Never Say Never Again (1983)

We’ve been doing this review series for fourteen months now, and I always tease the next installment by saying that “James Bond will return,” but it’s been a bit of a downward spiral these past few months as we hit the doldrums of the Roger Moore era (or should we say reign of error?).  Finally, with 1983’s Never Say Never Again, we can officially say:  James Bond is back, baby.  And with Sean Connery back at the helm, it’s almost enough to overlook the film’s faults.

Essentially a remake of Thunderball, Never Say Never Again finds Connery as an aging 007 pulled out of therapeutic retirement to counter SPECTRE’s latest plot for world domination.  While investigating Domino Petachi (Kim Basinger), the sister of a dead Air Force pilot, Bond realizes that two missing warheads are in the possession of Domino’s domineering lover Maximillian Largo (Klaus Maria Brandauer).

It seems odd to remake an entry in the canon less than twenty years after Thunderball, but the success of Never Say Never Again is largely due to the work of two men – Sean Connery and director Irvin Kershner (who, of course, helmed The Empire Strikes Back).  Kershner keeps the film moving, avoiding the dull bits with a good action sequence or attractive cinematography, and Connery slips back into the role with all the charisma we’d expect from a veteran thespian.  The decision to foreground Connery’s return as a crucial plot element is an inspired one, and it’s woven quite seamlessly into the tapestry of Thunderball for a film that seems familiar yet cleverly updated. 

The graying Bond plotline fits perfectly with the spa retreat portions of Thunderball, also giving Connery a solid action sequence after a frankly lackluster opening (the jungle infiltration here fails to live up to Thunderball’s jetpack funeral crash).  And Connery’s roguish sense of humor plays well opposite a frustrated M; though the “upper management loathes Bond” plot doesn’t quite mesh with what we’ve seen from previous films, a more welcome change is the newer camaraderie with Q – whose previous frustration with 007 gives way to a warmer embrace when he realizes how much fun it is to have Bond/Connery back.

Indeed, Never Say Never Again is an extremely fun outing for Bond.  It mercifully avoids the slapstick comedy of, say, Octopussy (released the same year), but Connery plays the role with a wry wink and a powerful penchant for opportune one-liners.  Brandauer too, as a contemporary Peter Lorre type, plays his madman baddie with gleeful insanity (which he proudly admits when one character labels him as such).  The big surprise here is Basinger’s Bond girl; while I’m not the world’s biggest fan of hers, she plays second fiddle to Connery without succumbing to the empty-headed bimbo stereotype, instead offering a Domino whose anger at her brother’s death is palpable.  More importantly, Bond’s seduction of Domino is entirely plausible, even in spite of the wiry gray tint in Connery’s sideburns (okay, maybe even because of the gray).

It’s not a perfect Bond film – Goldfinger can rest easy in that regard.  Because it’s a one-off in a sideways universe version of James Bond, we never get closure on Blofeld, who remains at large; it’s a shame, since Max von Sydow’s master criminal role is a treat and mixes menace with that classic British smug satisfaction.  Perhaps the biggest crime, aside from a motorcycle in place of an Aston Martin, is that the score is wholly devoid of the classic Bond theme.  For legal reasons, of course, it couldn’t have appeared, but in this regard Thunderball has the advantage; nothing beats a John Barry score.

If someone somewhere layers a Barry soundtrack over this film, though, we might be looking at a solid silver to stand beside Goldfinger.  As it stands, though, Never Say Never Again is a pleasant detour away from the catastrophe of the mainstream franchise, and I’ll never say never ever to more Sean Connery.

Never Say Never Again is rated PG.  Bond beds three different women, one of whom wears a translucent leotard.  The typical amount of fistfights and gunfights transpire, though with a little more blood than in the mainstream series thus far; one person explodes.

James Bond and The Cinema King will return in a review of A View to a Kill (1985) on March 7, 2014!

Charlie St. Cloud (2010)

We interrupt your regularly scheduled Depp Week programming to bring you Charlie St. Cloud, Zac Efron's latest - and lightest - box office outing.

Efron plays the eponymous Charlie, taking off his dancing shoes and donning a winter coat of angst as the troubled teen who blames himself for the car crash that killed his younger brother Sam (Charlie Tahan). Charlie would have died too, were it not for the prayerful intercession of paramedic Florio Ferrente (Ray Liotta), but now that he's alive, Charlie has the unique ability to communicate with ghosts - particularly with Sam, with whom he had promised to practice baseball every day before college. But as Charlie wallows in his grief, working as a caretaker in a graveyard and throwing away his potential, he meets Tess Carroll (Amanda Crew), a spirited sailor who teaches Charlie the meaning of life - and letting go.

Allow me to first begin by saying that there is a very specific type of audience for whom this movie will hold almost unanimous appeal - and I'm not referring to the two old ladies I met this weekend who raved up and down about how "fantastic" and "spectacular" this picture was. For fans of the emotional catharsis, for Lifetime subscribers who can't get enough "life is for the living" morals, for people who just want to see Zac Efron take his shirt off - this movie offers all that in spades. But for more discerning viewers, I think Charlie St. Cloud comes up wanting.

Let me also add by way of preface that this isn't necessarily a bad movie. It's not terrible, but it's just not very good; on a scale of 1 to 10, it's probably a four or a five. The film itself is not very well-made, consisting mostly of fluffy emotions and hints of a story with more potential (potential perhaps lived up to in the Ben Sherwood novel on which the movie is based) than is acted upon. The biggest distraction in the film is Efron himself; I've admitted that I'm a fan of his career, and I think he's on his way to at least B-list stardom. But Charlie St. Cloud as a movie seems determined not to let him advance; for all the emoting and performing that Efron seems willing to do, the film spends far more time on shots that director Burr Steers (of 17 Again fame) must have consciously orchestrated in order to elicit maximum attractiveness out of Efron. There are a myriad of shots such as Charlie walking toward a window as soft light streams from the drapes and brings out the baby blue in his eyes; college students may one day craft a drinking game in which participants imbibe each time Efron takes his shirt off - two shots if the disrobing is not essential to the plot (which is, to say, always).

There are other people in the film, too; chief among them is Amanda Crew, who isn't asked to do very much in the film but who seems like she might be the next Jessica Biel if given the opportunity and a better haircut. Tahan is similarly unchallenging as ghostly Sam, but there's a sense of sibling chemistry between him and Efron which lends their scenes a genuine sense of authenticity and are some of the less improbable scenes in the film. As is often the case, Ray Liotta is criminally underused; though he makes the most of his two scenes in the film, the fact remains that he is only given two scenes in the film - hardly the stuff of a comeback, though he's an able caretaker of the film's "second chances" message, which is hammered repeatedly throughout the movie. Oh, yeah - and Kim Basinger's in here too, though I think the crew forgot about her during production as her character simply disappears with little more than an oblique "She moved" reference.

For a discerning viewer, a lot of the film will come off as very unsubtle. Dialogue consists mostly of characters shouting morals at each other - "Life is for the living!" and "You have to let go!" and "You were given a second chance for a reason!" among them. More notably, there's a plot twist borrowed wholesale from The Sixth Sense (no, Zac Efron's not actually dead, so I didn't spoil it... or maybe I did), but it's so blatantly obvious that the textbook foreshadowing barrels through the film like the freight train from Inception. But the most important lesson the film can teach us, it seems, is that Zac Efron has dreamy good looks that will plop ticketholders into seats faster than Dennis Miller can craft a metaphor.

If you've got a craving for eye candy, please see Charlie St. Cloud, if only to send a message that we're done with this whole Twilight business. Discerning moviegoers? You can still catch that Inception matinee.
Charlie St. Cloud is rated PG-13 "for language including some sexual references, an intense accident scene and some sensuality." I actually thought the innuendo was pretty tame, though parents might not like the "romantic interlude in a graveyard" scene, in which nothing but shadowplay is seen. The accident scene is startling but in a way that's been done to death; some mild blood accompanies this and another accident scene.

Stay tuned, folks, because your regularly scheduled programming for Depp Week continues next on The Cinema King as we go south of the border for Once Upon a Time in Mexico.