I had seen every James Bond film other than “Never Say Never Again,” released in 1983. That omission probably wasn’t accidental. The film occupies a strange and controversial place in the Bond canon: an unofficial, non-Eon Productions entry that marked Sean Connery’s return to the role of 007 after a twelve-year absence. When Netflix recently licensed all 26 Bond films from Amazon in a somewhat surprising move, including this odd, non-Eon outlier, I finally took the opportunity to check it off the list.
Unfortunately, the experience was a letdown. “Never Say Never Again” is a complete mess, and it has aged terribly. Some scenes are so misguided that they feel like unintentional parody, with the Blofeld scenes and dialogue standing out as particularly cringe-worthy. To be fair, many of the Bond films leading up to “Never Say Never Again” haven’t aged especially well either. Their pacing often drags, and Bond’s “cool” factor we all love is frequently buried under long, dull stretches and strained attempts at humor. This film suffers from all of those problems, only here they’re compounded by a weak script and thoroughly schlocky production values.
