Never Say Never Again Dvd Photo Gallery Extra Never Say Never Again Arab Market

MGM // PG // March 24, 2009

List Price: $34.98 [Buy now and save at Amazon]

Even if in 1983 you were aware that the latest James Bail movie, Never Say Never Over again, wasn't office of the "official" Eon Productions series - and so starring Roger Moore - watching information technology was still a strange experience, and in some respects well-nigh unavoidably disappointing. On i hand, the motion picture marked the return of Sean Connery to his star-making function later on a dozen-year absence (it seemed much longer back and so), and he slips back into that graphic symbol effortlessly; he's a joy to sentinel. The film is good in a lot of other ways, too, only the absence of then many elements moviegoers had come up to expect from a 007 movie - the gun barrel opening, "The James Bond Theme," appearances by Desmond Llewellyn and Lois Maxwell equally "Q" and Miss Moneypenny - fabricated for a decidedly off-kilter viewing feel. In the stop, it'southward still an above-boilerplate Bond movie, ameliorate certainly as a swan song for the irreplaceable Sean Connery than his previous Bail, Diamonds Are Forever (1971), had been. But Never Say Never Once more has its share of bug, including two big ones the film never quite overcomes.

Unlike the no-frills DVD release from October 2000 - when amidst all those special edition Bond titles, this was dumped onto the market similar a double-O Cinderella - this MGM/Fox release has a number of fascinating extras, including what may be the most negative backside-the-scenes featurette ever. The extras recoup somewhat for the disappointing audio; visually, all the same, the movie looks good most of the time.

The Thai (?) poster visually is a lot more than interesting than the bland U.S. ane-sheets. Note also the Chinese (not Japanese) poster below.

At its cadre, Never Say Never Again is a remake of Thunderball (1965), or more specifically, a new adaptation of the 1961 novel, which unlike Ian Fleming'south other books was based on an unproduced screenplay written in the late-1950s. What was intended equally the outset James Bond movie didn't happen, and when Fleming adapted the material into the novel, co-screenwriter/co-producer Kevin McClory sued and in an out-of-court settlement was awarded the story's moving picture rights. In 1964-65, McClory co-produced the first film version, also starring Sean Connery, with Eon Productions' Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli and Harry Saltzman - with the understanding McClory could not make another Thunderball flick for at least 12 years, i.east., 1976. At the fourth dimension, few would have imagined that the series would still exist going strong.

But information technology was, and past this time Connery, having acrimoniously parted manner with Eon, teamed upwards with McClory to remake Thunderball in a proposed film originally entitled Warhead. Eon sued and the project stalled, though supposedly a number of elements from Warhead's treatments suspiciously turned up in Eon's The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), which originally was to have featured curvation-nemesis Blofeld and his SPECTRE organization.

It wasn't until Warner Bros. and producer Jack Schwartzman, husband of actress Talia Shire, became involved that the project was revived. According to that gloomy featurette, there was a constant struggle among the writers, producers, and Connery about what tone the fabric should take. While the screenplay is credited to Lorenzo Semple, Jr. (the Batman Goggle box show, Papillon, King Kong), much of it was rewritten past an uncredited Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais (The Banking company Job).

Both the 1965 Thunderball and the 1983 Never Say Never Once more follow the main points of Ian Fleming's novel/adaptation fairly closely: SPECTRE, headed by Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Max von Sydow), steals 2 nuclear warheads, threatening to explode them unless the nations of the earth pay an enormous ransom: each state is to pay an corporeality equal to 25% of their annual oil purchases. (Hey - that could run into coin!) The operation, dubbed "The Tears of Allah," is being supervised by SPECTRE operative Maximilian Largo (Klaus Maria Brandauer) who lives aboard a colossal yacht, the Flying Saucer, with his girlfriend, Domino Petachi (Kim Basinger).

Meanwhile, James Bond (Connery) is sent by MI6'due south obnoxious new "M" (Edward Flim-flam) to a health clinic where, coincidentally, he runs into two of "The Tears of Allah'south" major players: SPECTRE agent Fatima Blush (Barbara Carrera) and Domino's U.S. Air Strength officer brother, Jack (Gavan O'Herlihy, son of veteran actor Dan O'Herlihy simply a dead ringer for American player William Atherton). A heroin addict, Jack is being blackmailed by SPECTRE into accessing the U.Due south. President's personal launch codes.

Amidst a lot of good stuff, Never Say Never Again has two big problems working against its success. The outset is that it has no choice only to exist a remake of Thunderball and that and then much of the writing, indeed all of the major artistic decisions, were subject to the approval of lawyers and the insurance company covering the production against a lawsuit from Eon. That'due south not exactly the ideal way to write a script, and the result is that Never Say Never Over again becomes uninteresting when, almost mechanically, it hits Thunderball's major plot points. Conversely, the viewer can sense the filmmakers' enthusiasm when new cloth is presented, particularly when it veers off in directions the Eon films up to that point had never attempted.

A related problem is that Never Say Never Once more can't avoid being compared to the 1965 pic. Thunderball was released at the pinnacle of Bond-mania, when the '60s-style spy film was still a new experience full of surprises. It'southward a large-scale, brassy film, while Never Say Never Again has a postmodern, jaded sensibility nearly the spy game (symbolized past the new "M"). One thing that's surprising about Never Say Never Once more is its comparatively scaled-back look. Thunderball cost nigh $v.6 one thousand thousand to brand and Never Say Never Again cost more than than half dozen times that, about $36 million. Yeah, inflation must be factored into this equation, but even so Thunderball looks like an epic and Never Say Never Over again cuts a lot of corners and seems undernourished much of the time. In Thunderball, for instance, in that location'south a large-scale theft of an Avro Vulcan jet bomber, which (as in the volume) spectacularly crash lands in the bounding main where, subsequently it gently sinks to the sandy bottom, its nuclear bombs are stolen. In Never Say Never Again there's none of this; Jack Petachi sets the theft into motion via a remote estimator in a modest command room; the next missile test control room has all of five or half-dozen guys at Irwin Allen-esque reckoner screens. (Actually, the bones plot of Never Say Never Once more is besides virtually identical to the 1978 Superman, but that's another story.)

The other major problem with Never Say Never Once more is its fearfully bad score, written past eclectic Frenchman Michel Legrand. It's hard to say which is worse: the many scenes with no music at all, crying out, pleading for underscoring, or scenes really accompanied by Legrand'south score, which almost e'er is either totally inapt or simply patently awful. It's easy to run across why he was selected: Legrand had written swell moving picture scores in the by (notably for Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort), added a continental flavor in keeping with its Prissy locations, and his jazz/arranger background was not unlike contemporary John Barry, whose involvement with 10 of the previous 13 Bail movies defined Eon'south series every bit much every bit anyone. (Why didn't they decline Legrand's score and get Barry himself? It seems unlikely that he would have been contractually tied to Eon's serial exclusively.) Note: Several readers, including Wei Jing and Gary Teetzel, have pointed out that Barry was indeed approached but declined, out of loyalty to Cubby Broccoli and his team. Thanks for pointing this out; it explains a lot!

Unfortunately, the results merely add to the cheap feel of the production. This is mayhap most obvious in the terrible opening titles/title sequence, with Bond single-handedly assaulting an armed camp in a Central American jungle, apparently to rescue a kidnapped woman. It's not a bad sequence per se, though information technology gives Connery a terrible archway subsequently his 12-year absence; a more dramatic one could take had theater audiences auspicious; instead, hither he simply kind of shows upwards, a figure coming into view, slinking out of the jungle foliage. And, "in one of the worst decisions in postproduction history," as writer Cloudless accurately describes it, "they put a [love] song over it." Legrand'due south music and the song's lyrics are totally at odds with what's onscreen: "You've got all the moves / Ah, but baby I've got them, too / No matter your attitude or your mood / I'll come through," etc. Back in 1983 when it was new, you could sense the theater audience's initial excitement of a sudden tempered with thwarting.

On the other paw, much of the residue of the film is very, very good. At the center, unsurprisingly, is Sean Connery. It's hard to believe simply dorsum then, when he was 53 years old, people wondered if he wasn't as well sometime to be playing the character. Quite the contrary of Roger Moore, Connery probably could have gotten away playing Bond into his early seventies. This reviewer and probably Connery himself would have preferred a Bond sans the obvious toupee Connery wears in the film, but otherwise he's an older but appreciably wiser 007. Connery's performance benefits from Never Say Never Again's superior dialogue. It's witty without resorting to the groan-inducing bad puns of the Roger Moore Bonds. Indeed, many of the motion-picture show'due south best scenes requite Connery memorable dialogue, specially in his climatic confrontation with Fatima Blush, 1 of the all-time-e'er Bond villainesses.

Carrera is terrific, her functioning sadly somewhat overshadowed past Brandauer'due south more psychological, unusual but overrated portrayal. But Carrera expands upon Luciana Paluzzi's counterpart, Fiona Volpe in Thunderball, as a forcefulness of nature, a dominatrix-like sexual predator that moves like she's dancing a perpetual samba. (More than the shame Legrand's score utterly fails to accentuate this.) Brandauer's Largo is much less hitting than Adolfo Celi's center patch-wearing super-villain, but Brandauer'southward psychological approach to the character, playing upwardly the possessive, abusive lover, a smiling psychopath with eccentric, understated and/or ironic facial expressions that precede his fierce outbursts, won only praise - fifty-fifty if the audience only gets to see the character'due south furnishings, without any glimpse into the causes.

Though Basinger's Georgia accent is a fleck jarring (she'southward from the same metropolis as Oliver Hardy!), she's undeniably gorgeous in this, and expresses the grapheme'south fragility well. Von Sydow, the best-cast of all the movie Blofelds, has too little screentime, every bit does Bernie Casey, 1 of the best Felix Leiters (Bond's CIA counterpart), and the first African-American one. (The inventive casting and lack of racial stereotypes - well, at least until you lot go to the Arabs - is refreshing. SPECTRE, for case, is now an equal opportunity employer; its uppermost ranks include men and women of various races.) Supremely talented comedian Rowan Atkinson appears in a few scenes equally a bumbling agent, simply his appearances are unfunny and rather embarrassing.

Beyond Connery'south performance and the good casting and performances of the other major roles, several activeness set pieces stand out, though they're few and far between. At the health clinic there'southward an excellent, very long fight sequence between Bond and a beefy SPECTRE agent (Pat Roach). It's violent and both staged and cutting much like the Peter Chase-edited fight scenes in the early Bonds, and it concludes on a very humorous note. Late in the movie there's a terrific, sexually-charged chase between Fatima, in a car, while Bail pursues her on a modified motorcycle, a variation of the famous Aston Matin. (Bond'south beloved Bentley, from the Ian Fleming novels, makes a cameo advent.)

Video & Audio

　 Filmed in 2.35:1 Panavision with original prints past Technicolor, Never Say Never Again looks good but non outstanding. Directly cuts have a pleasing grain and level of detail that notably improves upon the xvi:ix DVD release, but opticals and the title elements are soft and murky. The 1080p transfer is on a 50GB dual-layer disc like the other Bond releases.

The 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio and 3.0 Dolby Surround (per the original release) are a big thwarting. You know something's incorrect when the Orion logo music (replacing the original Warner Bros. logo) is five times more powerful than the main title theme. Both tracks lack oomph and there'due south very niggling sense of directional dialogue and sound effects, and even the score seems muddier than my old 45rpm of Lani Hall's theme song. French and Castilian mono tracks are too included, along with subtitle options in Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Korean, and Thai. The disc is closed-captioned.

Extra Features

The highlight of the amusing, impressively frank supplements (all sixteen:9 SD) is The Big Chance, a 16-minute behind-the-scenes overview featuring director Irvin "Kersh" Kershner, Lorenzo Semple, Jr., Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, Talia Shire Schwatzman, John Schwartzman (son of Jack and Talia), Barbara Carrera, and Bond series historian Steven Jay Rubin. Yous get the feeling this was not a happy production, and the interviewees make no basic about the innumerable problems and the picture'due south many shortcomings. Kersh complains a lot about the script. Sean Is Back (8 minutes) suggests Connery was entirely professional person but unenthused, though everyone speaks highly of him. Kersh complains about Klaus Maria Brandauer. The Girls of 'Never Say Never Again' (10 minutes) features more of Carrera, Valerie Leon (the "Lady in Bahamas" also appears in The Spy Who Loved Me) and Pamela Salem ("Miss Moneypenny"). Kersh complains about Kim Basinger, who otherwise does not appear. Fast Carrier Productions produced the featurettes.

Kersh gets to complain some more on the sound commentary track with Steven Jay Rubin. It's less amusingly frank just does an okay chore unraveling the convoluted, troubled production; laserdisc fans will remember Rubin for his long-lost but highly memorable Benchmark tracks he recorded for Dr. No, From Russia with Love, and Goldfinger. Unfortunately, Kersh seems to retrieve he's been brought in to tape descriptive sound for the visually-impaired; he's constantly describing what'due south happening onscreen, and afterwards a while it'll have yous climbing the walls.

Also included is a photograph gallery in loftier-def and a trailer which is not. In fact it'due south 4:3 panned-and-scanned (!), probably considering MGM/Fob couldn't get trailer material out of Warner Bros.

Parting Thoughts

Despite several major complaints, Never Say Never Again ranks above average in the James Bond canon. Connery'due south presence alone carries a lot of weight; for many he remains the one, the only true James Bail of the movies. Just it's a fine motion-picture show in other means, and with the exception of the below-par sound the Blu-ray disc offers a fine presentation with decent actress features. For Bail fans, this is Highly Recommended.

Film historian Stuart Galbraith 4'south latest book, The Toho Studios Story, is on sale at present.

poundsdowerent1968.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/36794/never-say-never-again/

Share this post