Octopussy

 

We're entering the bad Moore-era

13th movie and we start in... Cuba? I think it's Cuba, looks like Fidel Castro look-alikes all over the place. And 007 destroys some hanger with a plane and then leaves... That's it? Title roll and then we appear in Berlin as a clown is chased by some dagger throwing people in red. The clown gets a knife in the back, but is able to get to the British embassy and delivers a Faberge egg. Turns out it's a double 0 agent and as we return to London it's shown that the egg is a fake and meanwhile the real one is being auctioned away. Bond attends and switches out the fake with the real one, getting the sights on Kamal Khan, an exiled Afghan prince that payed for the Egg.

Apparently he acts as a seller of stolen Russian treasures that a Soviet General Orlov uses to fund... whatever he funds. They uses the smuggler Octopussy who have a palace in India to get the treasures across the Iron Curtain. But Kamal Khan and Orlov sets her up since Orlov plans to, instead of the jewelry, plant an atomic bomb that will go off on an American Air base in West Berlin, triggering protest of unilateral disarmament in the West, enabling the Soviet military to take Western Europe without the American Nuclear umbrella.

Now that's an interesting plot. The movie was made in 1983 and it was not until after the cold war ended that it was understood that the leaders of Soviet Russia was as paranoid as General Orlov and slightest believed aggression would have caused the Soviet Union to launch their nuclear arsenal. We also know that the peace protest was in some cases financed by the Soviet Union to try to disarm the West. So all this is really interesting and is on point with history... then why is this one of the most boring movies in the franchise? Well, I would assume the fact that instead of focusing of the internal power struggle of the Soviet Union, we get another diamond smuggling operation. I begin to see a pattern here.

After 007 stops the bomb, dressed in a clown suit I might add, Octopussy (who was gonna be collateral damage) travels back to India where Kamal Khans palace is and tries to catch him, but she fails so Bond arriving with Q in a hot air balloon. After getting on an airplane he rescues Octopussy and gets out. As stated it didn't do anything for me. It had exotic locals in India, but the music is terrible, there's hardly any in it. As mentioned, the politics of the movies are interesting, but it's hidden behind the boring main plot. Orlov should have been the main bad guy, I don't even get what Khan gets out of this besides money. And I assume they tried to make Octopussy appear as a female Blofeld with the not showing her face and the images of the octopus looking like SPECTRAS emblem. Why not go for that angle full time? Damn, why not have a female main antagonist?