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Has James Bond finally met his match with Octopussy, a mysterious
and beautiful woman who is involved in a plot to destroy East/West
relations...?
Nah,
of course he hasn't, though he is really beginning to show
his age. Roger Moore is, by this point in his career, snogging
woman young enough to be his granddaughters, and if you listen
carefully, you can almost hear his joints creaking throughout
the film. But it's still fun to see how he manages to save
the world yet again.
Octopussy
has Moore quite literally clowning around in a frivolous roller
coaster of a movie. A curious aspect of this film - and also
its predecessor, For Your Eyes Only - is that while
certain scenes strive to ensure that the story is taken more
seriously than usual, other aspects just seem to get sillier.
On one hand we have the tense countdown as Bond struggles
desperately to reach a bomb in time to deactivate it, while
on the other we have 007 swinging through the trees, yodelling
like Tarzan, and instructing a tiger, Barbara Woodhouse style,
to "sit". For all its faults, though, this is a much livelier
affair than For Your Eyes Only, and the action is helped
along no end by one of John Barry's best soundtracks.
The
screenplay, by George MacDonald Fraser, Richard Maibaum and
Michael G. Wilson, draws inspiration from the Ian Fleming
short stories Property of a Lady and (surprise, surprise)
Octopussy. The former is faithfully adapted into the
riveting auction scene, while events in the latter are referred
to in the past tense, making the movie Octopussy a
sort of sequel to the prose version.
Louis Jordan is not tremendously memorable as the primary
villain, Kamal Khan. Stephen Berkoff is far more menacing
as the seriously deranged warmonger, General Orlov. The movie
also benefits from a larger-than-usual role for the eccentric
gadget-master Q (Desmond Llewelyn).
If, like many fans, you already own this movie on VHS, what
makes it worth purchasing on DVD is the additional material.
A commentary by director John Glen, a music video, a feature
focusing on set designer Peter Lamont, and a "making of" documentary
are just some of the extras included on the disc. The documentary
reveals such details as the screen test that James Brolin
performed when the production team thought they might need
a new 007, and the action sequence that went seriously wrong
for stuntman B.J. Worth.
Octopussy
is not the best Bond film ever made, but it certainly beats
Moonraker.
Richard
McGinlay and Darren Rea
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