Licence To Kill - 1989

By Wikipedia
Licence to Kill, released in 1989, is the sixteenth entry in the James Bond film series by Eon Productions, and the first one not to use the title of an Ian Fleming story. It is the fifth in a row and last to be directed by John Glen. It also marks Timothy Dalton's second and final performance in the role of James Bond. The story has elements of two Ian Fleming short stories and a novel, interwoven with aspects from Japanese Rōnin tales. The film sees Bond being suspended from MI6 as he pursues drugs lord Franz Sanchez, who has attacked his CIA friend Felix Leiter and murdered Felix's wife during their honeymoon. Originally titled Licence Revoked in line with the plot, the name was changed during post-production.
Budgetary reasons made Licence to Kill the first Bond not to be shot in the United Kingdom, with locations in both Florida and Mexico. The film earned over $156 million worldwide, and enjoyed a generally positive critical reception, with much praise for the stunts, but some criticism on Dalton's interpretation of Bond and the fact that the film was significantly darker and more violent than its predecessors.
After the release of Licence to Kill, legal wrangling over control of the series and James Bond character resulted in a six-year long delay in production of the next Bond film which resulted in Dalton deciding to not return. It is also the final Bond film for actors Robert Brown (as M) and Caroline Bliss (as Moneypenny), screenwriter Richard Maibaum, title designer Maurice Binder, editor John Grover, cinematographer Alec Mills, director and former Bond film editor John Glen, and producer Albert R. Broccoli, although he would later act as a consulting producer for GoldenEye before his death.

Plot:
DEA agents collect James Bond – MI6 agent 007 – and his friend, now DEA agent Felix Leiter, on their way to Leiter's wedding in Miami to have them assist in capturing drugs lord Franz Sanchez. Bond and Leiter capture Sanchez by attaching a hook and cord to Sanchez's plane in flight near The Bahamas and pulling it out of the air with a Coast Guard helicopter. Afterwards, Bond and Leiter parachute down to the church in time for the ceremony.
Sanchez bribes DEA agent Ed Killifer and escapes. Meanwhile, Sanchez's henchman Dario and his crew ambush Leiter and his wife Della. Leiter is maimed by a tiger shark and Della is raped and killed. When Bond returns to Leiter's house to find Della dead and Felix alive, but seriously wounded, he swears to take his revenge on Sanchez.
After Bond kills Killifer by pushing him into the tank with the shark that maimed Leiter, M meets Bond in Key West's Hemingway House and orders him to an assignment in Istanbul, Turkey. Bond resigns after turning down the assignment, but M suspends Bond instead and immediately revokes his licence to kill. Bond flees from MI6 custody and becomes a rogue agent, bereft of official backing but later surreptitiously helped by MI6 armourer Q.
Bond boards the Wavekrest – a ship run by Sanchez's henchman Milton Krest – and foils Sanchez's latest drug shipment, stealing five million dollars in the process. Bond recruits Pam Bouvier, an ex-CIA agent-pilot whom he rescues from Dario at a Bimini bar, and journeys with her to the Republic of Isthmus. In Isthmus City, Bond is met by Q. He finds his way into Sanchez's employment by posing as an assassin looking for work. Two Hong Kong Narcotics Bureau officers foil Bond's attempt to assassinate Sanchez and take him to an abandoned warehouse. They are joined by Fallon, an MI6 agent who was sent by M to apprehend Bond either dead or alive. Bond is about to be sedated via injection and sent back to the UK in disgrace when Sanchez's men rescue Bond and kill the officers, believing them to be the assassins. Later, with the aid of Bouvier, Q and Sanchez's girlfriend Lupe, Bond frames Krest by placing the five million dollars he had stolen into the hyperbaric chamber on board the Wavekrest. An angry Sanchez traps Krest in the chamber and then rapidly depressurizes it, killing him; meanwhile, for Bond's perceived loyalty, Sanchez admits him into his inner circle.
Sanchez takes Bond to his base, which is disguised as a meditation retreat. Bond learns that Sanchez's scientists can dissolve cocaine in petrol and then sell it disguised as fuel to Asian drug dealers. The buying and selling are conducted via the televangelist Professor Joe Butcher, working under orders from Sanchez's business manager Truman-Lodge. The re-integration process will be available to those underworld clients who can pay Sanchez's price. During Sanchez's presentation to potential Asian customers, Dario discovers Bond and betrays him to Sanchez. Bond starts a fire in the laboratory and attempts to flee, but is captured again and placed on the conveyor belt that drops the brick-cocaine into a giant shredder. Bouvier arrives and distracts Dario, allowing Bond to pull Dario into the shredder, killing him.
Sanchez flees as fire consumes his base, taking with him four articulated tankers full of the cocaine and petrol mixture. Bond pursues them by plane, with Bouvier at the controls. During the course of the chase through the desert, three of the four tankers are destroyed. Sanchez attacks Bond aboard the final remaining tanker, which loses control and crashes down a hill side. Soaked in petrol from the leaking tanker, Sanchez attempts to kill Bond with his machete. Bond then reveals his cigarette lighter – the Leiters' gift for being the best man at their wedding – and immolates Sanchez, taking revenge for Felix and Della. Sanchez stumbles into the wrecked tanker, blowing it up and killing himself. Bouvier, driving the tractor from one of the destroyed tankers, rescues Bond.
Later, a party is held at Sanchez's former residence. Bond receives a call from Leiter telling him that M is offering him his job back.

Cast:
- Timothy Dalton as James Bond: An MI6 agent who resigns his Double-0 status to take his revenge on drug lord Franz Sanchez.
- Carey Lowell as Pam Bouvier: An ex-Army pilot and CIA informant.
- Robert Davi as Franz Sanchez: Main antagonist. The most powerful drug lord in Latin America, mentioned as having been wanted by the DEA for years.
- Talisa Soto as Lupe Lamora: Sanchez's girlfriend.
- Anthony Zerbe as Milton Krest: Sanchez's henchman who operates Wavekrest Marine Research.
- Frank McRae as Sharkey: Friend of Felix Leiter and owns a boat charter business.
- Everett McGill as Ed Killifer: DEA official
- Wayne Newton as Professor Joe Butcher: Sanchez's middleman and TV evangelist for Olimpatec Meditation Institute.
- Benicio del Toro as Dario: One of Sanchez's henchmen
- Anthony Starke as Truman-Lodge: Sanchez's financial advisor.
- Pedro Armendáriz, Jr. as President Hector Lopez, the president of Isthmus.
- Desmond Llewelyn as Q: Supplies Bond with various gadgets and helps him on the field.
- David Hedison as Felix Leiter: Former CIA agent, now with DEA.
- Priscilla Barnes as Della Churchill: Felix Leiter's bride.
- Robert Brown as M: Head of MI6, revokes Bond of his Double-0 licence.
- Caroline Bliss as Miss Moneypenny: M's personal secretary.
- Don Stroud as Colonel Heller: Sanchez's head of security.
- Grand L. Bush as Hawkins: DEA Agent and Bond ally who opposes Bond's vendetta.
- Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa as Kwang: A Hong Kong Police Narcotics agent sent to infiltrate Sanchez's heart of operations.
- Christopher Neame as Fallon: An MI6 agent sent by M to arrest Bond, dead or alive.
- Diana Lee Hsu as Loti: A female Hong Kong Narcotics agent working with Kwang.

Production:
Shortly after The Living Daylights was released, producer Albert R. Broccoli and writers Michael G. Wilson and Richard Maibaum started discussing its successor. The film would retain a realistic style, as well as showing the "darker edge" of the Bond character. For the primary location, the producers wanted a place where the series had not yet visited. While China was visited after an invitation by its government, the idea fell through partly because the 1987 film The Last Emperor had removed some of the novelty from filming in China. By this stage the writers had already talked about a chase sequence along the Great Wall, as well as a fight scene amongst the Terracotta Army. Wilson also wrote two plot outlines about a drugs lord in the Golden Triangle before the plans fell through. The writers eventually decided on a setting in a tropical country while Broccoli negotiated to film in Mexico, at the Estudios Churubusco in Mexico City. In 1985, the Films Act was passed, removing the Eady Levy, resulting in foreign artists being taxed more heavily. The associated rising costs to Eon Productions meant no part of Licence to Kill was filmed in the UK, the first Bond film not to do so. Pinewood Studios, used in every Bond film that far, housed only the post-production and sound re-recording.

Writing and themes:
The initial outline of what would become Licence to Kill was drawn up by Wilson and Maibaum. Before the pair could develop the script, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) went on strike and Maibaum was unable to continue writing, leaving Wilson to work on the script on his own. Although both the main plot and title of Licence to Kill owe nothing to any of the Fleming novels, there are elements from the books that are used in the storyline, including a number of aspects of the short story "The Hildebrand Rarity", such as the character Milton Krest. The novel Live and Let Die provided the material surrounding Felix Leiter's mauling by a shark, whilst the film version of the book provided the close similarity between the main villain, Kananga, and Licence to Kill's main villain Sanchez. The screenplay was not ready by the time casting had begun, with Carey Lowell being auditioned with lines from A View to a Kill.
The script – initially called Licence Revoked – was written with Dalton's characterisation of Bond in mind, and the obsession with which Bond pursues Sanchez on behalf of Leiter and his dead wife is seen as being because "of his own brutally cut-short marriage." Dalton's darker portrayal of Bond led to the violence being increased and more graphic. Wilson compared the script to Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo, where a samurai "without any attacking of the villain or its cohorts, only sowing the seeds of distrust, he manages to have the villain bring himself down". Wilson freely admitted that the aspect of the destruction-from-within aspect of the plot came more from the cinema versions of the Japanese Rōnin tales by Kurosawa or Sergio Leone than from Fleming's use of that plot device from The Man with the Golden Gun. For the location Wilson created the Republic of Isthmus, a banana republic based on Panama, with the pock-marked Sanchez bearing similarities to General Manuel Noriega. The parallels between the two figures were based on Noriega's political use of drugs trafficking and money laundering to provide revenues for Panama. Robert Davi suggested the line "loyalty is more important than money", which he felt was fitting to the character of Franz Sanchez, whose actions were noticed by Davi to be concerned with betrayal and retaliation.
The United Artists press kits referred to the film's background as being "Torn straight from the headlines of today's newspapers" and the backdrop of Panama was connected to "the Medellin cartel in Colombia and corruption of government officials in Mexico thrown in for good measure." This use of the cocaine-smuggling backdrop put Licence to Kill alongside other cinema blockbusters, such as the 1987 films Lethal Weapon, Beverly Hills Cop II and RoboCop and Bond was seen to be "poaching on their turf" with the drugs-related revenge story.

Casting:
After Carey Lowell was chosen to play Pam Bouvier, she watched many of the films in the series for inspiration. Lowell had described becoming a Bond girl as "huge shoes to fill", as she did not see herself as a "glamour girl", even coming to audition in jeans and a leather jacket. While Lowell wore a wig for the scenes set in the United States, a scene where Bouvier cuts her hair was added so Lowell's natural short hair could be used.
Robert Davi was cast following a suggestion by both Broccoli's daughter Tina, and screenwriter Richard Maibaum, who had seen Davi in the television film Terrorist on Trial: The United States vs. Salim Ajami. For the role of drug baron Franz Sanchez, Davi researched on the Colombian drug cartels and how to do a Colombian accent, and since he was method acting, he would stay in character off-set. After Davi read Casino Royale for preparation, he decided to turn Sanchez into a "mirror image" of James Bond, based on Ian Fleming's description of the villain Le Chiffre. The actor also learned scuba diving for the scene where Sanchez is rescued from the sunken armoured car.
Davi later helped out on the casting of his mistress, Lupe, by playing Bond in the audition, with Talisa Soto being picked from twelve candidates because Davi expressed he "would kill for her". David Hedison returned to play Felix Leiter, sixteen years after being the agent in Live and Let Die. Hedison did not expect to return to the role, saying "I was sure that [Live and Let Die] would be my first – and last" and Glen was reluctant to cast the 61-year old actor, since the role even had a scene parachuting. Hedison was the only actor to play Leiter twice, until Jeffrey Wright appeared in both Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace.
Up-and-coming actor Benicio del Toro was chosen to play Sanchez's henchman, Dario for being "laid back while menacing in a quirky sort of way", according to Glen. Wayne Newton got a role after sending a letter to the producers expressing interest in a cameo because he always wanted to be in a Bond film. The President of Isthmus was played by Pedro Armendáriz, Jr., the son of Pedro Armendáriz, who played Kerim Bey in the second James Bond film, 1963's From Russia with Love.

Filming:
Principal photography ran from 18 July to 18 November 1988. Shooting began in Mexico, which mostly doubled for the fictional Republic of Isthmus: locations in Mexico City included the Biblioteca del Banco de Mexico for the exterior of El Presidente Hotel and the Casino Español for the interior of Casino de Isthmus whilst the Teatro de la Ciudad was used for its exterior. Villa Arabesque in Acapulco was used for Sanchez's lavish villa, and the La Rumorosa Mountain Pass in Mexicali was used as the filming site for the tanker chase during the climax of the film. Sanchez's Olympiatec Meditation Institute was shot at the Otomi Ceremonial Center in Temoaya. Other underwater sequences were shot at the Isla Mujeres near Cancún.
In August 1988, production moved to the Florida Keys, notably Key West. Seven Mile Bridge towards Pigeon Key was used for the sequence in which the armoured truck transporting Sanchez following his arrest is driven off the edge. Other locations there included Ernest Hemingway House, Key West International Airport, Mallory Square, St. Mary's Star of the Sea Church for Leiter's wedding and Stephano's House 707 South Street for his house and patio. The US Coast Guard Pier was used to film Isthmus City harbour. As production moved back to Mexico, Broccoli became ill, leading to Michael G. Wilson becoming co-producer, a position he subsequently retained.
The scene where Sanchez's plane is hijacked was filmed on location in Florida, with stuntman Jake Lombard jumping from an helicopter to a plane, but Timothy Dalton himself being filmed atop the aircraft. The plane towed by the helicopter was a life-sized model created by special effects supervisor John Richardson. After filming wide shots of David Hedison and Dalton parachuting, closer shots were done near the church location. During one of the takes, a malfunction of the harness equipment caused Hedison to fall on the sidewalk. The injury made him limp for the remainder of filming. The aquatic battle between Bond and henchmen had two separate units, a surface one led by Arthur Woolster which used Dalton himself, and an underwater one which involved experienced divers. The barefoot waterskiing was done by world champion Dave Reinhart, with some close-ups using Dalton on a special rig. Milton Krest's death used a prostethic head which was created by John Richardson's team based on a mold of Anthony Zerbe's face. The result was so gruesome that it was shortened and toned down to avoid censorship problems.
For the climactic tanker chase, the producers used an entire section of a highway near Mexicali, which had been closed for safety reasons. Sixteen eighteen-wheeler tankers were used, some with modifications made by manufacturer Kenworth at the request of driving stunts arranger Rémy Julienne. Most were given improvements to their engines to run faster, while one model had an extra steering wheel on the back of the cabin so a hidden stuntman could drive while Carey Lowell was in the front and another received extra suspension on its back so it could lift its front wheels. Although a rig was constructed to help a rig tilt onto its side, it was not necessary as Julienne was able to pull off the stunt without the aid of camera trickery.

Music:
Initially Vic Flick, who had played lead guitar on Monty Norman's original 007 theme, and Eric Clapton were asked to write and perform the theme song to Licence to Kill and they produced a theme to match Dalton's gritty performance, but the producers turned it down and instead Gladys Knight's song and performance was chosen. The song (one of the longest to ever be used in a Bond film) was based on the "horn line" from Goldfinger, seen as an homage to the film of the same name, which required royalty payments to the original writers. The song gave Knight her first British top-ten hit since 1977. The end credits feature the Top 10 R&B hit "If You Asked Me To", sung by Patti LaBelle.
John Barry was not available at the time due to throat surgery, so the soundtrack's score was composed and conducted by Michael Kamen, who was known for scoring many action films at the time, such as Lethal Weapon and Die Hard. Glen said he picked Kamen for feeling he could give "the closest thing to John Barry."

Release and reception:
Film ratings organisations had objections against the excessive and realistic violence, with both the Motion Picture Association of America and the British Board of Film Classification requesting content adaptations, with the BBFC in particular demanding the cut of 36 seconds of film. The 2006 Ultimate Edition DVD of Licence to Kill marked the first release of the film without cuts.
Licence to Kill premiered at the Odeon Leicester Square in London on 13 June 1989, raising £200,000 (£370,964 in 2013 pounds) for The Prince's Trust on the night. The film grossed a total of £7.5 million (£14 million in 2013 pounds) in the United Kingdom, making it the seventh most successful film of the year, despite the 15 certificate which cut down audience numbers. Worldwide numbers were also positive, with $156 million, making it the twelfth biggest box-office draw of the year. The US cinema returns were $34.6 million, making Licence to Kill the least financially successful James Bond film in the US, when accounting for inflation. A factor suggested for the poor takings were fierce competition at the cinema, with Licence to Kill released alongside Back to the Future Part II, Lethal Weapon 2; Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (starring former Bond, Sean Connery) and Batman.
There were also issues with the promotion of the film: promotional material in the form of teaser posters created by Bob Peak, based on the Licence Revoked title and commissioned by Albert Broccoli, had been produced, but MGM decided against using them after American test screenings showed 'Licence Revoked' to be a common American phrase for the withdrawal of a driving licence. The delayed, corrected advertising, by Steven Chorney, in the traditional style, limited the film's pre-release screenings. MGM also discarded a campaign created by advertising executive Don Smolen – who had worked in the publicity campaign for eight Bond films before – emphasising the rougher content of the movie.

Contemporary reviews:
Derek Malcolm in The Guardian was broadly approving of Licence to Kill, liking the "harder edge of the earlier Bonds" that the film emulated, but wishing that "it was written and directed with a bit more flair." Malcolm praised the way the film attempted "to tell a story rather than use one for the decorative purposes of endless spectacular tropes." Writing in The Guardian's sister paper, The Observer, Philip French noted that "despite the playful sparkle in his eyes, Timothy Dalton's Bond is ... serious here." Overall French called Licence to Kill "an entertaining, untaxing film". Ian Christie in the Daily Express was scathing of the film, saying that the plot was "absurd but fundamentally dull", a further problem being that as "there isn't a coherent storyline to link [the stunts], they eventually become tiresome."
Hilary Mantel in The Spectator dismissed the film. "It is a very noisy film. There is a weary and repetitive note to the frenzy. The sex is low key and off-screen but there is a smirking perverse undertow which makes the film more disagreeable than a slasher movie."
David Robinson, writing in The Times observed that Licence to Kill "will probably neither disappoint nor surprise the great, faithful audience", but bemoaned the fact that "over the years the plots have become less ambitious". Robinson thought that Dalton's Bond "has more class" than the previous Bonds and was "a warmer personality". Iain Johnstone of The Sunday Times pointed out that "any vestiges of the gentleman spy ... by Ian Fleming" have now gone, and in its place is a Bond that is "remarkably close both in deed and action to the eponymous hero of the Batman film" that was released at the same time as Licence to Kill.
Adam Mars-Jones of The Independent was mixed in his review, pointing out that the dating of some of the Fleming ideas, such as imperialism, are out of place; the writers are "trying in effect to reproduce the recipe while leaving out ingredients that would now seem distasteful". Overall Mars-Jones thought that "James Bond is more like a low-tar cigarette than anything else – less stimulating than the throat-curdling gaspers of yesteryear, but still naggingly implicated in unhealthiness, a feeble bad habit without the kick of a vice."
For the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail, Rick Groen thought that in Licence to Kill "they've excised Bond from the Bond flicks; they've turned James into Jimmy, strong and silent and (roll over, Britannia) downright American", resulting in a Bond film that is "essentially Bond-less". Summing up, Groen thought "Actually, that dialogue ... ain't bad. The silence looks good on Timothy Dalton".
Gary Arnold of The Washington Times thought that a number of factors "fail to prevent the finished product from jamming and misfiring with disillusioning frequency". Arnold thinks that "demanding that he [Dalton] play Bond's wrathfulness in a transparently seething and hotheaded manner" means that Dalton "seems to waste away on this second outing as Bond." Overall Arnold sees that there is a "failure to recognize that Bond productions are simply too extravagant to permit an uncompromised return to first principles." The critic for The New York Times, Caryn James, thought Dalton was "the first James Bond with angst, a moody spy for the fin de siecle", and that Licence to Kill "retains its familiar, effective mix of despicably powerful villains, suspiciously tantalizing women and ever-wilder special effects", but was impressed that "Dalton's glowering presence adds a darker tone". James concluded that "for all its clever updatings, stylish action and witty escapism, Licence to Kill ... is still a little too much by the book."
Roger Ebert for the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3½ stars out of 4, saying "the stunts all look convincing, and the effect of the closing sequence is exhilarating ... Licence to Kill is one of the best of the recent Bonds." Jack Kroll, writing in Newsweek described Licence to Kill as "a pure, rousingly entertaining action movie". Kroll thought that Dalton was "a fine actor who hasn't yet stamped Bond with his own personality", observing "Director John Glen is the Busby Berkeley of action flicks, and his chorus line is the legendary team of Bond stunt-persons who are at their death-defying best here". For Time magazine, Richard Corliss bemoaned that although the truck stunts were good, it was "a pity nobody – not writers Michael G. Wilson, and Richard Maibaum nor director John Glen – thought to give the humans anything very clever to do." Corliss found Dalton "misused" in the film, adding that "for every plausible reason, he looks as bored in his second Bond film as Sean Connery did in his sixth".

Reflective reviews:
Opinion on Licence to Kill has not changed with the passing of time and the reviews are still mixed: though film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes lists the film with a positive 74% "fresh" rating from 38 reviews. Tom Hibbert of Empire gives the film only two of a possible five stars, observing that "Dalton ... is really quite hopeless". Hibbert concluded that "he may look the part, but Timothy Dalton fails the boots, the scuba gear, or the automobiles left him by Moore and Connery." In 2006, IGN ranked Licence to Kill fifteenth out of then twenty one Bond films, claiming it is "too grim and had strayed too far from the Bond formula." That same year, Benjamin Svetkey and Joshua Rich of Entertainment Weekly ranked the film as second worst in the series, questioning Wayne Newton's cameo, and considering that "not even Benicio Del Toro in an early role as a henchman is enough to pep up the action." The magazine also listed Pam Bouvier seventh on their list of worst Bond girls, saying Carey Lowell "fumbled this attempt at giving 007 a modern, independent counterpart by turning her into a nagging pest."
Norman Wilner of MSN considered Licence to Kill the second worst Bond film, above only A View to a Kill, but defended Dalton, saying he "got a raw deal. The actor who could have been the definitive 007 ... had the bad luck to inherit the role just as the series was at its weakest, struggling to cope with its general creative decline and the end of the Cold War". In October 2008 Time Out re-issued a review ofLicence to Kill and also thought that Dalton was unfortunate, saying "one has to feel for Dalton, who was never given a fair shake by either of the films in which he appeared".
Some critics, such as James Berardinelli, saw a fundamental weakness in the film: the "overemphasis on story may be a mistake, because there are times when Licence to Kill's narrative bogs down." Berardinelli gave the film three out of a possible four stars, adding "Licence to Kill may be taut and gripping, but it's not traditional Bond, and that, as much as any other reason, may explain the public's rejection of this reasonably well-constructed picture." Raymond Benson, the author of nine Bond novels, said of the film: "It boggles my mind that Licence to Kill is so controversial. There's really more of a true Ian Fleming story in that script than in most of the post-60s Bond movies." John Glen has said Licence to Kill "is among my best Bond films, if not the best".

Appearances in other media:
The Licence to Kill screenplay was written into a novel by the then-novelist of the Bond series John Gardner. It was the first of those novels since Moonraker in 1979.
Licence to Kill was also adapted as a forty-four page, colour graphic novel, by writer and artist Mike Grell (also author of original-story Bond comic books), published by Eclipse Comics and ACME Press in hardcover and trade editions in 1989. The adaptation closely follows the film story, although the ending is briefer, and James Bond is not drawn to resemble Timothy Dalton after Dalton refused to allow his likeness to be licensed. Domark also published a video game adaptation, 007: Licence to Kill, to various personal computers.

Awards and nominations:
1990 Edgar Allan Poe Award - Best Motion Picture - nomination for Michael G. Wilson and Richard Maibaum
1989 MPSE Golden Reel - Outstanding Sound Mixing - nomination for Graham Hartstone

The Living Daylights - 1987

By Wikipedia
The Living Daylights (1987) is the fifteenth entry in the James Bond film series and the first to star Timothy Dalton as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. The film's title is taken from Ian Fleming's short story, "The Living Daylights". It was the last film to use the title of an Ian Fleming story until the 2006 installment Casino Royale.
The beginning of the film resembles the short story, in which Bond acts as a counter-sniper to protect a Soviet defector, Georgi Koskov. He tells Bond that General Pushkin, head of the KGB, is systematically killing British and American agents. When Koskov is seemingly snatched back, Bond follows him across Europe, Morocco and Afghanistan.
The film was produced by Albert R. Broccoli, his stepson Michael G. Wilson, and his daughter Barbara Broccoli. The Living Daylights was generally well received by most critics and was also a financial success, grossing $191.2 million worldwide.

Plot:
James Bond—agent 007—is assigned to aid the defection of a KGB officer, General Georgi Koskov, covering his escape from a concert hall in Bratislava,Czechoslovakia during the orchestra's intermission. During the mission, Bond notices that the KGB sniper assigned to prevent Koskov's escape is a female cellist from the orchestra. Disobeying his orders to kill the sniper, he instead shoots the rifle from her hands, then uses the Trans-Siberian Pipeline to smuggle Koskov across the border into Austria and then on to Britain.
In his post-defection debriefing, Koskov informs MI6 that the KGB's old policy of Smert Shpionam, meaning Death to Spies, has been revived by General Leonid Pushkin, the new head of the KGB. Koskov is later abducted from the safe-house and assumed to have been taken back to Moscow. Bond is directed to track down Pushkin in Tangier and kill him in order to forestall further killings of agents and escalation of tensions between the Soviet Union and the West. Although Bond's prior knowledge of Pushkin initially leads him to doubt Koskov's claims, he agrees to carry out the mission when he learns that the assassin who killed 004 (as depicted in the pre-title sequence) left a note bearing the same message, "Smert Shpionam."
Bond returns to Bratislava to track down the cellist, Kara Milovy. He determines that Koskov's entire defection was staged, and that Milovy is actually Koskov's girlfriend. Bond convinces Milovy that he is a friend of Koskov's and persuades her to accompany him to Vienna, supposedly to be reunited with him. Meanwhile, Pushkin meets with arms dealer Brad Whitaker in Tangier, informing him that the KGB is cancelling an arms deal previously arranged between Koskov and Whitaker.
During his brief tryst with Milovy in Vienna, Bond meets his MI6 ally, Saunders, who discovers a history of financial dealings between Koskov and Whitaker. As he leaves their meeting, Saunders is killed by Necros (Koskov and Whitaker's henchman), who again leaves the message "Smert Shpionam."
Bond and Milovy promptly leave for Tangier, where Bond confronts Pushkin. Pushkin disavows any knowledge of "Smert Shpionam", and reveals that Koskov is evading arrest for embezzlement of government funds. Bond and Pushkin then join forces and Bond fakes Pushkin's assassination, inducing Whitaker and Koskov to progress with their scheme. Meanwhile, Milovy contacts Koskov, who tells her that Bond is actually a KGB agent and convinces her to drug him so he can be captured.
Koskov, Necros, Milovy, and the captive Bond fly to a Soviet air base in Afghanistan—part of the Soviet war in Afghanistan—where Koskov betrays Milovy and imprisons her along with Bond. The pair escape and in doing so free a condemned prisoner, Kamran Shah, leader of the local Mujahideen. Bond and Milovy discover that Koskov is using Soviet funds to buy a massive shipment of opium from the Mujahideen, intending to keep the profits with enough left over to supply the Soviets with their arms.
With the Mujahideen's help, Bond plants a bomb aboard the cargo plane carrying the opium, but is spotted and has no choice but to barricade himself in the plane. Meanwhile the Mujahideen attack the air base on horseback and engage the Soviets in a gun battle. Milovy drives a jeep into the back of the plane as Bond takes off, and Necros also leaps aboard at the last second. After a struggle, Bond throws Necros to his death and deactivates the bomb. Bond then notices Shah and his men being pursued by Soviet forces. He re-activates the bomb and drops it out of the plane and onto a bridge, blowing it up and helping Shah and his men gain an important victory over the Soviets. Bond returns to Tangier to kill Whitaker, as Pushkin arrests Koskov, sending him back to Moscow.

Cast:
- Timothy Dalton as James Bond: an MI6 agent assigned to look into the deaths of and conspiracies against several of his allies.
- Maryam d'Abo as Kara Milovy: Koskov's girlfriend and later Bond's love interest.
- Jeroen Krabbé as General Georgi Koskov: Main villain and a renegade Soviet general.
- Joe Don Baker as Brad Whitaker: An American arms dealer and self-styled general. Baker called his character "a nut" who "thought he was Napoleon".
- John Rhys-Davies as General Leonid Pushkin: The new head of the KGB, replacing General Gogol.
- Art Malik as Kamran Shah: a leader in the Afghan Mujahideen.
- Andreas Wisniewski as Necros: Koskov's henchman, who poses repeated threats to Bond.
- Thomas Wheatley as Saunders: Bond's ally.
- Robert Brown as M: The head of MI6.
- Desmond Llewelyn as Q: MI6's "quartermaster", who supplies Bond with multi-purpose vehicles and gadgets useful in the latter's mission.
- Geoffrey Keen as Frederick Gray: The British Minister of Defence
- Caroline Bliss as Miss Moneypenny: M's secretary.
- John Terry as Felix Leiter: A CIA agent and ally to Bond.
- Walter Gotell as General Gogol: The retired head of the KGB, now a diplomat shown in a cameo at the end of the film.
- Virginia Hey as Rubavitch: General Leonid Puskin's mistress in Morocco
- Julie T. Wallace as Rosika Miklos: James Bond's contact in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia who works at the TransSiberian Pipline.
- Nadim Sawalha cameos as a police chief in Tangiers. Sawalha also appeared in a previous 007 film, The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), as Aziz Fekkesh.
- Waris Dirie cameos as Waris Walsh.

Production:
Originally the film was proposed to be a prequel in the series, an idea that eventually resurfaced with the "reboot" of the franchise in 2006. SMERSH's acronym from Fleming's novel's "Smiert Shpionam" – "Death to spies" – formed the storyline.

Casting:
In Autumn 1985, following the financial and critical disappointment of A View to a Kill, work began on scripts for the next Bond film, with the intention that Roger Moore would not reprise the role of James Bond. Moore, who by the time of the release of The Living Daylights would have been 59 years old, claims he chose to retire from the role after 12 years and 7 films. Cubby Broccoli however claimed that he let Moore go from the role. A significant search for a new actor to play Bond saw a number of actors, including Sam Neill, Pierce Brosnan and Timothy Dalton audition for the role in 1986. Bond co-producer Michael G. Wilson, director John Glen, Dana and Barbara Broccoli "were impressed with Sam Neill and very much wanted to use him." However, Bond producer Albert R. Broccoli was not sold on the actor.
The producers eventually offered the role to Pierce Brosnan after a three-day screen-test. At the time, he was contracted to the television show Remington Steele which had been cancelled by the NBC network due to falling ratings. The announcement that he would be chosen to play James Bond caused a surge in interest in the series, which led to NBC exercising (on the very last day) a 60-day option in Brosnan's contract to make a further season of the show. NBC's action caused drastic repercussions, as a result of which Albert R. Broccoli withdrew the offer given to Brosnan, citing that he did not want the character associated with a contemporary TV series. Not surprisingly, this led to a drop in interest in Remington Steele, and only 5 new episodes were filmed before the show was finally cancelled. The edict from Broccoli was that "Remington Steele will not be James Bond."
Dana Broccoli suggested Timothy Dalton. Cubby Broccoli was initially reluctant given Dalton's public lack of interest in the role, however at his wife's urging agreed to meet the actor. However Dalton would soon begin filming Brenda Starr and so would be unavailable. In the intervening period, having completed Brenda Starr, Dalton was offered the role once again, which he accepted. For a period, the filmmakers had got Dalton, but he had not signed a contract. A casting director persuaded Robert Bathurst, an actor who would become known for his roles in Joking Apart and Cold Feet, to audition for Bond. Bathurst believes that his "ludicrous audition" was only "an arm-twisting exercise" because the producers wanted to persuade Dalton to take the role by telling him they were still auditioning other actors.
Maryam d'Abo, a former model, was cast as the Czechoslovakian cellist Kara Milovy. In 1984, d'Abo had attended auditions for the role of Pola Ivanova in A View To a Kill. Barbara Broccoli included d'Abo in the audition for playing Kara which she later passed.
Originally, the KGB general set up by Koskov was to be General Gogol; however, Walter Gotell was too sick to handle the major role, and the character of Leonid Pushkin replaced Gogol, who appears briefly at the end of the film, having transferred to the Soviet diplomatic service. This was Gogol's final appearance in a James Bond film. Morten Harket, the lead vocalist of the rock group A-ha (which performed the film's title song), was offered a small role as a villain's henchman in the film, but declined, because of lack of time and because he felt they wanted to cast him due to his popularity rather than his acting.
Director John Glen decided to include the macaw from For Your Eyes Only. It was seen chirping in the kitchen of Blayden House when Necros attacks MI6's officers.
Other actors considered for the role of James Bond included; Mel Gibson, Mark Greenstreet, Lambert Wilson, Antony Hamilton, Christopher Lambert, Findlay Light, and Andrew Clarke.

Filming:
The film was shot at the Pinewood Studios at its 007 Stage in UK, as well as Weissensee in Austria. The pre-title sequence was filmed on the Rock of Gibraltar and although the sequence shows a hijacked Land Rover careering down various sections of road over several minutes before bursting through a wall and towards the sea, the location mostly used the same short stretch of road, at the very top of the Rock, shot from numerous different angles. The beach defences seen at the foot of the Rock in the initial shot were also added solely for the film, to an otherwise non-military area. The action involving the Land Rover switched from Gibraltar, to Beachy Head in the UK for the shot showing the vehicle actually getting airborne. Trial runs of the stunt with the Land Rover, during which Bond escapes by parachute from the tumbling vehicle, were filmed in the Mojave Desert, although the final cut of the film uses a shot achieved using a dummy. Other locations included Germany, the United States, and Italy. The desert scenes were done in Ouarzazate, Morocco. The conclusion of the film included the Schönbrunn Palace, Vienna and Elveden Hall, Suffolk.
Principal photography commenced at Gibraltar on 17 September 1986. Aerial stuntmen B.J. Worth and Jake Lombard performed to the pre-credits parachute jump. Both the terrain and wind were unfavourable. Consideration was given to the stunt being done using cranes but aerial stunts arranger B.J. Worth stuck to skydiving and completed the scenes in a day. The aircraft used for the jump was a C-130 Hercules, which in the film had M's office installed in the aircraft cabin. The initial point of view for the scene shows M in what appears to be his usual London office, but the camera then zooms out to reveal that it is, in fact, inside an aircraft. Although marked as a Royal Air Force aircraft, the one in shot belonged to the Spanish Air Force and was used again later in the film for the Afghanistan sequences this time in "Russian" markings. During this later chapter, a fight breaks out on the open ramp of the aircraft in flight between Bond and Necros, before Necros falls to his death. Although the plot and preceding shots suggest the aircraft is a C-130, the shot of Necros falling away from the aircraft show a twin engine cargo plane, a C-123 Provider. Worth and Lombard also doubled for Bond and Necros in the scenes where they are hanging on a bag in a plane's open cargo door.
The press would not meet Dalton and d'Abo until 5 October 1986, when the main unit travelled to Vienna. Almost two weeks after the second unit filming on Gibraltar, the first unit started shooting with Andreas Wisniewski and stunt man Bill Weston. During the course of these three days it took to film this fight Weston fractured a finger, and Wisniewski knocked him out once. The next day finds the crew on location at Stonor House doubling for Bladen's Safe House, the first scene Jeroen Krabbé filmed.

The return of Aston Martin:
The film reunites Bond with British car maker Aston Martin. Following Bond's use of the Aston Martin DBS in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, the filmmakers then turned to the brand new Lotus Esprit in 1977s The Spy Who Loved Me, which reappeared four years later in For Your Eyes Only. Despite the iconic status of the submersible Lotus however, Bond's Aston Martin DB5 is recognised as the most famous of his vehicles. As a consequence, Aston Martin returned with their V8 Vantage.
Two different Aston Martin models were used in filming - a V8 Volante convertible, and later for the Czechoslovakia scenes, a hard-top non-Volante V8 saloon badged to look like the Volante. The Volante was a production model owned by Aston Martin Lagonda chairman, Victor Gauntlett.

Music:
The Living Daylights was the final Bond film to be scored by composer John Barry. The soundtrack is notable for its introduction of sequenced electronic rhythm tracks overdubbed with the orchestra—at the time, a relatively new innovation.
The title song of the film, "The Living Daylights", was co-written with Paul Waaktaar-Savoy of the Norwegian pop-music group A-ha and recorded by them. The group and Barry did not collaborate well, resulting in two versions of the theme song. Barry's film mix is heard on the soundtrack (and on A-ha's later greatest hits album Headlines and Deadlines). The version preferred by the band can be heard on the 1988 A-ha album Stay on These Roads. However, in 2006 Pal Waaktaar-Savoy complimented Barry's contributions "I loved the stuff he added to the track, I mean it gave it this really cool string arrangement. That's when for me it started to sound like a Bond thing". The title song is one of very few 007 title songs that is not performed / written by a British or American performer in the history of the series.
In a departure from conventions of previous Bond films, the film would become the first to use different songs over the opening and end credits. The song heard over the end credits, "If There Was A Man", was one of two songs performed for the film by Chrissie Hynde, of The Pretenders. The other song, "Where Has Everybody Gone", is heard from Necros's Walkman in the film. The Pretenders were originally considered to perform Daylights' title song. However, the producers had been pleased with the commercial success of Duran Duran's "A View to a Kill", and felt that A-ha would be more likely to make an impact in the charts.
The original soundtrack release was released on LP and CD by Warner Bros. and featured only 12 tracks. Later re-releases by Rykodisc and EMI added nine additional tracks, including alternate instrumental end credits music. Rykodisc's version included the gunbarrel and opening sequence of the film as well as the jailbreak sequence, and the bombing of the bridge.
Additionally, the film featured a number of pieces of classical music, as the main Bond girl, Kara Milovy, is a cellist. Mozart's 40th Symphony in G minor (1st movement) is performed by the orchestra at the Conservatoire in Bratislava when Koskov flees. As Moneypenny tells Bond, Kara is next to perform Alexander Borodin's String Quartet in D major. and the finale to Act II of Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro(in Vienna) also feature. Before Bond is drugged by Kara, Kara is practicing the Cello solo from the first movement of Dvořák's cello concerto in B minor. At the end of the film, Kara and an orchestra perform Tchaikovsky's Rococo Variations to rapturous applause.

Release and reception:
The Prince and Princess of Wales attended the film's premiere on 27 June 1987 at the Odeon Leicester Square in London. The Living Daylights grossed the equivalent of $191.2 million worldwide. In the United States it earned $51,185,000, including an opening weekend of $11,051,284, surpassing the $5 million grossed by The Lost Boys that was released on the same day.
In the film, Koskov and Whitaker repeatedly use vehicles and drug packets marked with the Red Cross. This action angered a number of Red Cross Societies, which sent letters of protest regarding the film. In addition, the British Red Cross attempted to prosecute the filmmakers and distributors. However, no legal action was taken. As a result, a disclaimer was added at the start of the film and some DVD releases.
The Living Daylights has a "Fresh" score of 75% on Rotten Tomatoes. IGN lauded the film for bringing back realism and espionage to the franchise and showing James Bond's dark side. Many including John J. Puccio and Chuck O'Leary praised Timothy Dalton's performance and his performing most of the stunts himself. The Washington Post even said Dalton developed "the best Bond ever." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times criticised the lack of humour in the protagonist, however, while Jay Scott of The Globe and Mail wrote of Dalton's Bond that "you get the feeling that on his off nights, he might curl up with the Reader's Digest and catch an episode of Moonlighting".

A View To A Kill - 1985

By Wikipedia
A View to a Kill (1985) is the fourteenth spy film of the James Bond series, and the seventh and last to star Roger Moore as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. Although the title is adapted from Ian Fleming's short story "From a View to a Kill", the film is the fourth Bond film after The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker and Octopussy to have an entirely original screenplay. In A View to a Kill, Bond is pitted against Max Zorin, who plans to destroy California's Silicon Valley.
The film was produced by Albert R. Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, who also wrote the screenplay with Richard Maibaum. It was the third James Bond film to be directed by John Glen, and the last to feature Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny.
Despite being a commercial success, with the Duran Duran theme song "A View to a Kill" performing well in the charts and earning a Golden Globe nomination for Best Song, the film received a mixed reception by critics and was disliked by Roger Moore. Christopher Walken, however, was praised for portraying a "classic Bond villain"

Plot:
James Bond is sent to Siberia to locate the body of 003 and recover a microchip originating from the Soviet Union. Upon his return Q analyses the microchip, establishing it to be a copy of one designed to withstand an electromagnetic pulse and made by government contractor Zorin Industries.
Bond visits Ascot Racecourse to observe the company's owner, Max Zorin. Zorin's horse wins a race but proves hard to control. Sir Godfrey Tibbett, a horse trainer and MI6 agent, believes Zorin's horse was drugged, although tests proved negative. Through Tibbett, Bond meets French private detective Achille Aubergine who informs Bond that Zorin is holding a horse sale later in the month. During their dinner at the Eiffel Tower, Aubergine is assassinated by Zorin's bodyguard May Day, who subsequently escapes, despite being chased by Bond.
Bond and Tibbett travel to Zorin's estate for the horse sale. Bond is puzzled by a woman who rebuffs him and finds out that Zorin has written her a cheque for five million dollars. At night, Bond and Tibbett break into Zorin's laboratory learning that he is implanting adrenaline-releasing devices in his horses. Zorin identifies Bond as an agent, has May Day assassinate Tibbett and attempts to have Bond killed too.
General Gogol of the KGB confronts Zorin for killing Bond without permission revealing that Zorin was initially trained and financed by the KGB, but has now gone rogue. Later, Zorin unveils to a group of investors his plan to destroy Silicon Valley which will give him—and the potential investors—a monopoly over microchip manufacture.
Bond goes to San Francisco where he learns from CIA agent Chuck Lee that Zorin could be the product of medical experimentation with steroids performed by a Nazi scientist, now Zorin's physician Dr. Carl Mortner. He then investigates a nearby oil rig owned by Zorin and while there finds KGB agent Pola Ivanova recording conversations and her partner placing explosives on the rig. Ivanova's partner is caught and killed, but Ivanova and Bond escape. Later Ivanova takes the recording, but finds that Bond had switched tapes, leaving her with a recording of Japanese music. Bond tracks down the woman Zorin attempted to pay off, State Geologist Stacey Sutton and that Zorin is trying to buy her family oil business.
The two travel to San Francisco City Hall to check Zorin's submitted plans, however Zorin is alerted to their presence and arrives, killing the Chief Geologist with Bond's gun and setting fire to the building in order to both frame Bond for the murder and kill him at the same time. Bond and Sutton escape from the fire, but when the police try to arrest Bond, they escape in a fire engine.
Bond and Sutton infiltrate Zorin's mine, discovering his plot to detonate explosives beneath the lakes along the Hayward and San Andreas faults, which will cause them to flood. A larger bomb is also in the mine to destroy a "geological lock" that prevents the two faults from moving at the same time. Once in place, Zorin and his security chief Scarpine flood the mines and kill the mine workers. Sutton escapes while Bond fights May Day; when she realises Zorin abandoned her, she helps Bond remove the larger bomb, putting the device onto a handcar and pushing it out of the mine, where it explodes, killing her.
Zorin, who had escaped in his airship with Scarpine and Mortner, abducts Sutton as Bond grabs hold of the airships mooring rope. Zorin tries to kill Bond, but he manages to moor the airship to the framework of the Golden Gate Bridge. Sutton attacks Zorin and in the fracas, Mortner and Scarpine are temporarily knocked out. Sutton flees and joins Bond out on the bridge, but Zorin attacks them with an axe. The ensuing fight culminates with Zorin falling to his death, whereupon Mortner attacks Bond using sticks of dynamite, but drops a stick in the cabin, blowing up the airship and killing himself and Scarpine.

Cast:
- Roger Moore as James Bond, MI6 agent 007.
- Christopher Walken as Max Zorin: Main antagonist. A psychopathic microchip industrialist planning to destroy the Silicon Valley in an earthquake and gain a monopoly in the market.
- Tanya Roberts as Stacey Sutton: The granddaughter of an oil tycoon whose company is taken over by Zorin.
- Grace Jones as May Day: Zorin's lover and chief henchwoman. She also possesses superhuman strength.
- Patrick Macnee as Sir Godfrey Tibbett: Bond's ally who helps him enter Zorin's villa and stable.
- Patrick Bauchau as Scarpine: Zorin's loyal associate.
- David Yip as Chuck Lee, a CIA agent who assists Bond and Sutton.
- Willoughby Gray as Dr. Carl Mortner: A former Nazi scientist who designs Zorin's microchips for carrying narcotic drugs (in the German release version, he is a Polish communist).
- Fiona Fullerton as Pola Ivanova; a KGB agent sent by Gogol to spy on Zorin.
Manning Redwood as Bob Conley: Max Zorin's chief mining engineer who handles Zorin's oil interests on the East Coast of the United States.
- Alison Doody as Jenny Flex: One of May Day's assistants who is often seen with Pan Ho.
- Robert Brown as M: The head of MI6
- Desmond Llewelyn as Q: An MI6 officer in charge of the research and development branch. He supplies 007 with his equipment for his mission.
- Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny: M's secretary.
- Geoffrey Keen as Fredrick Gray: The British Minister of Defence.
- Walter Gotell as General Gogol: The head of the KGB.
- Papillon Soo Soo as Pan Ho: One of May Day's assistants.
- Daniel Benzali as W. G. Howe: A city official working at San Francisco City Hall.
- Dolph Lundgren in an early, minor role as Venz, one of General Gogol's KGB Henchmen.
- Jean Rougerie as French private detective Achille Aubergine.
- Maud Adams is said to be visible as an extra in one of the Fisherman's Wharf scenes. In the DVD documentary Inside A View to a Kill, Adams explains that she was visiting her friend Moore on location and ended up in the crowd, but admits she is unable to actually see herself in the film; in the same documentary, director John Glen confirms that Adams appears as an extra, but does not specify where she is visible. The appearance remained a mystery for years until she was identified as standing in the background during one of the Fisherman's Wharf scenes. As a result, Adams appears in three Bond films, previously in The Man with the Golden Gun in 1974 and in Octopussy in 1983.

Production:
A View to a Kill was produced by Albert R. Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson. Wilson also co-authored the screenplay along with Richard Maibaum. At the end of Octopussy during the "James Bond Will Return" sequence, it listed the next film as "From a View to a Kill", the name of the original short story; however, the title was later changed.
When a company with a name similar to Zorin (the Zoran Corporation) was discovered in the United States, a disclaimer was added to the start of the film affirming that Zorin was not related to any real-life company. This is the first Bond film to have a disclaimer (The Living Daylights had a disclaimer about the use of the Red Cross.)

Casting:
Early publicity for the film in 1984 included an announcement that David Bowie would play Zorin. He turned it down, saying, "I didn't want to spend five months watching my stunt double fall off cliffs." The role was offered to Sting and finally to Christopher Walken.
Dolph Lundgren has a brief appearance as one of General Gogol's KGB agents. Lundgren, who was Grace Jones's boyfriend, was visiting her on set when one day an extra was missing so the director John Glen then asked him if he wanted to get a shot at it. Lundgren appears during the confrontation between Gogol and Zorin at the racetrack, standing several steps below Gogol.

Filming:
The film was shot at Pinewood Studios in London, Iceland, Switzerland, France and the United States. Several French landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, its Jules Verne Restaurant and the Château de Chantilly were filmed. The rest of the major filming was done in the Fisherman's Wharf and the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. The Lefty O'Doul Bridge was featured in the fire engine chase scene. The horse racing scenes were shot at Ascot Racecourse.
The production of the film began on 23 June 1984 in Iceland, where the second unit filmed the pre-title sequence. On 27 June 1984, several leftover canisters of petrol used during filming of Ridley Scott's Legend caused Pinewood Studios' "007 Stage" to burn to the ground. The stage was rebuilt, and reopened in January 1985 (renamed as "Albert R. Broccoli's 007 Stage") for filming on A View to a Kill. Work had continued on other stages at Pinewood when Roger Moore rejoined the main unit there on 1 August 1984. The crew then departed for shooting the horse-racing scenes at Royal Ascot Racecourse. The scene in which Bond and Sutton enter the mineshaft was then filmed in a waterlogged quarry near Staines and the Amberley Chalk Pits Museum in West Sussex.

On 6 October 1984, the fourth unit, headed by the special effects supervisor John Richardson, began its work on the climactic fight sequence. At first, only a few plates constructed to resemble the Golden Gate Bridge were used. Later that night, the shooting of the burning San Francisco City Hall commenced. The first actual scenes atop the bridge were filmed on 7 October 1984.
In Paris it was planned that two stunt men, B.J. Worth and Don Caldvedt, would help film two takes of a parachute drop off a (clearly visible) platform that extended from a top edge of the Eiffel Tower. However, sufficient footage was obtained from Worth's jump, so Caldvedt was told he would not be performing his own jump. Caldvedt, unhappy at not being able to perform the jump, parachuted off the tower without authorization from the City of Paris. He was subsequently sacked by the production team for jeopardizing the continuation of filming in the city.
Airship Industries managed a major marketing coup with the inclusion of their Skyship 500 series airship in the film. At the time Airship Industries were producing a fleet of ships which were recognizable over many capitals of the world offering tours, or advertising sponsorship deals. As all Bond films have included the most current technology, this included the lighter than air interest.
The ship used in the climax was a Skyship 500, then on a promotional tour of Los Angeles after its participation in the opening ceremony of the 1984 Olympic Games. At that time, it had "WELCOME" painted across the side of the hull, but the word was replaced by "ZORIN INDUSTRIES" for the film. During the 1984 season, the ship was painted green and red as a part of Fujifilm's blimp fleet; it was subsequently colored white. In real life, inflating it would take up to 24 hours, but during the film it was shown to take two minutes.

Music:
The soundtrack was composed by John Barry, and published by EMI/Capitol. The theme song, "A View to a Kill", was written by Barry and Duran Duran, and performed by the band. "May Day Jumps" is the only track that uses the James Bond theme. Barry's composition On Her Majesty's Secret Service was modified for use in the songs "Snow Job", "He's Dangerous" and "Golden Gate Fight" of A View to a Kill. "A View to a Kill" was second in the British charts and first in the American charts, thus becoming the peak song in the James Bond series.
Duran Duran was chosen to do the song after bassist John Taylor (a lifelong Bond fan) approached producer Cubby Broccoli at a party, and somewhat drunkenly asked "When are you going to get someone decent to do one of your theme songs?"
During the opening sequence, a cover version of the 1965 Beach Boys song "California Girls", performed by Gidea Park with Adrian Baker (a tribute band), is used during a chase in which Bond snowboards; it has been suggested that this teaser sequence helped initiate interest in snowboarding.

Release and Reception:
This was the first Bond film with a premiere outside the UK, opening on 22 May 1985 at San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts. The British premiere was held on 12 June 1985 at the Odeon Leicester Square Cinema in London. The film was first broadcast on British television on 31 January 1990. It achieved a box office collection of US $152.4 million worldwide with $50.3 million in the United States alone. On its opening weekend in the US it earned $10.6 million.
Although its box office reception was excellent, the film's critical response was mostly negative. Rotten Tomatoes currently gives A View to a Kill a 36% "Rotten" rating, which is the lowest rating for the Eon-produced Bond films on the website.
One of the most common criticisms was that Roger Moore's age was 57 – and had visibly aged in the two years that had passed since Octopussy. The Washington Post critic said "Moore isn't just long in the tooth – he's got tusks, and what looks like an eye job has given him the pie-eyed blankness of a zombie. He's not believable anymore in the action sequences, even less so in the romantic scenes – it's like watching women fall all over Gabby Hayes." Sean Connery declared that "Bond should be played by an actor 35, 33 years old. I’m too old. Roger’s too old, too!". In a December 2007 interview, Roger Moore remarked, "I was only about four hundred years too old for the part."
Moore has also stated A View to a Kill as his least favourite film and mentioned that he was mortified to find out that he was older than his female co-star's mother. He was quoted saying "I was horrified on the last Bond I did. Whole slews of sequences where Christopher Walken was machine-gunning hundreds of people. I said 'That wasn't Bond, those weren't Bond films.' It stopped being what they were all about. You didn't dwell on the blood and the brains spewing all over the place".
Pauline Kael of The New Yorker said "The James Bond series has had its bummers, but nothing before in the class of A View to a Kill. You go to a Bond picture expecting some style or, at least, some flash, some lift; you don't expect the dumb police-car crashes you get here. You do see some ingenious daredevil feats, but they're crowded together and, the way they're set up, they don't give you the irresponsible, giddy tingle you're hoping for." Kael also singled out the dispirited direction and the hopeless script. "Director John Glen stages the slaughter scenes so apathetically that the picture itself seems dissociated. (I don't think I've ever seen another movie in which race horses were mistreated and the director failed to work up any indignation. If Glen has any emotions about what he puts on the screen, he keeps them to himself.)"
Lawrence O'Toole of Maclean's believed it was one of the series' best entries. "Of all the modern formulas in the movie industry, the James Bond series is among the most pleasurable and durable. Lavish with their budgets, the producers also bring a great deal of craft, wit and a sense of fun to the films. Agent 007 is like an old friend whom an audience meets for drinks every two years or so; he regales them with tall tales, winking all the time. The 15th and newest Bond epic, A View to a Kill, is an especially satisfying encounter. Opening with a breathtaking ski chase in Siberia, A View to a Kill is the fastest Bond picture yet. Its pace has the precision of a Swiss watch and the momentum of a greyhound on the track. There is a spectacular chase up and down the Eiffel Tower and through Paris streets, which Bond finishes in a severed car on just two wheels. But none of the action prepares the viewer for the heart-stopping climax with Zorin's dirigible tangled in the cables on top of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge." And although O'Toole believed that Moore was showing his age in the role, "there are plenty of tunes left in his violin. James Bond is still a virtuoso, with a licence to thrill."
Brian J. Arthurs of The Beach Reporter said it was the worst film of the Bond series. C. Pea of the Time Out Film Guide said, "Grace Jones is badly wasted." Norman Wilner of MSN chose it as the worst Bond film, while IGN picked as the fourth worst, and Entertainment Weekly as the fifth worst.
Bond historian John Brosnan believed A View to a Kill was Moore's best Bond entry. He said Moore looked in better shape than the previous Bond film, Octopussy. Brosnan especially admired the dirigible finale.
Danny Peary had mixed feelings about A View to a Kill but was generally complimentary: "Despite what reviewers automatically reported, [Moore] looks trimmer and more energetic than in some of the previous efforts ... I wish Bond had a few more of his famous gadgets on hand, but his actions scenes are exciting and some of the stunt work is spectacular. Walken's the first Bond villain who is not so much an evil person as a crazed neurotic. I find him more memorable than some of the more recent Bond foes ... Unfortunately, the filmmakers – who ruined villain Jaws by making him a nice guy in Moonraker – make the mistake of switching Mayday at the end from Bond's nemesis to his accomplice, depriving us of a slam-bang fight to the finish between the two (I suppose gentleman Bond isn't allowed to kill women, even a monster like Mayday) ... [The film] lacks the flamboyance of earlier Bond films, and has a terrible slapstick chase sequence in San Francisco, but overall it's fast-paced, fairly enjoyable, and a worthy entry in the series."
Also among the more positive reviews was Movie Freaks 365's Kyle Bell: "Good ol' Roger gave it his best. ... Whether you can get past the absurdity of the storyline, you can't really deny that it has stunning stunt work and lots of action. It's an entertaining movie that could have been better."

Apearances in other media:
This film was adapted into two video games in 1985. The first, titled A View to a Kill, was published by Domark. It was available for the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, Oric 1 and Oric Atmos, and MSX. The second, titled James Bond 007: A View to a Kill was a text-based video game for DOS and Apple II computers. It was developed by Angelsoft, Inc. and published by Mindscape Inc.
The film was loosely adapted into a series of four Find Your Fate adventure game books, Win, Place, or Die, Strike it Deadly, Programmed for Danger, and Barracuda Run, which were released in 1985.

May Day was a playable multiplayer character in the 1997 and 2000 video games GoldenEye 007 and The World Is Not Enough, for the Nintendo 64 and both N64 and PlayStation respectively. In the 2002 game Nightfire, May Day and Max Zorin also appears as bots. Other references include Nikolai Diavolo, a character in the 2004 game James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing, claiming Zorin to be his mentor and friend. In GoldenEye: Rogue Agent, a multiplayer level is the summit of the Golden Gate Bridge, including the Zorin blimp, which would fire on players when activated. Players are also able to climb the suspension cables (similar to the events of the film).

Never Say Never Again - 1983

By Wikipedia
Never Say Never Again is a 1983 spy film based on the James Bond novel Thunderball, which was previously adapted in 1965 under that name. Unlike the majority of Bond films, Never Say Never Again was not produced by Eon Productions, but by an independent production company, one of whose members was Kevin McClory, one of the original writers of the Thunderball storyline with Ian Fleming and Jack Whittingham. McClory retained the filming rights of the novel following a long legal battle dating from the 1960s.
The film was directed by Irvin Kershner and, like Thunderball, stars Sean Connery as British Secret Service agent James Bond, 007, marking his return to the role 12 years after Diamonds Are Forever. The film's title references how Connery said to the press in 1971 that he would "never again" play James Bond. As Connery was 52 at the time of filming, the storyline features an ageing Bond, who is brought back into action to investigate the theft of two nuclear weapons by SPECTRE. Filming locations included France, Spain, the Bahamas and Elstree Studios in England.
Never Say Never Again was released by Warner Bros. in the autumn of 1983. It opened to positive critic reviews and was a commercial success, grossing $160 million at the box office, although this was less overall than the Eon-produced Bond film released in June of the same year, Octopussy. In 1997 the distribution rights of Never Say Never Again were purchased by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which distributes Eon's Bond films, and the company has handled subsequent home video releases of the film.

Plot:
After MI6 agent James Bond, 007, fails a routine training exercise, his superior, M, orders Bond to enrol in a health clinic in London to get back into shape. While there, Bond witnesses a mysterious nurse named Fatima Blush giving a sadomasochistic beating to a patient in a nearby room. The man's face is bandaged and after Blush finishes her beating, Bond sees the patient using a machine which scans his eye. Bond is seen by Blush and an attempt is subsequently made to kill him in the clinic gym: however Bond manages to defeat the assassin.
Blush and her charge, a United States Air Force pilot named Jack Petachi, are operatives of SPECTRE, a criminal organisation run by Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Petachi has undergone an operation on his right eye to make it match the retinal pattern of the US President, which he uses to circumvent security at an American military base in England. While doing so, he replaces the dummy warheads in two cruise missiles with live nuclear warheads; SPECTRE then obtains the warheads to extort billions of dollars from NATO governments. Blush subsequently murders Petachi.
Under orders from the Prime Minister, M reluctantly reactivates the double-0 section and Bond is assigned the task of tracking down the missing weapons. He meets Domino Petachi, the pilot's sister, and her wealthy lover, Maximillian Largo, a SPECTRE agent. Bond follows Largo and his yacht to the Bahamas, where he spars with Blush and Largo.
Bond is informed by Nigel Small-Fawcett of the British Consulate that Largo's yacht is now heading for Nice, France. There, Bond joins forces with his CIA counterpart, Felix Leiter. Bond goes to a beauty salon where he poses as an employee and, whilst giving Domino a massage, is informed by her that Largo is hosting an event at a casino that evening. At the charity event, Largo and Bond play a 3-D video game called Domination, which Bond ultimately wins; Bond then informs Domino of her brother's death. Bond returns to his villa to find Nicole, his French contact, dead, having been killed by Blush. After a vehicle chase on his motorbike, Blush captures Bond. Forced to write his memoirs putting her as his "Number One" sexual partner, Bond uses his Q-branch-issue fountain pen to shoot Blush.
Bond and Felix then attempt to board Largo's motor yacht, the Flying Saucer, in search of the missing nuclear warheads. Bond becomes trapped and is taken, with Domino, to Palmyra, Largo's base of operations in North Africa. Largo punishes Domino for betraying him by auctioning her off to some passing Arabs. Bond subsequently escapes and rescues Domino.
After her rescue, Domino and Bond reunite with Felix on a US Navy submarine and track Largo to a location known as The Tears of Allah, below a desert oasis. Bond and Leiter infiltrate the underground facility and a gun battle erupts between Felix's team and Largo's men in the temple. In the confusion Largo makes a getaway with one of the warheads. Bond catches and fights Largo underwater. Just as Largo tries to detonate the last bomb, he is killed by Domino, taking revenge for her brother's death. Bond then returns to the Bahamas with Domino.

Cast:
- Sean Connery as James Bond, MI6 agent 007.
- Kim Basinger as Domino Petachi, sister of Jack Petachi and mistress of Maximillian Largo.
- Klaus Maria Brandauer as Maximillian Largo; based on the character Emilio Largo, a senior member of SPECTRE.
- Barbara Carrera as Fatima Blush; based on Fiona Volpe and a member of SPECTRE.
- Bernie Casey as Felix Leiter, Bond's CIA contact and friend.
- Max von Sydow as Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the head of SPECTRE.
- Edward Fox as M, Bond's superior at MI6.
- Rowan Atkinson as Nigel Small-Fawcett, Foreign Office representative in the Bahamas.
- Gavan O'Herlihy as Jack Petachi, a pilot used by SPECTRE to steal the nuclear missiles. He is Domino Petachi's brother.
- Alec McCowen as Q (also known as Algy)
- Pamela Salem as Miss Moneypenny, M's secretary
- Saskia Cohen Tanugi as Nicole, Bond's MI6 contact in France
- Prunella Gee as Patricia Fearing, a physiotherapist at the clinic
- Valerie Leon as "Lady in Bahamas", a tourist in the Bahamas and Bond girl.
- John Stephen Hill as Communications Officer
- Milow Kirek as Kovacs
- Pat Roach as Lippe
- Anthony Sharp as Lord Ambrose

Production:
Never Say Never Again had its origins in the early 1960s following the controversy over the 1961 Thunderball novel. Fleming, along with independent producer Kevin McClory and scriptwriter Jack Whittingham had worked together on a script for a potential Bond film, to be called Longitude 78 West, which was subsequently abandoned because of the costs involved. Fleming, "always reluctant to let a good idea lie idle", turned this into the novel Thunderball which did not credit either McClory or Whittingham; McClory then took Fleming to the High Court in London for breach of copyright and the matter was settled in 1963. After Eon Productions started producing the Bond films, they subsequently made a deal with McClory, who would produce Thunderball, and then not make any further version of the novel for a period of ten years following the release of the Eon-produced version in 1965.
In the mid-1970s McClory again started working on a project to bring a Thunderball adaptation to production and, with the working titleWarhead, he brought writer Len Deighton together with Sean Connery to work on a script. The script ran into difficulties after accusations from Eon Productions that the project had gone beyond copyright restrictions, which confined McClory to a film based on the Thunderball novel only, and once again the project was deferred. Towards the end of the 1970s developments were reported on the project under the name James Bond of the Secret Service, but when producer Jack Schwartzman became involved and cleared a number of the legal issues that still surrounded the project he brought on board scriptwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr to work on the screenplay. Connery was unhappy with some aspects of the work and asked British television writers Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais to undertake re-writes, although they went uncredited for their efforts because of a restriction by the Writers Guild of America.
The film underwent one final change in title: after Connery had finished filming Diamonds Are Forever he had pledged that he would "never" play Bond again. Connery's wife, Micheline, suggested the title Never Say Never Again, referring to her husband's vow and the producers acknowledged her contribution by listing on the end credits "Title "Never Say Never Again" by: Micheline Connery". A final attempt by Fleming's trustees to block the film was made in the High Courts in London in the spring of 1983, but these were thrown out by the court and Never Say Never Again was permitted to proceed.

Cast and Crew:
When producer Kevin McClory had first planned the film in 1964 he held initial talks with Richard Burton for the part of Bond, although the project came to nothing because of the legal issues involved. When the Warhead project was launched in the late 1970s, a number of actors were mentioned in the trade press, including Orson Welles for the part of Blofeld, Trevor Howard to play M and Richard Attenborough as director.
In 1978 the working title James Bond of the Secret Service was being used and Connery was in the frame once again, potentially going head-to-head with the next Eon Bond film, Moonraker. By 1980, with legal issues again causing the project to flounder, Connery thought himself unlikely to play the role, as he stated in an interview in the Sunday Express "when I first worked on the script with Len I had no thought of actually being in the film". When producer Jack Schwartzman became involved, he asked Connery to play Bond: Connery agreed, asking (and getting) a fee of $3 million, ($7 million in 2013 dollars) a percentage of the profits, as well as casting and script approval. Subsequent to Connery reprising the role, the script has several references to Bond's advancing years – playing on Connery being 52 at the time of filming – and academic Jeremy Black has pointed out that there are other aspects of age and disillusionment in the film, such as the Shrubland's porter referring to Bond's car ("they don't make them like that any more"), the new M having no use for the 00 section and Q with his reduced budgets.
For the main villain in the film, Maximillian Largo, Connery suggested Klaus Maria Brandauer, the lead of the 1981 Academy Award-winning Hungarian film Mephisto. Through the same route came Max von Sydow as Ernst Stavro Blofeld, although he still retained his Eon-originated white cat in the film. For the femme fatale, Director Irvin Kershner selected former model and Playboy cover girl Barbara Carrera to play Fatima Blush – the name coming from one of the early scripts of Thunderball. Carrera's performance as Fatima Blush earned her a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, which she lost to Cher for her role in Silkwood.
Micheline Connery, Sean's wife, had met up-and-coming actress Kim Basinger at a hotel in London and suggested her to Connery, which he agreed upon. For the role of Felix Leiter, Connery spoke with Bernie Casey, saying that as the Leiter role was never remembered by audiences, using a black Leiter may make him more memorable. Others cast included comedian Rowan Atkinson, who would later parody Bond in his role of Johnny English.
Former Eon Productions' editor and director of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Peter R. Hunt, was approached to direct the film but declined due to his previous work with Eon. Irvin Kershner, who had achieved success in 1980 with The Empire Strikes Back was then hired. A number of the crew from the 1981 film Raiders of the Lost Ark were also appointed, including first assistant director David Tomblin; director of photography Douglas Slocombe and production designers Philip Harrison and Stephen Grimes.

Filming:
Filming for Never Say Never Again began on 27 September 1982 on the French Riviera for two months before moving to Nassau, the Bahamas in mid-November where filming took place at Clifton Pier, which was also one of the locations used in Thunderball. The Spanish city of Almería was also used as a location. Largo's Palmyran fortress was actually historic Fort Carré in Antibes. For Largo's ship, the Flying Saucer, the yacht Nabila, owned by Saudi billionaire, Adnan Khashoggi, was used. The boat, now owned by Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, has subsequently been renamed the Kingdom 5KR. Principal photography finished at Elstree Studios where interior shots were filmed. Elstree also housed the Tears of Allah underwater cavern, which took three months to construct. Most of the filming was completed in the spring of 1983, although there was some additional shooting during the summer of 1983.
Production on the film was troubled with Connery taking on many of the production duties with assistant director David Tomblin. Director Irvin Kershner was critical of producer Jack Schwartzman, saying that whilst he was a good businessman "he didn't have the experience of a film producer". After the production ran out of money, Schwartzman had to fund further production out of his own pocket and later admitted he had underestimated the amount the film would cost to make.
Many of the elements of the Eon-produced Bond films were not present in Never Say Never Again for legal reasons. These included the gun barrel sequence, where a screen full of 007 symbols appeared instead, and similarly there was no "James Bond Theme" to use, although no effort was made to supplement another tune. Never Say Never Again did not use a pre-credits sequence, which was filmed but not used; instead the film opens with the credits run over the top of the opening sequence of Bond on a training mission.

Music:
The music for Never Say Never Again was written by Michel Legrand, who composed a score similar to his work as a jazz pianist. The score has been criticised as "anachronistic and misjudged", "bizzarely intermittent"  and "the most disappointing feature of the film". Legrand also wrote the main theme "Never Say Never Again", which featured lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman—who had also worked with Legrand in the Academy Award winning song "The Windmills of Your Mind"—and was performed by Lani Hall after Bonnie Tyler, who disliked the song, had reclutantly declined.
Phyllis Hyman also recorded a potential theme song, written by Stephen Forsyth and Jim Ryan, but the song—an unsolicited submission—was passed over given Legrand's contractual obligations with the music.

Release and reception:
Never Say Never Again premiered in New York on 7 October 1983, grossing $9.72 million ($23 million in 2013 dollars) on its first weekend, which was reported to be "the best opening record of any James Bond film" up to that point and surpassing Octopussy's $8.9 million ($21 million in 2013 dollars) from June that year. The film went on general release in the US in 1,500 cinemas on 14 October 1983 and had its UK premiere at the Warner West End cinema in Leicester Square on 14 December 1983. Worldwide, Never Say Never Again grossed $160 million in box office returns, which was a solid return on the budget of $36 million.
Warner Bros. released Never Say Never Again on VHS and Betamax in 1984, and on laserdisc in 1995. After Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer purchased the distribution rights in 1997 (see Legacy, below), the company has released the film on both VHS and DVD in 2001, and on Blu-Ray in 2009.

Contemporary reviews:
Never Say Never Again was broadly welcomed and praised by the critics: Ian Christie, writing in the Daily Express, said that Never Say Never Again was "one of the better Bonds", finding the film "superbly witty and entertaining, ... the dialogue is crisp and the fight scenes imaginative." Christie also thought that "Connery has lost none of his charm and, if anything, is more appealing than ever as the stylish resolute hero." David Robinson, writing in The Times also concentrated on Connery, saying that: "Connery ... is back, looking hardly a day older or thicker, and still outclassing every other exponent of the role, in the goodnatured throwaway with which he parries all the sex and violence on the way". For Robinson, the presence of Connery and Klaus Maria Brandauer as Maximillian Largo "very nearly make it all worthwhile." The reviewer for Time Out summed up Never Say Never Again saying "The action's good, the photography excellent, the sets decent; but the real clincher is the fact that Bond is once more played by a man with the right stuff."
Derek Malcolm in The Guardian showed himself to be a fan of Connery's Bond, saying the film contains "the best Bond in the business", but nevertheless did not find Never Say Never Again any more enjoyable than the recently released Octopussy (starring Roger Moore), or "that either of them came very near to matching Dr. No or From Russia with Love." Malcolm's main issue with the film was that he had a "feeling that a constant struggle was going on between a desire to make a huge box-office success and the effort to make character as important as stunts." Malcolm summed up that "the mix remains obstinately the same-up to scratch but not surpassing it." Writing in The Guardian's sister paper, The Observer, Philip French noted that "this curiously muted film ends up making no contribution of its own and inviting damaging comparisons with the original, hyper-confident Thunderball". French concluded that "like an hour-glass full of damp sand, the picture moves with increasing slowness as it approaches a confused climax in the Persian Gulf."
Writing for Newsweek, critic Jack Kroll thought the early part of the film was handled "with wit and style", although he went on to say that the director was "hamstrung by Lorenzo Semple's script". Richard Schickel, writing in Time magazine praised the film and its cast. He wrote that Klaus Maria Brandauer's character was "played with silky, neurotic charm", whilst Barbara Carrera, playing Fatima Blush, "deftly parodies all the fatal femmes who have slithered through Bond's career". Schickel's highest praise was saved for the return of Connery, observing "it is good to see Connery's grave stylishness in this role again. It makes Bond's cynicism and opportunism seem the product of genuine worldliness (and world weariness) as opposed to Roger Moore's mere twirpishness."
Janet Maslin, writing in The New York Times, was broadly praising of the film, saying she thought that Never Say Never Again "has noticeably more humor and character than the Bond films usually provide. It has a marvelous villain in Largo." Maslin also thought highly of Connery in the role, observing that "in Never Say Never Again, the formula is broadened to accommodate an older, seasoned man of much greater stature, and Mr. Connery expertly fills the bill." Writing in The Washington Post, Gary Arnold was fulsome in his praise, saying that Never Say Never Again is "one of the best James Bond adventure thrillers ever made", going on to say that "this picture is likely to remain a cherished, savory example of commercial filmmaking at its most astute and accomplished." Arnold went further, saying that "Never Say Never Again is the best acted Bond picture ever made, because it clearly surpasses any predecessors in the area of inventive and clever character delineation".
The critic for The Globe and Mail, Jay Scott, also praised the film, saying that Never Say Never Again "may be the only instalment of the long-running series that has been helmed by a first-rate director". According to Scott, the director, with high quality support cast, resulted in the "classiest of all the Bonds". Roger Ebert gave the film 3½ out of 4 stars, and wrote that Never Say Never Again, while consisting of a basic "Bond plot", was different from other Bond films: "For one thing, there's more of a human element in the movie, and it comes from Klaus Maria Brandauer, as Largo." Ebert went on to add, "there was never a Beatles reunion ... but here, by God, is Sean Connery as Sir James Bond. Good work, 007."

Reflective reviews:
Because Never Say Never Again is not an Eon-produced film, it has not been included in a number of subsequent reviews. Norman Wilner of MSN said that 1967's Casino Royale and Never Say Never Again "exist outside the 'official' continuity, [and] are excluded from this list, just as they're absent from MGM's megabox. But take my word for it; they're both pretty awful". Of the more recent reviews, opinion on Never Say Never Again is still mixed: film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes lists the film with a 59% "rotten" rating from 39 reviews. The score is still more positive than some of the Eon films, with Rotten Tomatoes ranking Never Say Never Again 16th among all Bond films in 2008. Empire gives the film three of a possible five stars, observing that "Connery was perhaps wise to call it quits the first time round". IGN gave Never Say Never Again a score of 5 out of ten, claiming that the film "is more miss than hit". The review also thought that the film was "marred with too many clunky exposition scenes and not enough moments of Bond being Bond".
In 1995 Michael Sauter of Entertainment Weekly rated Never Say Never Again as the ninth best Bond film to that point, after seventeen films had been released. Sauter thought the film "is successful only as a portrait of an over-the-hill superhero." He did admit, however that "even past his prime, Connery proves that nobody does it better". James Berardinelli, in his review of Never Say Never Again, thinks the re-writing of the Thunderball story has led to a film which has "a hokey, jokey feel, [it] is possibly the worst-written Bond script of all". Berardinelli concludes that "it's a major disappointment that, having lured back the original 007, the film makers couldn't offer him something better than this drawn-out, hackneyed story." Critic Danny Peary wrote that "it was great to see Sean Connery return as James Bond after a dozen years". He also thought the supporting cast was good, saying that Klaus Maria Brandauer's Largo was "neurotic, vulnerable ... one of the most complex of Bond's foes" and that Barbara Carrera and Kim Basinger "make lasting impressions." Peary also wrote that the "film is exotic, well acted, and stylishly directed ... It would be one of the best Bond films if the finale weren't disappointing. When will filmmakers realize that underwater fight scenes don't work because viewers usually can't tell the hero and villain apart and they know doubles are being used?"

Legacy:
In the 1990s, McClory announced plans to make another adaptation of the Thunderball story, Warhead 2000 AD, with Timothy Dalton in the lead role, but this was eventually scrapped. In 1997 the Sony Corporation acquired all or some of McClory's rights in an undisclosed deal, and subsequently announced that it intended to make a series of Bond films, as the company also held the rights to Casino Royale. This move prompted a round of litigation from MGM, which was settled in an out-of-court settlement in which Sony gave up all claims on Bond, although McClory still claimed he would proceed with another Bond film, and continued his case against MGM and Danjaq; on 27 August 2001 the court rejected McClory's suit. McClory died in 2006.
On 4 December 1997, MGM announced that the company had purchased the rights to Never Say Never Again from Schwartzman's company Taliafilm. The company has since handled the release of both the DVD and Blu-Ray editions of the film.

Octopussy -1983

By Wikipedia
Octopussy (1983) is the thirteenth entry in the James Bond film series, and the sixth to star Roger Moore as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond.
The film's title is taken from a short story in Ian Fleming's 1966 short story collection Octopussy and The Living Daylights, although the film's plot is original. It does, however, include a portion inspired by the Fleming short story "The Property of a Lady" (included in 1967 and later editions of Octopussy and The Living Daylights), while the events of the short story "Octopussy" form a part of the title character's background and are recounted by her.
Bond is assigned the task of following a general who is stealing jewels and relics from the Russian government. This leads him to a wealthy Afghan prince, Kamal Khan, and his associate, Octopussy. Bond uncovers a plot to force disarmament in Europe with the use of a nuclear weapon.
Produced by Albert R. Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, Octopussy was released in the same year as the non-Eon Bond film " Never Say Never Again ". Written by George MacDonald Fraser, Richard Maibaum, and Michael G. Wilson, the film was directed by John Glen.

Plot:
British agent 009 is found dead at the British embassy in East Berlin, dressed as a circus clown and carrying a fake Fabergé egg. MI6 immediately suspects Soviet involvement and sends James Bond—agent 007—to investigate, after seeing the real egg appear at an auction in London, ordering the agent to find out who the seller is. At the auction, Bond is able to swap the real egg with the fake, and engages in a bidding war with exiled Afghan prince Kamal Khan, forcing Khan to pay £500,000 for the fake egg. Bond follows Khan back to his palace in Rajasthan, India, where Bond defeats Khan in a game of backgammon. Bond escapes with his Indian colleague Vijay, evading Khan's bodyguard Gobinda's attempts to kill them both. Bond is seduced by one of Khan's associates, Magda, and notices that she has a blue-ringed octopus tattoo. Magda steals the real Fabergé egg fitted with a listening device by Q, while Gobinda captures Bond and takes him to Khan's palace. After Bond escapes from his cell he listens in on the bug in the Fabergé egg and discovers that Khan is working with Orlov, a renegade Soviet general, who is seeking to expand Soviet borders into Europe.
After escaping the palace, Bond infiltrates a floating palace in Udaipur, India, and there finds its owner, Octopussy, a wealthy woman who leads the Octopus cult, of which Magda is a part. In Octopussy's palace, Bond finds out that Orlov has been supplying Khan with priceless Soviet treasures, replacing them with replicas, while Khan has been smuggling the real versions into the West, via Octopussy's circus troupe. Orlov is planning to meet Khan at Karl-Marx-Stadt (Chemnitz) in East Germany, where the circus is scheduled to perform. After evading Khan's assassins, Bond goes to East Germany.
Bond infiltrates the circus, and finds that Orlov replaced the Soviet treasures with a nuclear warhead, primed to explode during the circus show at a US Air Force base in West Germany. The explosion would trigger Europe into seeking disarmament, in the belief that the bomb was a US one that detonated by accident, leaving its borders open to Soviet invasion. Bond takes Orlov's car, drives it along the train tracks and boards the moving circus train. Orlov is shot dead by GDR guards, while trying to cross the border. Bond kills the twin knife-throwers, Mischka and Grischka, in revenge for 009's death, and, after falling from the train, commandeers a car, in order to get to the Air Force base. At the base, Bond disguises himself as a clown to evade the West German police. He attempts to convince Octopussy that Khan has betrayed her, by showing her one of the treasures, found in Orlov's car, that she was to smuggle for him. Octopussy realises that she has been tricked and assists Bond in deactivating the warhead.
Bond and Octopussy return to India and launch an assault on Khan's palace. Khan and Gobinda flee the palace, capturing Octopussy in the process. Bond follows them as they attempt to escape in an aeroplane, clinging to the fuselage and disabling one of its engines. Gobinda dies after falling off the roof of the plane and Bond rescues Octopussy from Khan, the pair jumping onto a nearby cliff moments before the plane crashes into a mountain, killing Khan. While M and General Gogol discuss the return of the jewellery, Bond recuperates with Octopussy, aboard her private boat in India.

Cast:
- Roger Moore as James Bond, MI6 agent 007.
- Maud Adams as Octopussy: A jewel smuggler and wealthy businesswoman.
- Louis Jourdan as Kamal Khan: An exiled Afghan prince and the film's main villain.
- Kabir Bedi as Gobinda: Khan's bodyguard.
- Steven Berkoff as General Orlov: A Soviet general who works with Khan to bomb a U.S. airbase.
- Kristina Wayborn as Magda: Octopussy's and Khan's trusted subordinate.
- Vijay Amritraj as Vijay: Bond's ally in India.
- David Meyer & Anthony Meyer as Mischka & Grischka: Khan's knife-throwing henchmen.
- Desmond Llewelyn as Q: MI6's gadget designer. Llewelyn was disappointed because he was unable to travel to India since his scenes were filmed at Pinewood Studios.
- Robert Brown as M: Head of the British Secret Service.
- Geoffrey Keen as Fredrick Gray: Britain's Minister of Defence.
- Walter Gotell as General Gogol: KGB leader working to stop Orlov.
- Douglas Wilmer as Jim Fanning: MI6's operative with a knowledge of artefacts.
- Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny: M's secretary.
- Michaela Clavell as Penelope Smallbone: Moneypenny's assistant.
- Andy Bradford as MI6 agent 009.

Production:
The title 'Octopussy' comes from the Ian Fleming collection of short stories Octopussy and The Living Daylights. Hardly any of the plot of the short story "Octopussy" is used, however, with its events simply related by Bond as the family backstory for one of the main characters. The scene at Sotheby's is, though, drawn from the short story "The Property of a Lady" (included in 1967 and later editions of the collection), while Kamal Khan's reaction following the backgammon game is taken from Fleming's novel Moonraker. Due to a non-Eon Bond film, Never Say Never Again being released in 1983, Octopussy saw Roger Moore returning for the role, though he had showed interest in departing from James Bond after For Your Eyes Only.
George MacDonald Fraser was hired to work on an early draft of the script and he proposed that the story be set in India.

Casting:
Following For Your Eyes Only, Roger Moore had expressed a desire to stop playing James Bond. His original contract had been for three films, which was fulfilled with The Spy Who Loved Me. Subsequent films were negotiated on a film by film basis. Given his reluctance to return for Octopussy, the producers engaged in a semi-public quest for the next Bond, with both Timothy Dalton and James Brolin being suggested. However, when the rival Never Say Never Again was announced the producers re-contracted Moore in the belief that an established actor in the role would fare better against Sean Connery. Brolin's three screentests were publicly released for the first time as a special feature named James Brolin: The Man Who Would Be Bond in the Octopussy Ultimate Edition DVD.
The producers were initially reluctant to feature Maud Adams again because her previous character was killed in The Man with the Golden Gun. Sybil Danning was announced inPrevue magazine in 1982 as being Octopussy, but was never actually cast. Faye Dunaway was deemed too expensive. Barbara Carrera said she turned down the role to take a part in the competing Bond film Never Say Never Again. In the book A Star is Found: Our Adventures Casting Some of Hollywood's Biggest Movies, casting director Jane Jenkins revealed that the Bond producers told her that they wanted an East Indian actress to play Octopussy, so she looked at the only two Indians in a then predominantly white Hollywood, Persis Khambatta and Susie Coelho. Afterwards, she auditioned white actresses, like Barbara Parkins, who she felt could pass for Indian. Finally, Cubby Broccoli announced to her that they would cast Swedish-born Maud Adams, darken her hair, and change a few lines about how she was raised by an Indian family. A different plotline, with Adams' British father exposed as a traitor, was used instead. As for Adams, she asked to play Octopussy as a European woman and was granted this, but on the title character's name, she felt the producers "went too far".
Octopussy is also the first movie to have Robert Brown as M, because of the death of Bernard Lee in 1981. Desmond Llewelyn would get a larger role as Q in this film. One of Bond's allies was played by Vijay Amritraj, who was a professional tennis player. His character not only shares the same first name, but he is also the tennis pro at Kamal Khan's club, and he uses his tennis racket as a weapon during the auto rickshaw chase (accompanied by the sound of a tennis ball being hit and scenes of onlookers turning their heads left and right as if they are watching a tennis match).
There is a brief cameo appearance by Gary Russell as a teenager in a car. Russell had been a popular child actor as "Dick" in the television series The Famous Five.

Filming:
The filming of Octopussy began on 10 August 1982 with the scene in which Bond arrives at Checkpoint Charlie. Principal photography was done by Arthur Wooster and his second unit, who later filmed the knife-throwing scenes. Much of the film was shot in Udaipur, India. The Monsoon Palace served as the exterior of Kamal Khan's palace, while scenes set at Octopussy's palace were filmed at the Lake Palace and Jag Mandir, and Bond's hotel was the Shiv Niwas Palace. In England RAF Northolt, RAF Upper Heyford and RAF Oakley were the main locations. The Karl-Marx-Stadt railways scenes were shot at the Nene Valley Railway, near Peterborough, while studio work was performed at the Pinewood Studios and 007 Stage. Most of the crew as well as Roger Moore had diet problems while shooting in India.
The pre-title sequence has a scene where Bond flies a nimble homebuilt Bede BD-5J aircraft through an open hangar. Hollywood stunt pilot and aerial coordinator J.W. "Corkey" Fornoff, who piloted the aircraft at more than 150 miles per hour, has said, "Today, few directors would consider such a stunt. They'd just whip it up in a computer lab." Having collapsible wings, the plane was shown hidden in a horse trailer; however, a dummy was used for this shot. Filming inside the hangar was achieved by attaching the aircraft to an old Jaguar car by a steel pole with the roof removed and driving along. The second unit were able to add enough obstacles including people and objects inside the hangar to hide the car and the pole and make it look as though Moore was flying inside the base. For the explosion after the mini jet escapes, however, a miniature of the hangar was constructed and filmed up close. The exploding pieces of the hangar were in reality only four inches in length. A Mercedes-Benz saloon car was stolen by Bond and used to chase the train – having had his tyres shot out, Bond drove on the rails and entered the train. During filming, the car had intact tyres in one scene so as to avoid any mishap.
Stunt co-ordinator Martin Grace suffered an injury while shooting the scene where Bond climbs down the train to catch Octopussy's attention. During the second day of filming, Grace – who was Roger Moore's stunt double for the scene – carried on doing the scene longer than he should have, due to a miscommunication with the second unit director, and the train entered a section of the track that the team had not properly surveyed. Shortly afterwards, a concrete pole fractured Grace's left leg. This affected morale in the camp for some time.
The bicyclist seen passing in the middle of a swordfight during the tuk tuk chase sequence was in fact a bystander who passed through the shot, oblivious to the filming; his intrusion was captured by two cameras and left in the final film as an unscheduled stunt. Cameraman Alan Hume's last scene was that of Octopussy's followers rowing. That day, little time was left and it was decided to film the sunset at the eleventh hour when Hume said, "Oh, just shoot the bloody thing!"
The Fabergé egg in the film is real; it was made in 1897 and is called the Coronation Egg, although the egg in the film is named in the auction catalogue as "Property of a Lady", which is the name of one of Ian Fleming's short stories released in more recent editions of the collection Octopussy and The Living Daylights.
In a bit of diegesis that "breaks the fourth wall", Vijay signals his affiliation to MI6 by playing the James Bond Theme on a recorder while Bond is disembarking from a boat in the harbour near the City Palace. Like his fictional counterpart, the real Vijay had a distinct fear of snakes and found difficulty holding the basket during filming.

Music:
The score was composed by John Barry, with the lyrics by Tim Rice. The opening theme, "All Time High", is sung by Rita Coolidge and is one of six musical themes in the James Bond series whose song titles do not refer to the film's title, the other five being Dr. No (1962), "We Have All the Time in the World" from On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), "Nobody Does It Better" from The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) (although the song's lyrics do include the phrase, "the spy who loved me"), the song "You Know My Name" from Casino Royale (2006), and "Another Way to Die" from Quantum of Solace (2008). "All Time High" spent four weeks at number one on the US Billboard Adult Contemporary singles chart and reached number 36 on the Billboard Hot 100.
The soundtrack album was released in 1985 by A&M Records; the compact disc version of this release was recalled due to a colour printing error which omitted the credits from the album cover, making it a rare collector's item. In 1997, the soundtrack was re-issued by Rykodisc, with the original soundtrack music and some film dialogue, on an Enhanced CD version. The 2003 release, by EMI, restored the original soundtrack music without dialogue.

Release and Reception:
Octopussy's premiere took place at the Odeon Leicester Square on 6 June 1983 in the company of Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales. Within five months of its premiere, it was released in 16 countries worldwide. The film earned slightly less than For Your Eyes Only, but still grossed $187,500,000, with $67.8 million in the United States alone. It also performed slightly better than Never Say Never Again, the non-Eon Bond remake of Thunderball which came out a few months later.
The film has received mixed reviews. Some reviewers disliked Bond's clown costume, gorilla outfit, and Tarzan yell during a jungle chase. One review claimed that it was long and confusing. By contrast, Louis Jourdan's "suave" performance, the elegance of the film locations in India, and the stunts on aircraft and the train were appreciated. Jeffrey Westhoff at Rotten Tomatoes praised Roger Moore as being "sterling". Neal Gabler and Jeffrey Lyons at the TV-show Sneak Previews praised the film and said "Octopussydelivers" and "The nice thing about Octopussy is that it's going back-to-basics, less gadgets, more hand-to-hand combat. It's more of an adventure movie in a more traditional sense and I like it for that". Danny Peary wrote that Octopussy "has slow spots, little humour, and villains who aren’t nearly of the calibre of Dr. No, Goldfinger, or Blofeld. Also, the filmmakers make the mistake of demeaning Bond by having him swing through the trees and emitting a Tarzan cry and having him hide in a gorilla suit and later disguise himself as a clown (whom all the kids at the circus laugh at). It’s as if they’re trying to remind us that everything is tongue-in-cheek, but that makes little sense, for the film is much more serious than typical Bond outings – in fact, it recalls the tone of From Russia with Love." Entertainment Weekly chose Octopussy as the third worst Bond film, while Norman Wilner of MSN chose it as the eighth worst, and IGN chose it as the seventh worst. The review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a 43% rating.
Octopussy was nominated for an Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films Award, with Maud Adams nominated for the Saturn Award in the Best Fantasy Supporting Actress category. Chris Nashawaty also ranks her as the best Bond girl of the Roger Moore James Bond films. The film won the Golden Screen Award in Germany and the Golden Reel Award for Best Sound Editing.