Octopussy (1983)

True story: After "For Your Eyes Only" they were looking for someone to replace Roger Moore as James Bond. He was getting tired of playing him, he was getting too old, and it was beginning to be noticeable. James Brolin and future Bond Timothy Dalton were considered for the part, but then Sean Connery happened.

When, after a lengthy legal battle "Never Say Never Again," a non-Eon remake of "Thunderball" was put into production starring the original Mack-Daddy himself as 007 once again and set to come out the same year as "Octopussy," it was widely thought that it was not the proper time to risk trying anything new. So Moore was brought back once again, and I'm forced to grit my teeth and suffer through more of his shenanigans as the series still refused to grow up a little bit.

That being said, I must admit to actually liking "Octopussy." Despite the ridiculous title which you feel silly even saying out loud, this is a fun movie that manages to be quite entertaining. The plot is a little obtuse at times and there is more than one occasion when it's easy to not understand a thing anybody is talking about, but the action in between all of it is abundant and exciting, more so then arguably any of Roger Moore's other outings, and the screwball antics are kept to a relative minimum. Mostly.

Dammit, I said "mostly."

The story this time revolves around Fabergé eggs, and before you say anything, no, the plot doesn't suck. It gets kind of dicey to follow, but essentially what's going on is that there's a lot of forgeries of priceless things going around and being sold for insane prices lately, all to fund a rogue Russian general, Orlov (Steven Berkoff), doing bad things like expanding their borders and conquering some of Europe. I know that sounds stupid, and maybe it is, but it works just enough to get the story from A to B. In any case 007 is naturally the only one who can do anything about it, and sets out to track down the forgers, heading out to India where a bunch of the action takes place, before heading to West Germany (a nice dated reference there) for the admittedly exciting climax.

The *ahem* titular character is a notorious smuggler played by Maud Adams, whom observant viewers might recognize from "The Man With The Golden Gun," where she played Christopher Lee's ill-fated concubine whose corpse was shockingly good at sitting bolt-upright in instant rigor mortis. Like in that previous film, Adams is a strong presence on screen, and makes for one of the better Bond girls of the series, since she's not totally useless or stupid. This is particularly true when you look at the lineup of girls from the rest of the Roger Moore era. In fact she's probably the most respectable of all of them, since she had become an incredibly powerful world-class smuggler all by herself, and Maud Adams does command a great deal of respect in her performance. She's not just some busty ditz they slapped a lab coat on and called "Doctor" like we believe that for one hot minute. (I'm looking at you, Denise Richards.)

Useless? She's got her own elite squad of hot ninja acrobat circus performers who dress like The Flash. That's awesome!

Roger Moore is his usual cream-puff self, but at least here he brought a bit more physicality to the role. Or at least, his stuntman did. I've said it before and I'll keep saying it until I'm finally done with him, but Roger Moore is not a threatening guy, and I've never bought him as an action lead. But despite all of that, the film does manage to make him come across as more than someone's goofy uncle despite his noticeably advancing age.

Like I said earlier, the wackiness is toned down a bit in "Octopussy," an aspect I was immensely relieved by. True, there are moments like Bond dressing like both a clown and a gorilla, a crowd watching a car chase with heads moving back and forth in unison like a tennis match, all while Bond's sidekick Vijay wails on the bad guys with a tennis racket, and Bond yelling like Tarzan while swinging on a vine (groan), but for all of that goofy crap there's still a lot of pretty hard-hitting action and some surprisingly dark stuff in here. When the film features a guy taking a rotary saw yo-yo to the face and a dude hunting humans like he's a cross between Van Pelt and the villain from "Bloodlust," it tends to make up for some of the more comedic moments.

I love ham and eggs!

Once again, however, the villain is slightly lackluster. Louis Jourdan is just...alright as Kamal Khan, an exiled Afghan prince working with Orlov. One one hand he's slimy enough and gives off the impression that he would gladly set fire to a car full of nuns just because, but it's likely that he'd probably get someone else to do it for him. And this is just me, but I like my Bond villains to be somewhat more threatening then that. Otherwise when we get to the final showdown there's going to be little tension because you know he doesn't stand a chance against 007. It's really more about getting past the big henchman they always have at that point, and I've always found that to be a bit anticlimactic when the films go that route. Orlov would have been the more logical choice for James to face off against at the end, but unfortunately that doesn't end up happening.

That's about all I have for "Octopussy." It's a surprisingly exciting entry in the Roger Moore series, and I'd call it one of his better, if not best ones. True, you're not going to know exactly what's going on the whole time, but the climax has Bond fighting a dude on top of a plane. That's got to count for something.

Yeah, the trailer sucks, but you get a taste for how much action is in this one.

THE BOTTOM LINE - I'd call "Octopussy" one of my favorite Roger Moore flicks. The biggest reason for that is the action, which flows fast, hard-hitting, and is surprisingly consistent throughout its overly long run-time. It's just enough to make you forgive the fact that it's still Roger Moore. It's what's great about the English. I must have seen this movie twice.

JAMES BOND

WILL RETURN IN

"A VIEW TO A KILL"

The Man With The Golden Gun (1974)

1973's "Live And Let Die" was one of the weaker Bond outings, and by far the worst of the "New Guy" debuts. With Roger Moore at the helm, the series sank further into a spiral of comedy that had began some time ago, but had previously been kept above water due to the badassery of Sean Connery and even George Lazenby (yeah you heard me, I said Lazenby). Now with the Earl Grey flavored tofu blandness of Mr. Moore, the series continued as if it were slowly (and sometimes not so slowly) becoming a parody of itself.

Its follow-up, "The Man With The Golden Gun" is something of an enigmatic film, as it seems to be a transitional one. The lack of gadgets and inclusion of a sadistic, depraved psychopath of a villain who gets sexual thrills from killing suggests a darker, more gritty entry. However, at the same time it also features third nipples, the return of Sheriff J.W. Pepper, Bond giving a wedgie to a sumo wrestler, and Tattoo from "Fantasy Island." Oh dear. I sense being annoyed by shifts in tone in my future. It's not full blown comedy yet, but we're getting there.

Why is it that nearly every expression Roger Moore makes can be accompanied by a *BOING* sound effect?

"The Man With The Golden Gun" could have been a really solid entry, and I'm saying that while being a HUGE detractor of Roger Moore. I enjoy the initial setup, which finds Bond taken off of active duty when he finds himself the target of Scaramanga, the world's most infamous assassin and the titular character. While officially off-duty, Bond is given the under-the-table go ahead to find Scaramanga and take him out first, so that Bond can get back to his current mission, which involves a new solar power source which could solve the energy crisis. Eventually and conveniently these two plots meet up in an endgame which may seem somewhat contrived, but it does give Christopher Lee a chance to fire a laser cannon, and that's awesome.

Gentlemen, the contest shall be overly large collars at dawn. May the most starched win.

There are plenty of action beats which are perhaps not quite as good as previous entries including "Live And Let Die," due to the fact that they seem rather lackadaisical and too gentle with the smug creampuff that is Roger Moore, but for what they are they serve their purpose acceptably well and tend to not be boring. The editing may be wanting, as some of the numerous chase sequences had an overall lack of reference as to who was where, and on occasion the film flat-out confuses the audience with "How in the world did he get there?" moments which are never explained, but like I said they serve their purpose just fine. And unlike "Live And Let Die" or "Thunderball," I was not bored stiff by "The Man With The Golden Gun."

Scaramanga is a thankful reprieve from Yaphet Kotto's forgettable Mr. Big from the previous outing, and for the first time since "Goldfinger" we get a memorable bad guy who isn't Blofeld. Naturally when you get Christopher Lee to be your villain its extraordinarily unlikely that he won't be the best thing about the movie, and he unsurprisingly manages to steal the show. The film does keep his debauchery to a PG level, but there are scenes with him that could have come right out of an exploitation flick, and could have gotten really, really raw and kinky had they kept going past the point the camera cut to another scene. Part of me is glad they cut away but another part of me wanted to see it, just so his character was made just that much more twisted.

You know, just to take it from an "Oh man he's going to shoot Bond" level to an "Oh man he's going to shoot Bond and then wear his skin" level.

The thing about Scarmanga that makes him so great as a character is the nonchalant manor in which Christopher Lee plays him. Lee can be super intense when needed, as his turns as Dracula showed us, but in "The Man With The Golden Gun" he overall stays icy calm and detached from the violence that he is inflicting, discussing it like it's a golf outing. Normally this would be a point against a performance but it's clear by looking into his eyes that the reason he's detached is because it's no big deal to him. He'll shoot someone in the face with the same emotion as he would have eating a sandwich. And then he'll have sex with his concubine because death puts him in the mood. It's a role fueled by juxtaposition and subtle fire behind Lee's eyes, and it's really a killer performance by one of the masters.

However, I said earlier that "The Man With The Golden Gun" could have been a really solid entry. The issues come up when discussing the aforementioned shifts in tone. While the film starts off with a very promising first act, once Bond arrives in Thailand posing as Scaramanga himself, it quickly devolves into bizarre territory as Bond is attacked by sumo wrestlers, gets forced into a martial arts contest for some reason, and then goes off on prolonged escape and chase sequences featuring the return of J.W. Pepper, who marks the absolute nadir of the film's ups and downs.

I think Rosco Coltrane and Boss Hogg congealed into a tubby, racist mass.

It's this goofy, cornball crap interjecting itself into what is otherwise a fairly dark story involving some really twisted stuff that makes "The Man With The Golden Gun" not work that well. I can't tell you how frustrating it was for me watching this film because of that reason. There are scenes in "The Man With The Golden Gun" that are outright brilliant, but they are sullied by the bad comic relief.

"I claim this land for Oz!"

A pitch perfect example is a scene where Scaramanga and Bond first meet at a mixed martial arts fight. The scene is brilliantly set when Bond sits down next to Andrea (Maud Adams), Scaramanga's consort who recently sold him out to James, only to find that she's quite dead from a gunshot. Scaramanga then sits down next to Bond and tells him in so many words, "Yeah, I killed her. And I know you tried messing with me. That's cute. Don't do it again or I'll kill you like I killed her." This is also one of the few moments where Roger Moore plays Bond in a halfway acceptable manner, making the scene very intense.

Immediately after that Bond girl Goodnight (Britt Ekland) becomes an offensively useless ditz when she gets her dumb ass captured by Scaramanga, and we get a chase scene where Bond and J.W. Pepper follow him through the streets of Thailand while Pepper shouts shockingly racist epithets which I think are supposed to be humorous. This all culminates in Bond jumping a river via a broken bridge, which spins the car in a spiral complete with a slide whistle sound effect (because that's essential to the stunt), and then the case ends when Scaramanga's car turns into a plane. Then I remember the previous scene of dead-serious coldness and I get sad.

It's just not right without the OOOOOOOOOOOOOOWHOOP!

That's really the biggest issue I have with "The Man With The Golden Gun." There are other things that annoyed me, chief amongst those is a rather anti-climatic end to the final showdown, and the utterly worthless character of Goodnight, who is insufferably dumb and pathetic even for Bond girl standards. Keep in mind this is a character whom Bond locks in a closet for hours so he can have sex with another girl in the same room, but when released she's mostly upset because Bond won't plow her immediately. That's an escalation of both Bond's piggishness and a 37-year setback for women in cinema all in one scene! Good job!

And she's supposed to be a secret agent. That's "Glasses on Tara Reid = Ph.D" level stupid.

The rest of it is middling to okay. Despite Roger Moore still choosing to act like he doesn't give a crap, it's surprising how much millage a film can get from a decent villain. Add to the fact that "The Man With The Golden Gun" is actually a very pretty film, and showcases some fantastic scenery and really cool set designs (I was particularly a fan of a secret base made from a slanted, sunken ship) and you've got a Bond flick that manages to be surprisingly not bad considering all the crap that goes along with it. It's still not anywhere close to the best, but it's far from the worst.

I wish I could have been a movie trailer maker back in the day. I wouldn't have had to give a crap.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "The Man With The Golden Gun" is one of the better Roger Moore entries. Most of that has to do with Christopher Lee, as he drags the movie kicking and screaming into respectability on occasion. His presence alone is enough to override some of the Roger Moore zaniness, but it's still present, which irritates me to no end. A big step up from "Live And Let Die," however.

JAMES BOND

WILL RETURN IN

"THE SPY WHO LOVED ME"