This was Sean Connery‘s one-off return as James Bond after over a decade out. His last outing as Bond being in 1971 with Diamonds Are Forever and he was already looking aged compared to his debut with Dr No in 1962.
Never Say Never Again was one of only two Bond movies ever produced outside of Eon Productions – the other being Casino Royale (1967), although that was just a dull satire so struggles to even qualify as a Bond movie.
Never Say Never Again gets off to a respectable start, as a health farm used by MI6 agents seems to have been infiltrated by some enemy Spectre agents. It gets a bit slow and messy and the movie progresses, but the action & intrigue pick up nicely in the second hour, before dying down again and becoming very slow and tedious towards the end.
Interesting gadgets afforded to Bond by Q in this movie include a special motorbike and a fountain pen that shoots.
There are some scuba scenes in this movie too – one of them involves Bond needing to deal with a bunch of sharks.
Cast members
Sean Connery rolls back the years to deliver a strong performance as an aging James Bond.
Bond girls in this movie include Barbara Carrera as Fatima Blush, and Kim Basinger as Domino Vitali. They both do a fair job.
The main antagonist, Maximillian Largo, is played quite convincingly by Klaus Maria Brandauer.
Bernie Casey does a decent job as Felix Leiter from the American CIA.
We also get a minor part by Rowan Atkinson (Mr Bean) who entertainingly plays Bond’s assistant in one scene.
Rating
In summary, Never Say Never Again is a respectable movie, funded by Warner Bros, and almost of competes with the usual Bond standard, although I’d say it’s comfortably Connery’s worst Bond movie. It’s in dire need of editing to make it more concise, and some better cinematography because the angles are really lazy from time to time while the sound effects only prolong the boring bits. Because Connery’s getting so old here, he doesn’t have so much of his usual smooth & charming demeanour – although he’s still trying, it’s not so convincing any more – he looks more like a grandfather than a bachelor now. He’s still a great actor though. All things considered, I’d probably rate it So-So, slightly lower than Roger Moore’s worst Bond movie which was probably For Your Eyes Only (1981) which I rated Lower-OK.
Fun fact
Never Say Never Again also goes down in history as being the movie where Steven Seagal was hired to teach Sean Connery some Aikido, and during the course of training, Seagal broke Connery’s wrist! This may have set the filming of this movie back a bit, and it may have also set Seagal’s career back a bit too – he never made his own movie debut until Above The Law (1988). As with most broken joint injuries, Connery’s wrist never fully healed. In fact, he never actually knew his wrist was broken until over a decade later, when he discovered it was still broken in 1995, according to an interview on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in 1996.
Diamonds Are Forever is Sean Connery’s last outing as James Bond, before the Roger Moore era began. Connery did come back one time, to make Never Say Never Again, 12 years later, independently of Eon Productions, but Diamonds Are Forever still marks the end of the main Connery-as-Bond era.
One of the most memorable scenes from this movie is when Bond steals a space buggy to make his escape through rocky desert terrain. This is followed by a charismatic car chase by cops which probably inspired similar scenes in the Roger Moore era – especially those in Live And Let Die (1973) which was Roger Moore’s first outing as James Bond and was the movie that immediately followed Diamonds Are Forever, so they probably took the interesting car chase from this movie and doubled down on the concept to make some epic chases in the next movie. It’s not so much the car chase itself that’s entertaining – it’s more the reaction of the cops in how they find Bond’s speeding & stunt-driving so cheeky & humiliating.
Another highly memorable scene from this movie, is when James kicks Blofeld’s cat, to see which of the two lookalikes the cat jumps to, so James knows which one to kill.
Another highly memorable scene from this movie, is when James enters a penthouse to find a kidnapped man and is confronted by two cute ladies named Bambi & Thumper who turn out to be highly acrobatic warrior women that proceed to beat him up until he eventually gets the better of them in the pool.
The main woman in this movie, Tiffany Case, is played fairly well by Jill St John. The main antagonist (Blofeld) is played this time quite well by Charles Gray. And of course Sean Connery does very well as always.
This movie is a bit one dimensional and void of creativity & excitement comparted to Goldfinger for example, but it’s not far from the usual standard expected from a Bond movie in the Connery era. I rate it an OK movie.
You Only Live Twice is the fifth Bond film by Eon Productions and the fifth outing of Sean Connery as James Bond. He does an excellent job as usual.
This time, the movie is set mostly in Japan. We see sumo wrestlers (including one of Bond’s early adversaries – bringing back vibes of Oddjob from Goldfinger) as well as ninjas (in white gis doing mostly other Japanese martial arts – obviously expecting a naïve audience) plus plenty of beautiful Japanese women – especially the main woman in this movie – James’s initial liaison in Japan, called Aki, played quite well by Akiko Wakabayashi. Akiko seems bright and beautiful, in contrast to James’s cover wife towards in the end of the movie – an agent named Kissy Suzuki, played adequately by Mie Hama. She’s pretty but not stunning, and has a typical bimbo gaze & demeanour.
Aki’s boss (Tiger Tanaka) is played quite well by Tetsurô Tanba.
The main enemy in Japan (Mr Osato) is played well by Teru Shimada, although his company is just a front – he works for Spectre (the main enemy in every Bond movie by Eon up to this point).
Spectre’s boss – their ‘Number 1’ agent – never reveals his face until the end of this movie. Until this point we’d only ever seen his hand stroking a fluffy white cat as he sits in his chair barking orders – this time we learn his name is Ernst Stavro Blofeld and he’s played adequately by Donald Pleasence. He’s a bit of a Dr Evil type character.
Karin Dor also plays a significant role in this movie, as Helga Brandt – a female Spectre agent who Bond thought he seduced, but failed. She later gets killed by Blofeld – she’s dropped in a pond of piranhas, for unwittingly allowing Bond to escape.
This movie is responsible for one of the most iconic & memorable sets in Bond history – the lair built within a volcano, with a sliding roof that, when closed, makes it look like the volcano is full of water to anyone looking down from above. The freeing of prisoners and taking over of that volcano base probably inspired similar antics in The Spy Who Loved Me starring Roger Moore 10 years later – the similarity here may also have something to do with the fact that both movies were directed by Lewis Gilbert – they were his first two of three Bond movies he directed.
Overall I rate this movie as OK – about the same as every other Bond movie so far in the series up to this point, with the exception of Goldfinger which was probably slightly better.
Fun fact 1
My favourite movie of all time is Bloodsport, inspired by the alleged real-life story of Frank Dux who has been widely exposed as a pretender these days. When asked who trained him, he said ‘Tiger Tanaka’, and this worked his way into the movie where Van Damme’s character Frank Dux is trained by a Mr Tanaka. I guess he got the idea from You Only Live Twice and didn’t expect Bloodsport to become the massive cult classic that it became, which has had both positive and negative effects on his reputation due to this controversy.
Fun fact 2
After this movie, Sean Connery asked for a significant pay rise, but Eon Productions refused. So the next Bond movie – On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) – starred George Lazenby instead. It was a commercial success, but was still considered a flop in comparison to You Only Live Twice. Lazenby also refused to do a second movie, due to lack of gadgets in his first one. He’d also never acted in anything before this movie. And he was told by the producers not to turn up to the movie premiere unless he shaved his beard and cut his long hair, but he turned up anyway, without shaving or cutting anything. I have to respect him for that, even if he makes a weak James Bond.
So Eon eventually agreed to Connery’s terms for one more outing – Diamonds Are Forever (1971) – marking the 6th & final outing of Connery as Bond on an Eon Productions film, before eventually finding a suitable replacement in Roger Moore, whose era began with Live And Let Die (1973). Roger Moore made 7 consecutive Bond movies, which took us through to the mid 80s and was followed by a couple starring Timothy Dalton which took us through to the 90s. But Connery made one more attempt at a Bond movie, outside of Eon Productions, before the Roger Moore era had ended – Connery was commissioned to star in Never Say Never Again (1983) in the second of the only two Bond movies ever produced outside of Eon Productions. It featured Kim Basinger as well as Rowan Atkinson (Mr Bean) and a bunch of other strong but lesser known actors, and was picked up for distribution by Warner Bros, so it’s a very serious movie still.
Thunderball is the 4th movie in the James Bond saga and the fourth time Sean Connery plays the leading role – he does a good job as usual.
This movie gets off to an interesting start, with a cross-dressing agent trying to trick James Bond, who kills him and takes time to throw some flower over his body before running away and escaping from the rooftop via jetpack to his bag-of-tricks car. We then begin to hear the Thunderball theme tune by Tom Jones, all within the first 5 minutes.
It’s good to see Desmond Llewelyn back as Q, around the 1 hour mark.
This movie is a bit slower, more monotonous and more one-dimensional and yet still messier than Goldfinger, but not devastatingly so.
The main antagonist in this movie is Emilio Largo (Spectre’s “Number 2” agent) played fairly well by Adolfo Celi although he’s probably a bit podgy and effeminate for such an active top agent in such a physically demanding role.
There are several women in this movie but none get significant enough screen time or deliver a significant enough performance to be particularly worth mentioning here, although it’s good to see the return of Martine Beswick after the strong impression she made in her minor role (in the gypsy girls’ cat-fight) in From Russia With Love – two Bond movies ago.
After Dr No, and From Russia With Love, Goldfinger is the third movie in the James Bond saga. It stars Sean Connery, as did the two movies prior – he performs outstandingly as usual. And according to mainstream review sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, Goldfinger is the best Bond movie of all time, although I wouldn’t read too much into that as they both also rate a couple of Daniel Craig’s movies as being superior to anything by Roger Moore or Timothy Dalton which of course is absolute nonsense.
Goldfinger is an interesting one though. It takes Q branch to another level, with the return of Desmond Llewelyn playing Q – we met him in the previous movie, From Russia With Love, and he reprises his role in almost every Bond movie until his death in 1999. He gets some good screen time this time round, in Goldfinger, as he introduces us to a well kitted-out Bond car, with dynamic weaponary, a bulletproof rear shield and a passenger ejector seat. The knightrider/batmobile style Bond car is a nice concept that returns regularly in subsequent movies.
Goldfinger also introduces us to one of the most iconic tough-guy villains in the whole saga, called Oddjob, played excellently by Harold Sakata (real name Toshiyuki Sakata, wrestling alias Tosh Togo). He could be the second most memorable baddie after Jaws.
To its credit, this movie is packed with iconic James Bond movie scenes, from the card game with help through an earpiece from a lady with a telescope in the distance, to the golf game with switching balls, to the car tailing scene where James spies on Goldfinger from a high vantage point, while a woman with a gun spies on and shoots at James from an even higher vantage point. That’s all within the first 40 minutes, so it’s off to a more efficient start than From Russia With Love which had a bit of a messy first hour before the really good scenes came back to back in the second hour.
Further concepts coined by this movie within the first hour include Bond dressing up in all black, to stealthily infiltrate and observe Goldfinger’s base – a concept well copied by Bruce Lee in Enter The Dragon, 9 years later. As well as the very iconic scene of Bond being strapped to a table with a lazer beam pointing down, cutting through the metal table and slowly moving towards him – a classic concept that gets replicated by further Bond movies.
This movie also takes naughty female names to a new level, and introduces us to the concept of secret compartments within shoes – similar to the secret popout poison knife hidden with the shoe of the enemy in From Russia With Love, except this time it’s just a compartment for slotting things in to keep them hidden.
This movie also introduces us to electronically moving floors and tables, for elaborate displays.
This movie has a goods bit of humour too, such as the way Bond escapes from Goldfinger’s prison by tricking the guard into thinking he’s disappeared.
There’s also a couple of good examples of dropping tracking beacons, including in Goldfinger’s car, and in a random guy’s jacket pocket with a note.
We also get new music in this movie – instead of using the classic theme tune from Dr No, that was also remixed for use throughout From Russia With Love – this time we get a bunch of remixes of Shirley Bassey’s Goldfinger theme tune and it works quite well.
The main antagonist in this movie, Goldfinger, is played quite well by Gert Fröbe.
The main female roles are taken by Shirley Eaton (as Jill Masterson, who gets killed off in the first hour) and Honor Blackman (as P**** Galore, one of Goldfinger’s main assistants alongside Oddjob). They both do a fair job in their respective roles, although promoting Honor Blackman as a very attractive woman is a bit of a stretch.
The fight scene at the end between Bond and Oddjob is a bit weak – Oddjob seems to be able to take all kinds of punishment but when it’s his turn he mostly just does useless WWE style throws to make Bond stumble for a few steps while staying completely unhurt. I guess this is due to his ‘professional wrestling’ background – prior to that he was an Olympic weightlifter.
All in all, I rate this movie as Upper-OK. It may be slightly better than Dr No and From Russia With Love, but not by a significant enough margin to rate it on a much higher level, in my opinion, considering the current rating system we’re using here. When I think of the very best Bond movies of all time, I have to say this is not on that level, in terms of entertainment value for my taste – it’s still a bit old fashioned even if it’s got plenty of new cool features compared to the last two movies.
Subsequent Bond Movies
Next in the series of Bond movies, after Goldfinger (1964), is Thunderball (1965) which was promoted in the closing credits of Goldfinger just like Goldfinger was promoted in the closing credits of From Russia With Love. Then after Thunderball, Connery did You Only Live Twice (1967) although a few months prior to the release of that movie, there was Casino Royale (1967) starring David Niven, produced by a company other than Eon Productions (only two Bond movies were ever made outside of Eon Productions, of which this was one, so don’t expect it to be up to the same standard). Then we had On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) starring George Lazenby, but he was far from able to fill Connery’s shoes – he’d never done any acting before – he was also disinterested in starring in another Bond movie, so they got Connery back for Diamonds Are Forever (1971) before the Roger Moore era began. Connery eventually did one further Bond movie, a decade later, outside of Eon Productions, called Never Say Never Again (1983), but Roger Moore was still going strong and Timothy Dalton was great after him, and that took us through to the 90s by which time Connery was now an old man, looking like a grandpa – something that was already starting to show in Diamonds Are Forever, 12 years earlier – not very fitting for a hotshot active agent doing a lot of physical work while trying to look cool – something Connery was able to pull off much easier in his earlier movies from the 60s. So Connery eventually packed it in and focused on other movies of which he made many classics like First Knight alongside Richard Gere and Entrapment alongside Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Dr No is a classy movie, thoughtfully made. It has more slow scenes and less exciting action than the best James Bond movies of all time, but with Connery’s charisma and the overall quality of production it still manages to sustain an action fan’s attention if he hasn’t seen this movie in at least the last few years.
This was Sean Connery’s first outing as James Bond, and was the first movie ever made in the entire James Bond franchise. This movie was followed by From Russia With Love (1963), then Goldfinger (1964) which is the highest rated Bond movie of all time according to the big mainstream review sites, but they rate Daniel Craig above Roger Moore and Timothy Dalton so what do they know! They’re neither understand nor appreciate what made James Bond the monster brand that it is today.
Dr No warms up nicely after about half an hour in, as James Bond identifies suspicious island called Crab Quay worth investigating in connection with his colleague’s murder. None of the local fisherman dare go near it, but Bond surely will.
As classy as it is, it still lacks the level of fast action that you’d expect from a strong modern movie – in this way it’s kind of like Bruce Lee’s last movie, Enter The Dragon – I guess this was the peak of what was produced in the 60s & 70s but by today’s standards I have to rate it just OK – no more, no less. It’s definitely at least a level or two below the best Bond movies by Roger Moore (who played Bond from the 70s till the mid 80s) and Timothy Dalton (in the late 80s). Budget may have also been a factor, since Dr No was also the lowest budget Bond movie by a long way, even after adjusting for inflation. The next movie – From Russia With Love – had twice the budget, after adjusting for inflation, then it was increased by the same amount again for the third movie, Goldfinger, and it pretty much kept going up with each next movie in the saga. So all things considered, they did a great job here.
Sean Connery‘s acting was superb, as the star of the show – a slick-talking, slick-moving MI6 agent who pretty much never puts a foot wrong. Near the start of this movie, James’s boss ‘M’ explicitly referred to MI6, but this was later dubbed over so what you’re likely to hear him say now is MI7 even though his lips are clearly saying MI6 still.
Ursula Andress played the lead female in this movie – a shell collecting woman called Honey Ryder – although she only appeared in the second hour. She did a fair job of it.
Earlier on, Zena Marshall did a decent job a double agent working as an administration assistant at the local agency.
And prior to that, Eunice Gayson played Sylvia quite adequately – she was the first significant female James Bond bumped into – initially at the casino, then they had a brief liaison after that.
Joseph Wiseman played the main villain, Dr No himself. He did a fair job of it.
Having a messier a plot than the original Highlander, and having overly drawn out fight scenes that get especially boring for rewatchers, Highlander II deserves a lower rating than the original but is still just about watchable – generally worth watching sequentially after the original and before the third and fourth.
The best part of this movie is the re-appearance of Sean Connery in a strong supporting role albeit with a lot less screen time than Christopher Lambert, the star of the first four movies in this series. There are 5 movies in total, in the Highlander movie saga, and none of the sequels are as good as the original, but the 5th instalment deserves erasing from history altogether.
Michael Ironside does a fair job as the main antagonist in Highlander 2. Not a pleasant character – sick in every way – but respectable acting.
Virginia Madsen does a decent job as the main female in this movie. She makes a credible couple with Lambert.
The plot takes us to the future, to 2024 (considering the movie came out in 1991) where baddies have blanketed the sky with a “shield” (that looks like modern “con trails”, to use the less controversial name for them). This shield was originally installed to protect the earth from radiation of the sun, due to a hole in the ozone layer, but after it repaired itself, the bad guys left the shield in place for nefarious reasons without telling anyone that it’s no longer needed.
There are a few good scenes in this movie, but there’s a lot of slow & dull material here too. It’s mad how it had a budget of over $30 million – about twice that of the original, yet ended up in the state it did. The producers of Highlander II: The Quickening could hardly have done a worse job if they tried!
The Highlander (1986) starring Christopher Lambert has an interesting plot with some cool bits throughout the movie, including a strong appearance by Sean Connery. This just about makes up for the cheesy bad acting, which is so bad in places, it’s borderline satirical – not helped by the extremely cheesy music played throughout, by an 80s band called Queen.
Highlander is about a few ‘immortal’ men, who can not die, unless they are decapitated. Lambert’s character, Connor MacLeod (pronounced MacCloud) has lived for a few hundred years until the present day (1986, in New York), and this movie follows him during his first lifetime in the Highlands of Scotland, a few hundred years ago, as well as during his time in ‘present day’ New York. Plus there’s a short clip of him participating WW2.
The basic concept is, those few immortal men must meet and fight each other until there is only one left. MacLeod makes friends with some of them, including Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez (played fantastically by Sean Connery) who has lived for thousands of years, and teaches MacLeod about his powers and trains him how to fight; but there is one big and nasty man called The Kurgan (played adequately by Clancy Brown) who beheads all of Lambert’s friends for hundreds of years until finally it’s just the two of them left to decide the winner in present day New York City.
There’s no other strong or important performances to speak of in this movie, as far as I see. The various women in MacLeod’s life were all played satisfactorily by different actresses but none of them stand out to me as being especially noteworthy.
So all in all it’s not a terrible movie. It’s worth watching once in a blue moon when you’ve got nothing better to do. Christopher Lambert is his usual self – he does a generally decent job; and Sean Connery is his usual self – excellent in his role although he has less than half the screen time of Lambert here.
If you enjoyed this movie, don’t miss the many sequels, which continue with the same theme, and offer a similar level of stunts and acting.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) is a bad third movie in the series – it’s about equal to the second one (Temple Of Doom, 1984) and has a lot less of the weird occult stuff although there is a strong religious angle to this one.
This time, Harrison Ford (who plays Indiana Jones as well as usual) is joined by Sean Connery (who plays his father) for a good chunk of the movie. Both their performances seem a bit laboured, not as crystal clear as they are when they’re performing at their best, but they still both put in decent work here.
Considering it’s the third of 5 movies in the saga, they’ve done a good job in maintaining a fairly decent standard although the original is probably still the best movie of them all since Harrison Ford is a bit younger there and his age is clearly catching up with him now. This time the movie is set in the WW2 era and is largely based in Germany, while featuring plenty of military personnel with credible accents, mannerisms and uniforms, etc.
This is more of an evolving adventure movie rather than a martial arts movie per say, and is more of a team endeavour than a single action hero job compared to most action hero movies featured on this site, but there’s plenty of fast action scenes including fighting with fists, whips, guns, tanks, planes, etc as you would expect from any Indiana Jones movie.
As with the other Indiana Jones movies so far, there’s a lack of potent female input, although Alison Doody does a fair job as the lead female with minimal screen time. She’s plays Elsa Schneider who keeps jumping back & forth from supporting Indy and his father, to double crossing them, to supporting them again. She’s probably still the third main character in this movie. She’s not unattractive, she’s just a bit basic and isn’t given a substantial role either.
Other supporting cast members do a fairly good job as usual in this series. They include River Phoenix in his late teens, who plays a younger version of Indiana at the start of the movie – he died of an overdose just four years after this movie was released, at the age of only 23. John Rhys-Davies also performs well as Sallah, Indy’s accomplice in the desert.
Some of the best parts of this movie include when Indy bumps into Adolf himself – great comedy there; plus when Indy and his father get on a German zeppelin airship – another outstanding comedy moment there; and when Indy finally meets the immortal guardian of the Holy Grail – that was a cool moment too.
Another nice touch to this movie was its scene in the ancient city of Petra, in Jordan. This place, according to some people (such as Dan Gibson, who has an interesting YouTube channel) was the true home of the religious prophets Ibrahim (Abraham) and Muhammad, and is allegedly still the direction that all the world’s oldest masjid prayer walls point to today. Can anyone prove him wrong? He seems to welcome the challenge.