Sunday, March 29, 2009

Never Say Never Again (1983) ***1/2

What a ballsy film to do! Honestly, this is a James Bond film that doesn't have Monty Newman's theme, the gun barrel sequence, or Desmond Llewelyn. What it does have, back for one last go, is Sean Connery.

Never Say Never Again is essentially a remake of 1966's Thunderball, which finds Bond stumbling onto a conspiracy to hijack two nuclear warheads and ransom the world to avoid detonation. Along the way he runs into the femme fatale Fatima Blush (Barbara Carerra) and the innocent victim Domino (Kim Basinger) while trying to stop SPECTRE agent #1 Maximillan Largo (Klaus Maria Brandauer).

This film is really a novelty. It had been 12 years since Connery bowed out in Diamonds Are Forever and he is the main draw of this film. It's played as an older Bond, which is an interesting concept even though we've seen the same story before. This film was Irvin Kershner's follow up the the magnificent Empire Strikes back and even though this film doesn't come close to the perfection of that movie it is still a solid action adventure with a few surprises. It's hokey at times, but Connery proves even at that age he is still James Bond.

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