Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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11 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Strictly by the numbers Bond caper, 31 Oct 2007
Of course, all the Bond movies are entertaining on some level or other. However, it becomes difficult when a film is as...well, routine as this one, to pick a number from one to five summarising the effectiveness of the movie. As a work of substance it is in the bottom few Bond movies. However, does it fulfil its remit to entertain..? Yes, it does - even if the chuckles are sometimes for the wrong reasons.
So just how by-the-numbers is it? John Glen, veteran of the Bond movies is back, an effective if uninspiring director. John Barry delivers an adequate - but no more - score for the movie in conventional style.
How about the number 6? Moore is back for the 6th time, and while he looks good for his age, he is still in his mid 50's by this point, and definitely looking a little too old for the role. Especially when shown in counterpoint to hordes - and I mean hordes - of scantily clad athletic young women.
The number 2? The number of times the leading lady has starred in a Bond movie, Maud Adams having starred with Moore in The Man With The Golden Gun. It surely says something about the lack of originality when they have to recycle their leading ladies, even if they do have chemistry with the leading man.
The number zero - the amount of truly memorable scenes in the entire movie.
1? Is the number of rival Bond films that year - the looming threat of Sean Connery in Never Say Never Again seems to have prompted the producers to go back to a more jokey style playing to Moore's strengths, after the significantly superior and more serious For Your Eyes Only.
It's not all bad though - Q finally gets a slightly larger role, Louis Jordan is a suitably slimy and cultured bad guy, there is a decent car chase as Bond races to the circus in Berlin (the only reasonably tense moment in the movie). However, this is offset by characterisation that is stereotyped and two dimensional even by Bond standards, and Steven Berkoff as the rogue Russian general is so hammy you expect someone to light up a barbeque.
All in all, this being the 13th Bond movie may well be the most pointed clue of all as to what to expect. Definitely unlucky for some.
Extras are probably the most generous in the Ultimate Edition series so far - as well as an immaculate print and dts sound, the Special Edition features are all there - but also some fascinating screen test footage with James Brolin. He was selected to be Bond up until Moore agreed to return, and it is fascinating / intriguing / scary (delete as appropriate) to see how he performed in the high quality screen tests. He also appears in interview to introduce the screen tests. Other items include a tribute to the air stunt crew, and outtakes from some of the stunts, behind the scenes Super-8 footage as well as a rather dull period featurette on Bond in India.
Great package of extras, for one of the most mediocre Bond outings.
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7 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
My favourite Bond film., 26 Nov 2006
Roger Moore's sixth Bond outing is fantastic. The plotline is a tangiable story because it can actually happen. The friction between the Russian generals is superbly played and General Orlov is an impressive villian. But, the main villian of this film is Kamal Khan. He is one of my all time favourite villians, along with Scaramanga and Auric Goldfinger. Khan is a brilliant character because he is played with a degree of menace by Louis Jordan and has some liknesses to 007's character. The Bond girl, Octopussy, is played with considerable charm by Maud Adams (who played Andrea Anders in The Man with the Golden Gun) and is an mysterious character as the audience do not know her real name.
Octopussy is one of my favourite Bond films because of the locations. India, Germany and of course Britain are visited. The Indian streets look beautiful in the taxi chase and Kamal Khan's Monsoon Palace continue the beautiness. An extended apperance of Q is always welcome and Roger Moore's take of James Bond in this film is excellent.
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5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
James Bond Carries On Up the Khyber, 12 Dec 2007
Facing up against a rival Bond project for the first time since You Only Live Twice - and one with Connery attached to boot - the obvious expectation was that once again the Broccoli camp would pull out all the stops and come up with one of the best Bond films yet. Instead, this is the one where they threw in the towel and began copying others rather than leading the pack.
For Your Eyes Only had gone head-to-head with Raiders of the Lost Ark and come off the worse. As a result, Octopussy shamelessly copies its market chase and truck sequences to remarkably little interest or excitement. Even the location seems second-hand - in 1982-3 you couldn't move for film crews in India, what with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, The Far Pavilions, The Jewel in the Crown, Gandhi and Heat and Dust all reviving the Raj. Only one sequence, with a deadly yo-yo (usually heavily cut in the TV prints), works - and then only briefly.
Worse still, this one drags its feet more than any other entry in the series, with very long waits between very lacklustre setpieces. The plot is similarly uninvolving. With a similar hook to The Fourth Protocol, but nowhere near as good (and The Fourth Protocol isn't exactly a masterpiece), this is so alarmist it's a wonder Broccoli didn't hand over the producing reins to Euan Lloyd. Maud Adams makes a poor job of the title role, but Steven Berkoff is completely off the scale as the renegade Russian villain. With the diction of a demented Dalek and the subtlety of a Spitting Image puppet, it's quite an achievement to sit through any of his scenes without squirming in embarrassment.
The cheapest looking Bond film, it is doubtful that anyone would have gone to see such a geriatric action movie without the Bond name attached. The silly jokes are pretty pathetic - a snake charmer playing the Bond theme, a series of terrible tennis jokes built around Vijay Amritraj's appearance as Bond's ill-fated sidekick (British actor's union Equity actually tried to call a strike over his casting) - and would have been rejected from the very worst Carry On film. There's even some lovable xenophobia thrown in for good measure ("That'll keep you in curry for a few weeks.")
That it could have been worse is borne out by one of the DVD's most interesting new extras - a series of screen tests with James Brolin as Bond. He gives it a good try, but he's trying to hard as if clearly aware that he's terrible casting. It's a moot point as to whether Brolin would have got the part had Connery's return to Bondage persuaded the producers to stick with the tried-and-trusted Roger Moore, but it would have been more of an impersonation than a performance if he had.
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