Sean Connery vowed he would never play James Bond after Diamonds are Forever in 1971, but to quote the title of his 1983 Bond film: Never Say Never Again . Entertainment lawyer Jack Schwartzman noticed that Albert Broccoli, the producer who controlled the movie rights to almost all of Ian Fleming's Bond books, didn't own the rights to Thunderball . Kevin McClory, who won those rights from Fleming in a lawsuit, allowed Broccoli to make the movie Thunderball in 1965, but McClory was now free to let Schwartzman remake it. Schwartzman offered Connery an irresistibly huge cheque to return as Agent 007.
The media had predictable fun with Connery's age, but at 53 he was three years younger than Roger Moore, who was playing Bond in the "official" 1983 release ( Octopussy ) and would play him again in 1985's A View to a Kill . Compared with Harrison Ford, who recently returned in his mid-60s to play Indiana Jones, Connery was a spring chicken. At any rate, he was in great shape, which was more than could be said for the script, which was rewritten even as the film was being shot. It didn't help, as director Irvin Kershner grumbles on this week's great-looking DVD and Blu-ray of Never Say Never Again , that Thunderball is the "poorest book of the whole series." Or that Schwartzman had to spend weeks in a London courtroom opposing an injunction sought by Broccoli, who said the movie would trade on the reputation of his "official" Bond films. (Broccoli later bragged that Octopussy raked in $81-million (U.S.) worldwide, beating Never Say Never Again 's $51-million.)
Never Say Never Again has three weak elements. Michel Legrand's musical score is sappy. The title ballad plays during Bond's opening assault on a building, dissipating the tension. And the undersea climax works no better here than it did in Thunderball . The lighting in one cavern is so bright the filmmakers might just as well have hung a neon sign saying, "Look, it's only a set!"
But the flaws are minor next to the film's successes, most of them courtesy of the powerhouse cast. Klaus Maria Brandauer plays the chief villain, Maximilian Largo. He reports to Max von Sydow as Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Largo's unwilling girlfriend is Kim Basinger (Domino Petachi), who had been recommended to Schwartzman after his wife, actress Talia Shire, saw her on a TV show. Barbara Carrera plays Fatima Blush, Largo's henchwoman. Edward Fox plays Bond's boss, M, as the stuffiest prig on Earth. Rowan Atkinson has a few moments as a bumbling liaison officer. Alec McCowen adopts a Cockney accent as Q, the man who designs Bond's exploding pens, and moans about budget cuts that deprive him of spare parts. He is delighted to see Bond back in active service. "Now you're on this, I hope we're going to have some gratuitous sex and violence." Bond replies, "I'll do my best."
In Marc Forster's Quantum of Solace (2008), Daniel Craig's second outing as Bond after Casino Royale , there is no such winking. This time it's personal. Bond is out to bring down the shadowy forces who killed his girlfriend in the previous film; she betrayed him, but died to save him. The film borrows its playbook from The Bourne Identity (2002), with its driven hero, bone-crunching chases and a pace that makes no concessions to inattentive viewers. Mathieu Amalric, as the villainous Dominic Greene, affects the same insouciant, superficially friendly but deeply vengeful manner as Brandauer in Never Say Never Again ; both, in turn, are reminiscent of the nose-nipping bad guy played by Roman Polanski in Chinatown .
In the bonus features, Craig says the stunts in the first film "seemed a walk in the park compared to this one." Anyone in doubt should listen to Dick (Skip) Evans, who had to operate a 60-year-old DC3 in an aerial battle with a jet fighter. "Sometimes," he says, "the only thing between the bottom of the airplane and the ground is just the top of the cactus."
One image of a woman who has been smothered in oil and draped on a bed suggests a homage to the gold-painted victim on the bed in 1964's Goldfinger . That film, one of the best Bond outings, has been released this week on Blu-ray along with The World Is Not Enough and Moonraker , which is definitely not one of the best.
Coincidentally, Craig Ferguson, performing standup comedy in Boston on the DVD Craig Ferguson: A Wee Bit o' Revolution (2009), devotes part of his routine to Bond - probably because the Scottish actor and late-night talk-show host loves imitating Connery's brogue (yes is yesh, some is shome). James Bond should be hairy, Ferguson says. Connery was hairy. Daniel Craig is not. "That new James Bond, I don't like him at all. He's been waxed. There's not a hair on him. When he does that scene [in Casino Royale ]- he walks out of the water - he's like a gay dolphin." The rest of Ferguson's routine is along the lines of his amusing talk-show monologues, with a bare minimum of unbleeped expletives. But he spends too much time seriously declaring that, having just become a U.S. citizen, he feels more American than the Americans.
Also out: In the Electric Mist (2009), director Bertrand Tavernier's adaptation of the James Lee Burke thriller In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead . Tommy Lee Jones plays detective Dave Robicheaux, up against New Orleans mobster Julie (Baby Feet) Balboni (John Goodman).
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If you missed the Oscar-winning movie of a Mumbai lad (Dev Patel) who creates a stir on an Indian quiz show, Slumdog Millionaire (2008) is slated for a DVD release next Tuesday. Bonus features include a running commentary by Patel and director Danny Boyle, but let's skip to the important bit: Yes, there's a music video of A.R. Rahman's catchy Oscar-winning song Jai Ho , accompanied by clips from various parts of the film. The Bollywood fantasy dance to Jai Ho was designed to be the final scene of the movie, but test audiences felt it betrayed the film's realistic tone, so it was removed from the story and plays under the closing titles. W.C.
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The animated film Bolt (2008) may set you to thinking about other movies. A dog star (John Travolta) who doesn't know he's on film? The Truman Show . He forces a cat to accompany him by tying her to him with a leash? Madeleine Carroll and Robert Donat in The 39 Steps . Animators blanched when told of the leash, because it's tricky to capture. "If you're making a computer-animated movie," says co-director Chris Williams, "don't tie two characters together. It'll only break your heart." W.C.