Octopussy (1983)
Directed by John Glen
James Bond is sent to investigate after a fellow “00” agent is found dead with a priceless Fabergé egg. Bond follows the mystery and uncovers a smuggling scandal and a Russian General who wants to provoke a new World War.
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What critics compared Octopussy to
It's a mystery how the same British agent can be both clown-suit wearing kid entertainer (in Octopussy, 1983) and the stone killer that the amazing Daniel Craig plays in this critic- and fan-savaged hit of today.
And all in an atmosphere of adolescent smuttiness that would get one of the movies the title "Octopussy."
Craig — the best actor the 007 series has ever had — provides a teasing counter-taunt, but Bardem gets campier, recalling Louis Jourdan’s prissy baddie in “Octopussy” and “Diamonds Are Forever” henchmen Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd.
Then, when I was “coming of age,” so to speak, Bond got real silly with Roger Moore and stuff like Moonraker and Octopussy.
The whole nuclear-apocalypse-now plot feels a tiny bit like a leftover from a Roger Moore-era Bond — there were one or two moments, particularly when the globe-trotting paused in India, that I worried I was watching “Octopussy” again.
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Certainly Roger Moore was a comparatively lightweight Bond with his seven appearances in the series: Live and Let Die (1973), The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), Moonraker (1979), For Your Eyes Only (1981), Octopussy (1983) and A View to a Kill (1985).
It's probably just a coincidence, but the two Bond films that Maud Adams appeared in -- The Man with the Golden Gun and Octopussy -- are easily the silliest entries in the long-running series (not counting the intentional spoof Casino Royale ).
Though she's as unsuccessful as the franchise itself has been in reconciling the burden that feminism places on these pictures, her homey conversations with Maud Adams (The Man with the Golden Gun and Octopussy ), Lois Chiles ( Moonraker ), Carey Lowell (Licence to Kill), and still others (the less said about Halle Berry, the better) are unexpectedly melancholy, especially as it dawns on d'Abo that, as a refugee of the thoroughly chaste The Living Daylights, she was one of the least-objectified Bond girls.