Never Say Never Again

Rating:
Summary: Ever saiy never again
Review: A bad movie, with a good james bond 007. This remake is not a real bond movie, there is not the original bond cast and makers. Sean Connery and Bernie Casey are the only good actors in this movie.

Rating:
Summary: Never Say Never Again
Review: This film is a sad excuse for a remake of one of the best Bonds, Thunderball. There are a few good things like Bernie Casey as Felix Leiter, the end fight, the motorcycle chase, the castle and casino scenes, the musical score, and though Sean Connery is very suave as OO7, he is just too old. The rest is very bad.

M looks as if OO7 could be his father, and Klaus Maria Branduer is not nearly as good as his predecessor Adolfo Celi, who played Largo in Thunderball. He has that stupid smile on his face in almost every scene and how could he hold the world hostage with nuclear weapons when he looks like he wouldn't (or couldn't) hurt a fly? He has to be the nicest OO7 villain ever, unlike the cruel villains such as Davi in License to Kill and Bean in GoldenEye. Kim Basigner is stupid and can't measure up to her predecessor, Claudine Augner, and since when does Domino have blond hair! Barbara Carrera is okay as Fatima Blush but still isn't as good as Lucianna Paluzzi. Max von Sydow is bad as Blofeld and also has hair and a beard! At least Charles Gray was excellent as Blofeld in Diamonds are Forever and his hair was smoothed out, not puffed up! Pat Roach is very weird as Lippe. AlecMcowen is not very good as "Q" Algy and the gadgets are not very good. How could you have anyone else but Desmond Llewelyn as Q!

The duel between OO7 and Largo at the casino with the video game "Domination" is pointless and boring. Overall, weak and it wasn't as good as the other '83 OO7 film, Roger Moore's excellent Octopussy. See this movie only if you want to see all the OO7 films, and buy it if you only want to own all the Bond films.

Rating:
Summary: DIAMONDS SHOULD HAVE BEEN FOREVER
Review: Why Sean? Why? You were the definitive Bond. Your wooden performance in a bad James Bond movie, You Only Live Twice, was still enough to cause it to outgross 3 to 1 a good James Bond movie, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Your farewell to the Bond series, the runaway hit Diamonds Are Forever, showed that you could play a different, campy, self deprecating Bond in a comic book adventure and still make it believable. In fact it proved that you could do it better than Roger Moore, whose first two efforts, while directed in the same style as DAF, are just plain lame by comparison and almost put the series into permanent exile. In fact, it wasn't until Moore's films were given a bigger budget and he less to say, that his movies came close to generating the excitement of yours. That said, you really let us all down when you made this stinker. Why? You had nothing to prove and lots to lose. Well, you lost. Moore's competing effort, Octopussy, was just flat out better in all aspects. Fortunately, Moore showed his true colors in his final 007 flick, A View To A Kill, which managed to combine the worst aspects of both his lame outings and his cartoonish ones. Okay, now for a few details about Never Say Never Again itself. Connery does bring his inimitable screen presence here, as the man immediately makes any movie, no matter how much of a mess it may be, watchable. However, because of well known external factors attributable to this not being a UA/EON production, nothing, including Connery's portrayal, seems particularly Bond-like even though this is a remake of a previous Bond film which starred Connery! Here, the Largo (not imposing enough) and Domino (not as exotic) characters are inferior to the originals and although the Fatima Blush character generates excitement isn't she just a more over-the-top (and therefore less believable) version of Fiona Volpe? And don't even get me started on that horrid score. The movie is too long and while I don't mind a Bond movie with more dialogue than action (From Russia With Love and DAF both fit in that category, but are among my favorites), when the action does appear it just doesn't seem all that exciting or credible. That fight with the henchman at Shrublands was just plain silly and the whole climax of the film was boring. It felt like the characters did all this talking for nothing. All these factors add up to this Bond movie being put into the "Avoid" pile, along with The Man With The Golden Gun, Moonraker and A View To A Kill. Poor Sean, you should have left well enough alone. If it makes any difference, I'll always think of your final Bond scene as hugging Jill St. John aboard the QEII rather than winking at the camera while in the swimming pool with Kim Bassinger.

Rating:
Summary: I like
Review: Good. I liked it. It had a lot of action and I was glad to see Kim Basinger's face. The villaness Fatima Blush was good and sparkled the movie. Sean Connery really blew the spot on this. The bad guy Klaus...whatever was way too nice. How can he be a bad guy? He smiled the whole time. This is a good Bond movie waiting for you to view. Enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: -Well done!
Review: Although this is not a true Bond movie, missing many features that are in normal ones, it's still a great movie. Having great action, this movie deserves four stars.

Rating:
Summary: A low point for true Bond fans
Review: It's so shocking that people just don't get the clue that this film was released to compete against Octopussy, which was an "official" Bond release. Sean Connery had a truckload of money handed to him by Warner Bros. with the opportunity to star in the role that made famous. You can't blame him for doing it, since all men go through some sort of mid life crisis to recapture the glory of their youth. Even that reason is no excuse for the terrible special effects, and the plot is a pathetic offtake of the original Thunderball, which is arguably one of the greatest Bond films of all time. A true Bond film fan would have hurled about twice as much debris at the screen as I did while watching the film. There is no gun barrel image to start the film (a staple of all Bond films), Connery reads his lines off in a questioning manner, not a dictating one (which is a main personality trait Bond traditionally has), and as hot as Kimmy B is, she lacks the true class that the original Domino (Claudine Auger) carried herself with in Thunderball. I guess the old Hollywood T&A actress can still cast a shadow over acting talent in any era (and don't tell me that she was better in Batman, either). The movie was an attempt to make some quick money off a naive movie public who were lured in by the return of Sean Connery. And by looking at some of the reviews by others on this site, it seems to have worked better that Warner Bros. had planned. I compare this film to Coke II. Lots of people said they liked it, but when it came down to it, the original was still the best.

Rating:
Summary: bond is bad
Review: the only thing to say about this bond movie is that it is Warners only installation in the bond films all the others were done by MGM.It makes it very difficult to find this movie as Warner are not currently producing any more copies at this time

Rating:
Summary: One more time, please!
Review: Great movie! Connery does justice over Moore and Lazenby one last time. His melange of seriousness and comedy make him a classic. Love the 80s soundtrack too. Whatever happened to it?

Fallbacks are that this movie is currently not in print. Will there ever be a re-release on DVD-VHS? Buy the old VHS copies now! You may "never" see it again!

Rating:
Summary: Should've said "never again"
Review: _Never Say Never Again_ is the only serious Bond film not released by MGM/UA. That lack of continuity shows to the point of distraction. Here, there's no gun barrel sequence, no funky titles, no great opening song, no recurring cast members. There's not even the James Bond theme. In fact, James Bond himself barely puts in an appearance.

What's here is a makeover of _Thunderball_, arguably the plot-weakest Bond of the 1960's. To be sure, the supporting cast (with the exception of the missing series regulars), is far superior to the original. Klaus Maria Brandauer is perfectly menacing as Largo, and it's a shame that he had to waste his one shot at Bondian villainy with this off-brand Bond. Likewise, Kim Basinger and Barbara Carrera turn in fine performances that put Connery's original _Thunderball_ girls to shame. And, no other Bond can boast the use of Rowan Atkinson, who brings just the right comic touch to his role of the British Consular official in the way that Desmond Llewellyn often did in other Bonds when he traveled out in the field

But the strain of trying to make a Bond film just using the elements that were legally available to the production crew is obvious. In writing Bond as an older man, the writers get into immediate trouble. If Bond is older than he was in the original Thunderball, then he had to have been married, and Blofeld had to have already murdered his wife. Yet, Connery here makes no reference to that fact, despite being faced with Blofeld. Nor is there reference to Blofeld's last tangle with Roger Moore's Bond in _For Your Eyes Only_, released only two years earlier. Worse, the attempt to follow Kevin McClory's original vision of Bond as a grittier character leaves us with a Bond that's checked his snappy comebacks at the door. Much of the grim humor of the MGM/UA Connery is gone, replaced by a certain Any Spy quality. It's no surprise that Connery himself seems confused as to his identity when he reads the line "Bond, James Bond" as a question, more than a statement.

Now that Eon Studios has finally acquired the rights to all Bond films, some of the problems with this little anomaly might yet see vital refurbishment. Perhaps when MGM/UA releases it next it will at least get new titles, soundtrack, and, most especially, the retrofitting of the James Bond theme.

None of that will make up for the lack of Desmond Llewellyn as 'Q', or Lois Maxwell's "Moneypenny"-or indeed of the lack of Bond himself--but with the right amount of tweaking the original film could be brought more into harmony with the other Bonds MGM already distributed.

Rating:
Summary: Not bad at all
Review: It is not as good as Thunderball, but Never Say Never Again was an admirable attempt to make a rival Bond film. It was certainly better than Roger Moore's overblown Octopussy, released the same year. But unfortunately, however suave he is, Connery just looks too old.