Octopussy (1983)

Continuing my James Bond marathon, today we'll discuss the 13th official film, Octopussy (1983).

SYNOPSIS:
Agent 009 shows up dead with a fake replica of a Fabergé egg.  James Bond (Roger Moore) is tasked with tracking down who made such a perfect replica and comes across a smuggling ring led by a lady named Octopussy (Maud Adams).  But there's a deeper plot afoot... a Russian general named Orlov (Steven Berkoff) plans to use the smuggling ring to sneak an atomic bomb onto a US base and set it off, kicking off WWIII!

REVIEW:
This film released while the Berlin Wall is still up, so it becomes a plot point to set off a bomb on a US base in Berlin, instigating war.  General Orlov makes his case for invading the rest of Europe, taking control of the continent, but his fellow Russians (including General Gogol (Walter Gotell)) think it's unwise.  Attempting to force their hand, he comes up with the plot of setting off a nuke on a US base, making it look like an accident with the Americans and forcing the UN to push nuclear disarmament, paving the way for Russia to just walk across borders and claim territory.

General Orlov laying out his plans for dominion over Europe

Despite being the smuggling ringleader, Octopussy wasn't the villain of the film.  She was actually grateful for James Bond's presence.  She is the daughter of a man Bond was sent to arrest for treason; however, Bond gave the man an opportunity to commit suicide rather than face trail.  For allowing him an honorable end, she is grateful and bends over backwards to accommodate Bond, despite her partner's attempts on Bond's life.  Octopussy runs an island occupied by only women, a safe haven for women who need a place to start over.  She also is the ringleader of a traveling circus, which is how she smuggles her goods from place to place.

Octopussy and Bond getting along swimmingly

Q (Desmond Llewelyn) provides Bond with a couple of gadgets.  First, a tracking microchip is inserted into the Fabergé egg so he can trace it while it's being returned to the smugglers.  Q gives Bond a watch that displays the location of the egg at all times.  Secondly, Bond is given a pen that houses corrosive acid within it.  Perfect if you need to burn your way out of a locked room.

This is the first film where Q is actually doing field work.  Normally, if he shows up in the field, it's to arm 007 with a new gadget.  But while Bond was spending the night on Octopussy's private island, Q and the Indian agent, Vijay (Vijay Amritraj) rotate shifts on the coast, waiting for him to return.  Some thugs show up and attack Vijay on his shift, which was very fortunate for the elderly Q because he wouldn't have had a fighting chance against them.  It's probably the closest we'll ever see Q to the action.

Q on recon duty

This film's title comes from Ian Fleming's 14th and final novel (released posthumously), titled "Octopussy and the Living Daylights."  It was a collection of four short stories.  This film's story, although borrowing its name from one of the shorts, is an original tale.  The short story titled "Octopussy" was about James Bond tracking down a WWII hero who had murdered his friend in order to get his hands on some Nazi gold from the war.  Some related trivia: the Fabergé egg in this film is titled "Property of a Lady," which is the name of another short story in this same novel.

This is the third film in the official James Bond franchise that has a title song with a different name than the film's title.  Octopussy's theme song is called "All Time High," and is performed by Rita Coolidge.  You can hear it here:

RECOMMENDATION:
This film has its moments.  The scenes where Bond is thrown off the circus train and has to find his way across Germany in less than an hour to get to the circus and disarm the nuke were very tense.  But overall, the film was a little bland.  The first couple times I watched this, I missed the small bit of dialogue where Octopussy describes her link to Bond.  For the life of me, I couldn't figure out why she liked him so much.  Usually, Bond has to seduce a woman before she'll turn to the side of good and do anything for him, but despite her smuggling operation, she was pretty much a good guy from the get-go.  Like I said, this film has its moments, but for the most part, it didn't keep my attention all the way through.  I guess the late '70s/early '80s Bond was pretty boring, in my opinion.