For Fresh Eyes Only: Never Say Never Again (1983)
I have a self-imposed rule that I can’t do any research on these articles beyond watching the film and looking up character/actor names. I have this rule for a few reasons, namely that this series isn’t meant to be a serious deep dive. If you want that, you can look elsewhere, as numerous other places have done that and likely better than I could. I am a novice when it comes to James Bond and I want that to come across in these articles.
Never Say Never Again was a tough one to do that with though. I know this has a weird history. To the best of what I can remember based on what I’ve heard, a scriptwriter was fired from a previous Bond film and he somehow retained the rights to still make that movie. And then he made that movie. And in one of the real Bond movies, they make fun of the guy. And I’m sure that’s not the whole story and there are even weirder stories about how Sean Connery got involved. I don’t know and I can not look it up until this article is written. Please don’t tell me. I have Google.
The idea of somebody else doing their own completely different take on such an established series is fascinating. The only problem is that the filmmaker’s idea of a good Bond is.... the exact same thing as the canon Bond movies. Nothing feels different about this character other than Sean Connery’s advanced age, which the film does poke fun at a bit. The innuendo is taken a bit farther, but not to any sort of extreme degree. The action feels more or less the same. I thought that the 1967 Casino Royale sucked, but at least it was different.
All of that being said, there is nothing wrong with Never Say Never Again, per se. But there’s also nothing noteworthy. It feels like a competent approximation of what the Bond films have already been. The plot is boring, the action’s solid, there’s a ton of corny jokes, and the characters are hit or miss. I’m honestly finding it hard to find anything noteworthy to talk about, which is probably the most damning thing to say about an opportunity like this. It was wasted. They couldn’t even get a new Bond, just reused one who had his time already.
They do at least attempt to make use of the fact that Connery has aged. Silver hair is peeking out, and the first act of the movie is practically devoted to making fun of this. They stick him in a rehabilitation center and crack joke after joke about how he’s not what he used to be. It’s corny as hell and gets old fast. The film doesn’t take good advantage of any of the recasting of established characters either. Some of the newcomers are interesting, Kim Basinger’s Domino and Barbara Carrera’s Fatima especially. They’re possibly the only two people in the movie that look like they’re at least having fun.
Never Say Never Again is ultimately unremarkable, which is such a shame for something that really had a chance to break the mold. Instead it’s just another Bond movie, and not a particularly good one either. Even if it was a total train wreck it would have been worthwhile, but it’s not. It’s just a kind of boring retread of places we’ve already been in the series up to this point. If you somehow haven’t seen this movie and you’re just reading this piece where I’ve said the same thing over and over for 5 paragraphs now, that’s what watching the movie is like. Hopefully next time I’ll be discussing a better movie and you’ll have a better article to read. This wasn’t my fault, it’s theirs.
Marcus Irving will return in For Fresh Eyes Only: Octopussy.
