECTRE due to ongoing issues with the copyright holder Kevin McClory. The Spy Who Loved Me is the first James Bond film made solely with Albert “Cubby” Broccoli as the producer, after his unfortunate falling out with Harry Saltzman. Previously, Saltzman and Broccoli were the dynamic duo who produced every prior James Bond film through their company Eon Productions, overseeing the franchise from a small-budget novelty film into a massive blockbuster series.

The Spy Who Loved Me opens with the mysterious disappearance of two submarines: one British and the other Soviet. The Soviets call up their best agent, Major Anya Amasova (a.k.a. Agent XXX, played by Barbara Bach -wife of Ringo Starr), and the British call up their best agent, James Bond (a.k.a. 007), who is predictably in bed with a woman in Austria, but when he gets the call he sports a vibrant yellow suit and starts skiing downhill away from a group of villains until he plunges off a massive cliff and opens a parachute revealing the British flag -the “Union Jack.” One of the skiing henchmen he kills is a rival agent -who turns out to be Amasova’s former lover at the beginning of the film. Bond then travels to Egypt to seek out recently stolen microfilm plans for a highly advanced submarine tracking system, where he meets up with Amasova. The two reluctantly join forces, realizing they have mutually shared objectives in this case. Bond also encounters a massive henchman who is seemingly indestructible with steel teeth named Jaws (played by Richard Kiel -a 7 foot 2 inch tall man who struggled with gigantism all his life until his death in 2014. He also reprised the role of Jaws in Moonraker). Bond and Amasova encounter Jaws in a train scene that contains strong echoes of From Russia With Love.

Both agents learn that the man behind the submarine attacks is a megalomaniacal billionaire named Karl Stromberg (played by Curd Jürgens). Stromberg brings the two scientists who developed the submarine tracking down to his submerged vessel “Atlantis” to thank them, but he demonstrates his power to them by shockingly dropping his secretary into the shark tank where she is killed for stealing information from Stromberg. He then allows the two scientists to escape but he blows up their helicopter shortly thereafter for some reason. 007 and XXX travel to Sardinia to investigate Stromberg’s secret base. Posing as a married couple, they infiltrate the base and learn that Stromberg has ofthe massive underwater base called “Atlantis.” They are captured, and Amasova learns that Bond killed her lover. She vows to kill Bond after the mission. Stromberg reveals his plan to use the two captured Soviet and British submarines to launch nuclear warheads from each, thus spawning a massive nuclear holocaust, while Stromberg remains secluded in his underwater lair, Atlantis. He hopes to create a new civilization under the sea. He takes Amasova as his prisoner down to the Atlantis, meanwhile Bond escapes his captivity and he frees the trapped British and Soviet submariners and they reprogram the submarines not to fire the nuclear warheads. Next, Bond goes to Atlantis to rescue Amasova -he encounters Jaws again and throws him into Stromberg lethal shark tank, but instead Jaws kills the shark and survives. Bond and Amasova leave in an escape pod together and Amasova decides against killing Bond. They are rescued by the British Royal Navy. Meanwhile, Jaws escapes the destroyed Atlantis and we see him swimming off into the ocean at the end.

The featured song at the outset of the film is performed by Carly Simon entitled “Nobody Does It Better” -a surprisingly apropos song. Interestingly enough, the cinematography for the film was done by Claude Renoir, son of the actor, Pierre Renoir, and the grandson of the famous Impressionist painter, Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

The Spy Who Loved Me is one of my favorite Bond films, or at least my favorite from the Roger Moore era. The mystery and intrigue surrounding a villain who desires to build a submerged, deep-sea civilization is amusing and compelling all at once. Also, the introduction of Bond working together with an enemy, albeit reluctantly, and then falling in love with a rival Soviet spy is a new twist. The Spy Who Loved Me is a welcome departure from Live and Let Die and The Man With The Golden Gun.

Live and Let Die (1973) Review

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Live and Let Die (1973) Director: Guy Hamilton

Live_and_Let_Die-_UK_cinema_poster

★★☆☆☆

Live and Let Die is the eighth Eon James Bond film, and the first to feature Roger Moore in the lead role (after Sean Connery refused to reprise the role, though Connery later returned in the non-canonical Bond film entitled Never Say Never Again –the title was a playful reference to the fact that Connery vowed “never” to play James Bond again). Both Adam West and Burt Reynolds were approached for the role of James Bond in Live and Let Die, but the producers were not eager to approach another cinematic outsider after controversies surrounding George Lazenby’s tenure so Roger Moore was a nice compromising fit in their eyes. At the time, Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman were barely on speaking terms so they divided producer credit for separate Bond films -Broccoli was given lead credit for Diamonds Are Forever while Saltzman was listed as producer for Live and Let Die.

The plot for Live and Let Die is based on Ian Fleming’s novel of the same name, though the book and the film have key distinctions. Live and Let Die is something of an oddity in the James Bond saga as it contains numerous “blaxploitation” references by showcasing black drug lords, pimpmobiles, strange voodoo cults, and so on. Also unlike other Bond films which have tended to focus on megalomaniacal super villains, Live and Let Die is about Caribbean drug traffickers smuggling heroin into the United States. After three agents are found dead, Bond finds himself trailing an infamous drug lord known as “Mr. Big” (Yaphet Kotto) who turns out to be Dr. Kananga (so-named because of the crew’s experience scouting for locations in Jamaica and stumbling upon a Crocodile Farm owned by a man named Ross Kananga). In the film, Dr. Kananga is a corrupt Caribbean political leader, whereas in Ian Fleming’s book, “Mr. Big” is a crime lord with connections to SMERSH who is smuggling Henry Morgan’s “pirate gold” into the United States. Both premises are pretty amusing. In the film there is a fairly remarkable boat chase scene, and it is intriguing to see England’s top gentleman spy cruising the seedier night clubs of Harlem. Between talk of “honkeys” and “bad mothers” as well as trash-piled, smoke-filled New York skies, this is a unique outing for Mr. Bond to say the least. This time, Bond’s romantic counterpart is Solitaire (Jane Seymour), a tarot-reading virgin tightly controlled by Mr. Big. Can she be trusted? Bond pays a visit to her vast seaside palatial home and seduces her which (she believes) causes her to lose her supposed psychic tarot abilities. In the end, Bond disrupts the planned heroin drug trade. He kills one of the primary henchmen, a tall cackling man Baron Samedi (Geoffrey Holder) by tossing him into a coffin filled with snakes, he battles another henchman man with a metallic claw for a hand named “Tee Hee” (Julius Harris). Bond rescues Solitaire just before she is put on display to be ritually sacrificed but they are soon captured. Next, Mr. Big slowly lowers Bond and Solitaire into a shark-infested pond but Bond escapes using a magnetic watch (for some reason no one is watching Bond while he escapes?) and then Bond kills Mr. Big using a small inflatable gadget which causes Mr. Big to expand and explode in what is perhaps the most comically ridiculous demise of any Bond villain. While they escape via a train (perhaps a nod to From Russia With Love) Bond is again attacked by the occultist henchman Tee Hee. He kills the clawed man by throwing him out a window leaving only his attached hook while Solitaire remains enclosed in a fold-up bed, unaware of the whole situation unfolding. The film ends with the “undead” Baron Samedi –one of the voodoo occultists who Bond previously had thrown into a coffin filled with poisonous snakes– laughing maniacally on the edge of the train as it speeds off into the night.

Live and Let Die is a clear departure for the James Bond franchise, though it is shockingly not the worst of the Roger Moore era. It is an uncomfortable film at times, with its many racially-motivated cliches, and in all I would say this is a mostly silly film, but there are actually worse Bond films in the series and to be fair some of the scenes of New Orleans and the Caribbean are quite impressive. Live and Let Die is the first Bond film to also feature a black Bond girl –a CIA agent named Rosie Carver (Gloria Hendry)– though United Artists refused to allow a black actress in the lead supporting role. Indeed the production crew apparently ran into considerable racism during filming in Louisiana, particularly for their black actors, hence why certain production decision were made –such as the brief appearance of a bumbling racist imbecile named Sheriff J.W. Pepper (who also reappears in The Man With The Golden Gun). It brought a smile to my face to see that “Quarrel Jr.” is introduced in this film (apparently he is the son of Quarrel from Dr. No), and the scenes with Felix Leiter and the CIA are nice but they are more or less frivolous background characters –contributing to the theory that James Bond is a subtle critique of the American method of espionage. At best, Live and Let Die is an entertaining movie and in the end, what more can you really ask for with a James Bond picture? At least, the Paul McCartney & Wings theme song is terrific and memorable! The notable Bond composer John Barry was forced to sit this one out for tax reasons so legendary Beatles producer George Martin completed the score for Live and Let Die. 

Read my review of Ian Fleming’s Live and Let Die here. Generally speaking, I prefer the novel to the film but neither are particularly stand-out achievements for the James Bond series.