007 Journals: Octopussy

Well we are far into Roger Moore's tenure as Bond and I feel like a lot of his movies have been hit or miss and very few in betweens. The last movie, For Your Eyes Only, was overall pretty boring and while it had some decent moments didn't really do much for me. Roger Moore is looking older and older (this film is no exception) and I feel like it would be working if they were playing up an aging James Bond story but since they aren't I just have to craft story for myself in my head. Now going into Octopussy I didn't really know anything about this film and I will tell you I had few hopes during the beginning. The cold open I was actually fine with. Bond having a portable plane in a trailer was pretty fun and the whole action scene was pretty great. Though I feel like I need to point out that plans can't use the same fuel as cars so that ending joke just left me scratching my head. What came after the cold open however involved a man on the run in a clown suit and was just really really hard to swallow. Luckily it gets better after that.

Now I have been on record saying that I'm not a fan of silly James Bond jokes and excessive gadgets but for some reason Bond hiding in a gorilla and clown suit really didn't bother me. Yeah the clown suit was a little much but it was contextualized well enough that it didn't bug me. Honestly my biggest complaint is the plot of the film. It is kind of hard to follow and understand why everything is happening and what everyone is doing until the film ends. The plot, once you know what is going on, is just fine but it takes too long to let the viewer in on it. Like a lot of other Bond films we have what could be the plot of two different movies happening simultaneously but they end up winding together. One involves the smuggling of diamonds and jewelry. The other involves a Russian general wanting to start an invasion. It gets kind of convoluted but ends up becoming understandable at the last second. This could have been seen by some as "Oh that's just good writing, they keep you guessing" but to me it's just kind of sloppy and could have been tightened up.

What doesn't disappoint in this film are the performances. Roger Moore has always been great but in this film I feel like he's put in a little more effort than his last few Bond films. This is the second time Maud Adams has played a Bond girl which to my knowledge is the first time a actress has made two Bond appearances as a Bond girl and it could have come off more strange if this film was not so long after The Man With the Golden Gun that Maud Adams had aged enough to look different. I felt like her role as Octopussy (I'm sorry but there is no way that name doesn't filthy) than she was in her previous outing. My favorite character in the movie however was Kamal Khan played by Louis Jourdan. He plays the character so suave and is a fantastically overconfident Bond villain. I would have liked to have seen a lot more of him in this movie because he stole almost every scene he was in. General Orlov was your stereotypical Russian military character that we see many times over in the Bond series, and while I felt he was played as if he was the most Russian, I found him to be entertaining.

Octopussy was honestly a surprise for me. With how the Roger Moore films have been progressing I honestly felt like it was just going to be getting worse and worse until we reached Timothy Dalton but Octopussy I found to be rather enjoyable. It's not perfect by any means and definitely not my favorite but it belongs in the top mentions of the Roger Moore era. There were some great action scenes including a good old fashioned gun fight at the end. I also really enjoyed the bidding war scene where Bond and M are bidding on the jewel egg. There are some odd choices though such as Bond's partner using a tennis racket as a weapon. Bond also uses all of the gimmicks you see in a bazaar as weapons. A guy is swallowing a sword? Let me borrow it for a quick sword fight. Oh you have hot coals? Better throw some guys on it. I also find it really tiring that Mi6 seems to uproot the entire Q branch just to meet Bond in the field and give him a couple gadgets. Although this time we had Bond using a gadget to zoom in on a busty woman's chest so I guess that was new. Honestly this movie has so much stuff that I normally don't like about a Bond movie but for some reason this time I was highly entertained. I'll give Octopussy a four out of five. Also how can you not love a fight between the circus and terrorists?!