This review of Octopussy (1983) is part of a wider rewatch of the James Bond series to mark its 60th anniversary. 007 has always been my favourite movie franchise, and I wanted to see where each film ranks within the series. Please check out the main blog post for my rankings of this and the other twenty-four official films and links to the movie reviews for the rest of the franchise.
Short Review
Graham and Matt of From Rewatch with Love were critical of this film, saying that it was confusing and the timeline was hard to follow in parts, which is true for the most part. However, I think the main problem is it has too many villains, you don’t really know who’s in charge, and as it turns out, the one the film is named after is being played by everyone else and doesn’t know what’s actually going on. Parts of this film are a bit juvenile and problematic too, such as the Q scene where Bond is getting his watch that can play a video stream, and he zooms in and out on a female employee’s cleavage. Some innuendo is a bit on the nose, such as in the scene with Magda in the hotel room after she and Bond have dinner, and she says “I need re-filling”. Despite all of this, I love the storyline of this movie, so I’m going to rate it highly within the Roger Moore era, as it is one of my favourite Bond films of his, along with the next one.
Long Review and Film Summary
Octopussy (and A View to a Kill) are the Roger Moore films I remember the most. We start this film with Bond driving a Horse Box to a race track across the road from a Military Base. He changes into a uniform and impersonates a soldier to gain access to a plane with a new radar system that the British don’t want to be tested. He’s caught by the soldier he is impersonating and is loaded onto an open-top truck. 007’s assistant drives a long side and tries to seduce the guards. Once distracted, James pulls their cords, which opens their parachutes and sends them into the sky. He takes their guns and shoots out the tyres on the transport truck. He gets into the horse box he brought and opens up the back, including the fake horse’s bottom. Out comes a small Union Jack plane, they send missiles after Bond, and he flies through a hangar, and the missiles blow it up. He flies off but soon lands as he runs out of fuel, parks in a petrol station and asks them to fill it up. Funny, silly, and interesting per-title sequence – Big fan of it. Moving into the opening and the song, we get lasers for the first time in a Bond opening, along with the usual silhouette that has become synonymous with Bond films. The song is very forgettable and doesn’t include the film title, something I’m very keen on. The film opens in East Berlin with a clown being chased by Mischka and Grischka (remember those names for later), throwing knives. As they all approach the border into West Berlin, one of them hits the clown in the back, and he falls off the bridge and gets carried away by the river. Reaching the residence of the British Ambassador, the clown breaks through the glass and falls over dead, dropping a Faberġe egg. I feel like this could have been a good pre-title sequence, pretending that Bond is dead. However, we learn very shortly that this is instead 009.
At a meeting with M (played by Robert Brown), MOD (played by Geoffrey Keen), and an Antiquities Expert, we find out the egg was an Easter present for the Russian royal family. The one that 009 recovered is a fake, with the real one being auctioned at Sotheby’s in the afternoon, the fourth egg auctioned this year. Bond and the Antiquities Expert, Jim Fanning (played by Douglas Wilmer), go to watch the auction. The program provides no name and simply calls it ‘Property of a Lady’. The funds from the sale will be paid to an anonymous Swiss bank account. We observe a Soviet meeting about mutual disarmament with NATO. General Gogol (played by Walter Gotell) and General Orlov (played by Steven Berkoff) disagree about whether this would compromise the Russian defensive position. Orlov does a presentation on how he can take over Europe in just ten days, and NATO wouldn’t attack with nuclear weapons. We follow Orlov as he goes inside the Kremlin Art Repository. He finds out the counterfeit egg was stolen and says they have no choice but to buy the real egg at auction. Back at Sotheby’s, a lady enters, Magda (played by Kristina Wayborn), along with Kamal Khan (played by Louis Jourdan) – he and Bond get into a bidding war for the egg. While the bidding is going on, 007 has a look at the real egg and swaps it with the fake one. After many bids, Khan is forced to pay £500,000 for the counterfeit.
Once outside, Bond puts a tail on their Taxi, which takes them to Heathrow and onto a plane to Delhi. M tells 007 to get on a flight to India (which he already has a ticket for) and sign a chit for the egg – It’s government property now. Getting off a boat in Delhi, Bond passes a snake charmer playing the 007 theme on a flute (a bit of fourth wall breaking). Vijay (played by Vijay Amritra) is his MI6 contact (the actor was very afraid of snakes) who takes him to see Sadruddin (played by Albert Moses), head of the MI6 station in India. Vijay tells Bond that Khan is an exiled Afghan Prince who lives at the heavily guarded Monsoon Palace but plays Backgammon at the hotel-casino most days. Khan beats the major at Backgammon with a weighted dice. Bond takes over and stakes the real egg while utilising players’ privilege to use Khan’s dice, 007 collects 200,000 rupees and keeps the egg. Khan says, “Spend the money quickly, Mr. Bond”, as James is passing some of it off to others. As they leave the hotel, Bond and Vijay end up in a tuk-tuk chase with Ninjas in black driving a Jeep. We get a great fight scene with knives, hot coals, swords, and Vijay hitting them with a tennis racket. Bond asks for the money he gave to Vijays and throws it into the crowd to slow the chasers down.
They drive through a movie poster (which is replaced by a new one) and enter the MI6 station. Q (played by Desmond Llewelyn) gives 007 the egg back with a homing device and microphone in it. Additionally, he gets a fountain pen that can listen and dissolve metals and a watch that can find the egg and show a video stream. Back at the hotel, Bond enters the dining room and is taken to a table he never reserved, where he finds Magda. They chat and head up to his room. The next morning, she steals the real egg (Bond knows) and exits via the balcony, using her sary to lower herself to the ground. Kamal’s bodyguard, Gobinda (played by Kabir Bedi), knocks Bond out and takes him to Monsoon Palace. Khan meets with Octopussy (played by Maud Adams), she’s glad the egg is back, but is not happy it was stolen in the first place. She also wants to meet with Bond after Khan has got the information he needs. Back at the Palace, the watch on James’ wrist pings with Eggs’ location as Khan arrives back, he’s told that dinner with Magda and Khan is at 8 pm.
During dinner, we find out that Bond is not a fan of steamed Sheep’s head, especially when Khan is talking about all the different chemicals he can use to torture him if he doesn’t talk. Bond goes back to his room and uses his acid pen to melt the bars on his window. He goes out onto the side of the building as a helicopter lands with Kamal, Gobinda, and General Orlov. James sneaks through Magda’s room and into the palace, gets close to the room they all went into and uses his listening device in the egg. He finds out that Kamal makes fake eggs for Orlov, who swaps them at the Kremlin Art Repository, selling the real egg for loads of money. Orlov breaks the egg (assuming it’s a fake) just after we hear, “One week from today in Karl-Marx-Stadt”. Kamal notices the bug inside but doesn’t say anything. When they are all leaving, Bond hides in a room where Kamal hangs the bodies of those he has killed. Gobinda walks past, notices the door is open, looks inside and locks the door. Henchman comes to take the bodies as Bond hides in one of the bags. They drive the bodies outside. Just before they can throw 007 into a hole, he kicks one of them, breaks free from the bag and runs into the forest. Kamal and his thugs are on top of Elephants doing a bit of hunting – Bond has now become their target.
The chase through the forests has everything: tigers, spiders, snakes, fights, Tarzan swing, burning off a leech, James undoing one of the harnesses, leading to the guy falling off his Elephant. Once he gives them all the slip, Bond flags down a tourist boat and gets away. Inside a fake Crocodile, 007 approaches the Floating Palace where Octopussy lives, along with her all-female population. She sees him on CCTV, arriving, skulking around and entering her room. We find out that she is the daughter of Major Dexter Smythe – he was sent by the British Secret Service to locate a cache of Chinese gold in North Korea. His guide was found 20 years later with a bullet from Smythe’s Service Revolver. He nobly committed suicide rather than face a court-martial. When her father’s gold ran out, the people in Hong Kong who disposed of it for him offered her a commission to smuggle some diamonds. As well as smuggling, she set up this island for underprivileged girls and diversified into hotels, circuses, shipping and carnivals – Bond finds a leaflet for a circus at Karl-Marx-Stadt.
While this is all happening, Kamal and Gobinda pay some thugs to take 007 out at Octopussy Island, including a man with a circular saw yoyo, which is a silly and impractical weapon but very entertaining. Vijay relieves Q of his lookout (waiting for Bond to come back) and says he will be back at midnight. Later that night, Vijay is surrounded by Gobinda and his thugs, and is killed with the yoyo saw. The thugs enter the island unnoticed, as they get ready to drop the saw onto Bond, he feels water drip off it and onto his face. He and Octopussy barely avoid being hit by it, and this turns into a fight between the two groups. Bond and a thug end up going through a window and into the water. Octopussy can’t get a clear shot of the assailant; they both disappear, and she thinks Bond is dead. However, James escaped in his fake crocodile and returned to Q, finding out that Vijay was dead. Bond asks M (via Q) to meet him in Berlin, West Germany, as the circus is heading for Karl-Marx-Stadt. James is given his papers and drives into East Germany.
This is where the film and its timeline become very difficult to follow. Magda, Gobinda, General Orlov, and Ocotopussy are all at the Big Top, Bond dressed as staff, overhears a meeting about jewellery snuggling and the Star of Russia, which Octopussy has the original hidden in the base of a cannon and wants to sell it in Switzerland. After the show, they’re going back to West Germany. 007 is under the train, braised, as it goes into a tunnel and stops alongside a nearly identical train. He gets off and onto the other train, which has a bomb loaded into its cannon base. The bomb is designed to mimic a US bomb and will go off at the next performance in a US Air Force Base in West Germany. Bond catches Mischka (played by David Meyer) removing the jewels on the other train; he tries to use a blow torch on Bond, and they fight, but ultimately 007 hits him with the canon and steals his uniform. A villain monologue wouldn’t have gone amiss here to explain the plan, which is basically, the bomb will go off and seem like an accident by the US and lead to disarmament, leaving every border open to the Russians. Orlov comes over to collect his Jewels as Bond pulls a gun on him. Orlov manages to get away, and Bond ends up in a shoot-out with his henchmen. James steals Orlov’s car, as the tyres shred on stop strips, 007 takes to the rails after the train. The signalman changes Bond’s track, and he ends up alongside the train as another train is coming and pushes the car into a river. General Gogol gets the car out of the river and finds the Jewels. Orlov tries to run through a checkpoint and is gunned down by US soldiers.
Bond is now on the train, hiding in a Gorilla outfit as Gobinda sets the bomb for 3:45 pm (four hours from now). Gobinda gets suspicious and goes to chop the head of the Gorilla as James escapes on top of the train, then down the side. Kamal shoots at the window upon seeing Bond. James and Gobinda end up fighting on the roof (love a good 007 train fight). Grishka (played by Anthony Meyer), who is Mischka’s brother, gets involved as he and Bond fall off the train roof, run into a forest, and towards a shack. Grishka throws knives at James and impales him on the wooden door. Grishka lunges at him and says, “This is for my brother”. Bond opens the door, and Grishka falls through. James looks at him and says, “This is for 009”, while throwing a knife at him. The circus parade gets into full swing at the Air Force base. Bond flags down a lift into town to find a phone to call MI6, a lady beats him to a phone box, so he steals her car and ends up in a chase with the Police. 007 bursts through a US security checkpoint and has everyone on his tail. The cannon (with the bomb in it) is wheeled into the Big Top – it shows just five minutes left. James gives everyone the slip, steals a clown costume from an RV, and goes to find the American base commander (played by Bruce Boa). Octopussy (who is scared that James is about to ruin her smuggling operation) and the commander are not being very helpful, so Bond tries to get the lock off with an axe. He gets held back by the Police, and Octopussy shoots the lock off. After seeing the bomb inside, the commander asks for silence and to let 007 go. Bond manages to take the detonator out with just a second to spare – the pin fires just outside the bomb.
Back in India, Octopussy and her team seduce Kamal’s men and break in to comfort him for trying to kill her and stealing her smuggled jewellery. Octopussy and Kamal’s teams end up in a massive fight, as Bond and Q arrive by Union Jack Hot Air Balloon, which is a very odd entrance, but rather assuming. Bond enters the palace by crashing through a window and shooting the guards. He sees on his watch (which is being broadcast from the cameras on the Hot Air Balloon) that Ocotopussy is being led away on horseback. James goes after them as she’s loaded into a plane by Kamal and Gobinda. Bond jumps from a horse onto the plane. Once in the air, Kamal tries to shake him off, going up and down, and side to side. Bond pulls wires in one of the engines. Gobinda and Bond fight on top of the plane with knives. Gobinda falls off, and Bond manages to get inside as Kamal is losing control. He and Octopussy jump out as Kamal crashes the plane along a mountain.
Back in London, General Gogol meets with M, and they agree that none of this has happened as long as they get the Star of Russia back. Bond is apparently “too injured” to travel home, but that doesn’t stop him from having relations with Octopussy as the movie ends.