Octopussy (1983)
 Roger Moore looked pretty long in the snout in For Your Eyes Only,
the previous entry in the Bond series. Miraculously, he looks younger
than ever in this one (The 13th movie in the Bond series and the
penultimate appearance by Moore as 007).
It can't be clean living. It probably has more to do with taking it
easier than usual. In Octopussy the stunts provide punishing work
for Moore's usual doubles and stand-ins, all of whom look much more
obvious in the long shots than ever before.
This Bond flick provides enough escapist nonsense, but trying to
piece together the ridiculous plot threads is as pointless as Christmas
shopping on 26 December. As is usual with a Bond film, when it all
threatens to get dull, it drags in new sets, new countries, new perils,
new escapes, new gadgets, new guns and new girls. Especially new girls!
Octopussy herself is Maud Adams (the only woman ever to play a Bond
Girl twice - she was in 1974's The Man With The Golden Gun also)
who plays the queen of the jewel smugglers living on an island
surrounded by man-eating crocodiles and populated by man-eating females.
James gets mixed up with this lethal beauty while investigating the
murder of agent 009, who dies in Berlin in a clown costume, clutching a
priceless Faberge egg stolen from the Hermitage museum in Leningrad. It
takes the entire movie before the connection is explained, and even then
you won't understand it, so let's skip the plot mechanics and get to the
toys.
All that matters are the stunts, hardware, special effects, and
gimmicks, and Octopussy doesn't skimp in any of these areas. The
pre-title opening (which has nothing to do with anything else in the
film) places 007 in Cuba, dodging nuclear rockets and destroying a
missile base in a jet while the fuel tank is on empty.
The scene switches instantly to East Germany, to the Kremlin, to a
Sotheby's auction in London, to the Taj Mahal, to the Indian hideout of
exiled Afghan prince Louis Jourdan, who plots the end of the world in a
heavily guarded monsoon palace, to the final showdown in a circus tent
in Germany, where an atom bomb is set to explode and kill thousands of
innocent people and force NATO to withdraw its nuclear weapons from
Europe.
Did you get all that?
The fun is not in watching 007 save the world (because he always
does), but the uncanny ways in which he manages to elude his enemies,
his traps, and his would-be assassins. The wild situations and the
bizarre characters are plentiful.
There's a hair-raising chase through the crowded Kasbahs of India in
three-wheel mopeds, and in one scene Bond encounters cobras, tigers,
tarantulas, crocodiles, and blood-sucking leeches in the space of a few
minutes.
Scaling walls, swimming moats, and escaping knife throwers,
blowtorches, and machine gun bullets, 007 is indestructible, as he flees
in the usual obligatory assortment of helicopters, rocket ships, and
water-skiing airplanes.
The directors of James Bond flicks are nothing more than traffic
cops. In that capacity, John Glen was one of the best.
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