Released in the same year as
Octopussy,
Never Say Never Again
was a return to the Bond franchise for Sean Connery.
Released as a 'rival' Bond film by the now-defunct Orion Pictures,
the differences are obvious immediately in that there's no trademark
John Barry theme accompanied by a stroll from right-to-centre before
turning and firing, the film opens with the theme tune played over action
instead of having the action first followed by a glossy credit sequence
and there's a change in cast members for key roles.
Often seen as a remake of
Thunderball
because S.P.E.C.T.R.E. are at their worst again in making threats with
bombs, the use of characters with the same names - such as Largo (Klaus
Maria Brandauer), sent to do Blofeld's (Max Von Sydow) bidding,
plus Domino (Kim Basinger), the good Bond girl, with Barbara Carerra
as the bad alternative who takes Connery through another underwater diving
scene early on.
As it's not an official Bond product there's no other regular cast members,
so Q is affectionately known as "Algy" for Algernon (Alec McCowen),
M is played by Edward Fox, Miss Moneypenny by Pamela Salem and
Felix Leiter changes skin colour to become Bernie Casey. There's also
a small role for British comedian Rowan Atkinson, best known these
days for his role as
Mr Bean,
as another bumbling idiot, Bond's informant Nigel Small-Fawcett.
As for the film itself, it'll never be the best Bond film ever made but
keeps you entertained for the two hours, despite occasionally dragging.
The film is presented in anamorphic 2.35:1 widescreen which occasional
print scratches and flecks but on the whole it looks very watchable.
The average bitrate is 6.5Mb/s, briefly peaking over 9Mb/s.
The sound is in Dolby Pro Logic, or so my Sony STR-DB930 amplifier says, but
it really doesn't sound like that and there's certainly no sound FX that
stand out, with the first 30 minutes of the soundtrack even sounding muffled to
a degree.
In the extras dept. there's just an 80-second theatrical trailer in
anamorphic 2.35:1 widescreen.
The disc contains a mere 16 chapters and both dialogue and subtitles are
in English, the latter containing a hard of hearing option.
The main menu contains animation and music but nothing like to the
extravangance we've come to expect from the Bond collection.
FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS
OVERALL
The following is a list of all the Bond films now available in production order
with their dates of release, followed by the unofficial movies:
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
