Never Say Never Again

Never say Never Again is a Sean Connery Bond film made in 1983. This is Sean Connery’s last appearance as Bond, and technically the film is considered an unofficial Bond movie because it was not produced by the companies that normally produce the Bond films. The movie starts out with Agent 007 practicing a search and rescue mission simulation for the new director, who has suspended all the double 0 agents. Bond is then forced to attend Shrublands, which is supposed to be a health farm where 007 is supposed to be learning how to take better care of himself. Of course, being Bond, he gets himself into trouble and falls neatly into a plot from the secret terrorist organization SPECTRE. This organization has somehow reconstructed the eye of a member of the U.S. Air Force so that on a retinal scan it will read just as the President’s would, they place 12 (a.k.a. Fatema Blush) in charge of his ‘care’ until the operation is ready to go. Blush turns out to be a psychotic murderess who enjoys blowing people up, ironically that’s how she is killed later on. This movie has every typically Bond twist and turn you can think of, right down to fighting off assassins in a tuxedo. Interestingly, this movie was part of the ‘battle of the Bonds’ that took place in 1983, when both Never say Never Again (featuring the aging Sean Connery) and Octopussy (starring Roger Moore), the official movie from the Bond franchise were released in the same year. Ultimately Octopussy did better in the box office, but many fans still enjoy Never Say Never Again, even though the ending insinuates the end of Bond.

The movie is typically 80’s in that it dealt with terrorists stealing the nuclear bombs and somehow it was all Russia’s fault again. Interestingly there was no Bond car in this movie, but there was a Bond motorcycle, which seemed to work better for the car chase scene anyway. Bond had his fancy gadgets created by Agent Q, one of which being a pen bomb that he used to blow up Fatema Blush. Again as we seem to have seen with early 80’s movies (or even Bond movies in general) females are generally flat characters who are either evil or good and rarely in between (and if they aren’t central to the plot they die most of the time anyway). Still a Bond movie is a Bond movie, they are always interesting, with insane plots that no other action hero could pull off, and most of all they keep us entertained as we are dragged into the world of international espionage for two hours and thirteen minutes.