DVD review (region 1)
Directed by Irvin Kershner
Starring Sean Connery, Kim Basinger, Barbara Carrera, Klaus Maria Brandauer, Max von Sydow
Release date Out now

Former field agent James Bond (Connery) is called back into action to locate a missing warhead and eliminate some free radicals…

Sean Connery’s return to his signature role in a rival movie to Eon’s established series starts with a badly misjudged wail of a song which plays over a brief but effective action sequence. Once you’ve become used to a Bond film beginning in such a radically different way to the established formula, the movie kicks into high gear in a 007 adventure in which some (but not all) of the pieces are different from what had, at that point, become Eon’s immovable format.

Unusually, Bond’s age is acknowledged. He’s no longer the thirty-something action man of the 1960s, but a slightly slower, slightly heavier agent who has, at the film’s start, been recalled into active service. That’s not to say that he doesn’t get stuck into the action. Be it swinging through windows, speeding through Monte Carlo on a motorbike or – yes! - dancing a tango with his leading lady, 007 somehow manages to look utterly at ease with his diverse surroundings.

The dance sequence is a prime example of just why Connery is so compelling in the role. Any other Bond would have looked ridiculous. Imagine Roger Moore or even current golden boy Daniel Craig being so nimble on his feet and you have a scene that would challenge the audience not to laugh. Yet Connery manages to pull it off with an easy charm.

There are many set pieces in the movie that work beautifully. A fight in a gym that escalates through a health farm until Bond ends it with his own urine sample (again, if it were any other Bond this would have been taking the proverbial piss); a videogame that can shock the losing player to death; and an undersea game of cat and mouse with sharks playing Tom to Bond’s Jerry. These sequences are all shot with authority by Irvin Kershner, who surely got the job on account of his skilled work on another great film franchise in The Empire Strikes Back. The veteran director is very much suited to calling the shots on a Bond picture. It’s a thoughtfully made film with clearly edited action sequences (something of a rarity these days), even when the copious underwater battle scenes threaten to cause confusion.

Kershner’s great skill of keeping the characters dominant amid the chaos of an action narrative is effective, and he is much helped by an excellent script, started by Lorenzo Semple Jr. and completed with considerable polish by comedy writers Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, who shamelessly repeat a fantastic gag from their TV hit Porridge amongst many other scripted gems.

The comedy here is very different from the official series of movies at the time. Connery gets his share of one-liners, but there is less of the ‘whoops, there’s the swannee whistle’ stuff of the Moore films. Rowan Atkinson’s broadly comedic Nigel Small-Fawcett is about as far as the humour is allowed to go, and he’s a strangely endearing bumbling character who is never allowed to outstay his welcome and become irritating.

The MI6 supporting cast fit well into their brief roles. Edward Fox’s M is sharp and bureaucratic, with little warmth or time for Bond. Pamela Salem’s Moneypenny is a softer, more sisterly character, but it’s Alec McCowen’s Algy (the Quartermaster) who completely steals his scenes with 007. No longer the upper-class jobsworth, forever exasperated at Bond's lack of professional care, this version of Q is the working man who admires Bond’s glamorous lifestyle while moaning about funding cuts from his basement workshop. There’s no doubt that he is an authentic representation as to what that character would have been like in reality, and when Bond tells him that his assignment is taking him to the Bahamas, he says what the entire audience is thinking: “Lucky bloody you!”

Bond films are often defined by their villains. Klaus Maria Brandeur’s cold-hearted Largo lacks the eyepatch of Adolfo Celi’s overtly sinister take of the character in Thunderball. But he’s somehow even more unsettling as the charming but psychotic villain. It’s interesting to note that, as with the latest Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, he and other enemy operatives are rich business people, which is all the more sinister than the stereotypical scarred villains popular in Bonds of old. Even Blofeld has the look of a refined aristocrat.

Largo’s relationship with Kim Basinger’s Domino is chilling in the extreme as he passionately treats her as a possession, fully prepared to kill her if she ever betrays him. Basinger herself is fine in a somewhat bland and thankless role. Domino is a horribly passive character, not even reacting angrily when Bond sneaks into a massage parlour and gives her the full body rubdown without her knowing! She finds her feet (or perhaps flippers!) during the film's climax, but otherwise is given little to do.

The film truly belongs to Barbara Carrera as the deliciously fruity Fatima Blush. By turns camp, embittered, seductive and evil (sometimes within the space of a syllable) she is more than a match for Bond. Startlingly sexy and brutal, you can’t help but share Kershner’s bemusement that Carrera’s career (which is easier to type than say) never quite took off after such a showstopping role. Surprisingly, she is the first women to be directly killed by Bond on screen. Feeling threatened 007?

If you can overlook a menu system that uses the weird image of Bond’s ID card tucked into a lady’s bikini bottoms, the extras on the disc include some refreshingly honest documentaries. There’s also an audio commentary that, when Steven Jay Rubin manages to steer Irvin Kershner away from merely describing what is going on on-screen, is fairly insightful.

It would have been nice to have seen the copious extra footage allegedly shot for the movie (which is slated by the writers in one of the documentaries), but other than that minor gripe this is one disc of “gratuitous sex and violence” that you won’t want to miss. Jonathan Wilkins

VERDICT: 9/10
The great, forgotten Bond adventure.

Connery’s journey back to the role is charted in the excellent The Battle For Bond by Robert Sellers. Click here to read the review.