Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.
Octopussy was the thirteenth Bond film in the Broccoli series and took the series further in the direction of spoof than it had ever previously gone. It's really up to each individual viewer to decide whether they like their Bond as parody or not. I'm glad that not all the Bond films take the same stylistic approach and therefore enjoy both the serious spy intrigue films and the spoofs, but if I could have only one or the other, it would be the serious ones. The spoofs are entertaining to an extent but my main problem with them is that roughly half of what's supposed to be funny is just too silly for my humor palate. The half of the humor that works is enjoyable.
The Story: The pre-credit sequence transpires in Cuba. Bond (Roger Moore) has been sent in to sabotage a fighter jet facility, disguised as Cuban Colonel Toro. When the real Colonel Toro (Ken Norris) shows up, Bond is in dire straights. He's arrested and trucked away under heavy guard. With the help of a distraction provided by the lovely British agent Bianca (Tina Hudson), Bond escapes. He then removes a miniature jet airplane from the back of Bianca's trailer, takes off, evades a heat-seeking missile, and flies sideways through the aircraft hanger so that the Cuban planes are destroyed by their own missile.
The credits play out against a jazzy rendition of "All Time High" sung by Rita Coolidge. The story proper begins in East Berlin, where 009 (Andy Bradford), dressed in a clown costume, emerges from a circus, pursued by the twins who comprise the circus's knife-throwing act, Mishka and Grishka (David and Tony Meyer). The British agent takes a knife in the back, but manages to survive long enough to reach the home of the British ambassador (Patrick Barr) in Berlin. As 099 falls dead, he releases from his clutches a high-quality forgery of a Fabirgé egg. MI6 suspects that the Russians may be selling off art treasures to fund their intelligence operations. Bond is assigned the task of investigating 009's mysterious death.
Bond attends an art auction at Sotheby's in London, with MI6 art expert Jim Fanning (Douglas Wilmer), where the genuine version of the same Fabrigé egg is being auctioned off under the title, "Property of a lady." Bond notices a woman, Magda (Kristina Wayborn), arrive and whisper a message to a man in the audience, Kamal Khan (Louis Jourdan), whereupon Khan begins bidding earnestly for the egg. According to Fanning, the egg should fetch between £250,00-300,000. Bond senses that Khan's need to buy the egg is urgent and bids up the price to £500,000 to test his theory. In the meantime, under the guise of inspecting the egg, Bond substitutes the fake one for the real one, so that what Khan ends up with is the fake.
Back at MI6, Khan is traced back to Delhi, India, so Bond heads there next. In Delhi, Bond meets up with two local British agents, Vijay (Vijay Amritraj) and section head Sadruddin (Albert Moses). Bond learns that Khan is a Prince who lives on a hilltop in Monsoon Castle. At the casino, Bond observes Khan cheating at Backgammon with loaded dice, fleecing a mark named Major Clive (Stuart Saunders). Bond challenges Khan, accepting a double that the Major declined, then beats Khan with his own loaded dice. Khan's solidly built henchman, Gobinda (Kabir Bedi), crushes the dice in his bare hands.
Bond collects his winnings and heads off with Vijay in a "company car" (i.e., a rickshaw souped-up by Q). Khan's henchmen are soon in hot pursuit. The chase is handled in slapstick fashion, integrating a bed of nails, hot coals, a sword swallower, money tossed into a crowd, and other humorous gimmicks, but Bond and Vijay finally disappear into the local British Secret Service headquarters. There, Q sets Bond up with a variety of gadgets that will play roles in subsequent scenes, including a homing device, a wristwatch with a miniature video screen, an ultra-sensitive listening device, and an acid releasing fountain pen. Bond is more interested in examining the cleavage of one of the secretaries than listening to Q.
Come dinnertime, Bond allows himself to be seduced by the lovely Magda, despite it being an obvious trap. They spend the night together, but in the morning, Magda steals the real Fabrigé egg and spirals down off Bond's balcony to Khan's automobile waiting below. Bond allows this to happen because he's fitted the egg with the homing device. He finds it unnecessary to pursue the object, however, since Gobinda sneaks up behind him and knocks him out cold. Bond later awakens in a locked room in Khan's mountaintop castle.
Khan feigns civility, inviting Bond to dine with him, but a stuffed goat's head and inferences of torture ruin Bond's appetite. Back in his room, Bond uses the acid-releasing fountain pen to erode the iron bars blocking one of his windows. From the ledge and an adjacent room, Bond observes the arrival of Russian General Orlov (Steven Berkoff), a crazed cold warrior determined to ensure that Russia exploits its numerical superiority in tank units along the iron curtain to achieve total victory in Europe. Bond discovers that it is Orlov who is behind the theft and sale of the Kremlin Art Depository treasures, to fund his crazy schemes. Bond escapes from Monsoon Castle, but not before being pursued through the jungle by Khan's safari, in another played-for-laughs slapstick action sequence. "I'm with the economy class," says Bond, as he finds his way to a tour boat.
Bond has learned that another player in Khan's scheme is a mysterious female entrepreneur, Octopussy (Maud Adams), who lives in the Floating Palace in Udaipur with a bevy of all-female beauties. Naturally that piques Bond's interest. Bond sneaks onto the floating castle, using a fake crocodile outfit, and confronts Octopussy in her quarters. It turns out that she already knows of Bond, since years ago Bond had been sent to arrest her father (Major Dexter Smythe), in Sri Lanka, for theft and a murder. She's not bitter, however, and, in fact, is grateful because Bond allowed her father the honorable alternative of suicide instead of standing trial. Octopussy falls for Bond (naturally) and the two spend a night together, but their repose is interrupted by a group of assassins sent to kill Bond, including one who wields a table saw blade yo-yo style. Bond also learns that Octopussy owns a circus that travels between East Germany and West Germany and uses it as a front for her diamond smuggling activities.
When Octopussy leaves on a business trip, Bond tracks down the circus train and discovers that Octopussy may only be smuggling diamonds, but Khan and Orlov have something far more sinister in mind. Orlov has planted a nuclear device aboard the circus train, hidden in a fake cannon used as a prop in the clown's act. The idea is that the bomb's detonation will be mistaken for a nuclear accident involving an American warhead, which will intensify demands for nuclear disarmament in the West. Soon, Bond has to deal with Mishka and Grishka. After killing one of the two on the train, Bond is later about to be dispatched by a knife by the other, who says, ominously, "And this for my brother." Bond swings aside and kills his assailant with one of his own knives, responding, "And that's for 009." Bond still has the cranky, uncooperative East German citizens and police with which to cope, before reaching the circus in West Germany, as the bomb is about to go off. In the climactic scene, Bond, dressed in a clown's costume, has to try to convince the General in charge of the base that there really is a bomb in the cannon. That's a hard sell, coming from a man dressed as a clown!
There's a final epilogue in which Octopussy sets into action the members of her Octopussy cult to invade Khan's Monsoon Castle. It's another slapstick scene in which the girls beat up the boys and in which Q comes to the rescue in a hot air balloon, provoking several of the beauties to cuddle the old man fondly. "What are you doing?" demands Q. "Cut it out! I've no time for that! Later, perhaps!" Geez, Q, you're almost eighty! There's not much "later" left! Grab it while you can! Khan and henchman Gobinda abduct Octopussy and make off in a small plane. Bond, on horseback, catches up with it as it's taking off and jumps onto the outside of the plane. There's a pitched aerial battle which only two of those aboard survive. Can you guess which two?
Production Values: The script for this film had a lot of potential. There's plenty of tension involved in the idea of a nuclear device smuggled into West Germany in order to precipitate war between the U.S.S.R. and the West. The plot is a little bit convoluted and some viewers complain about difficulty following it. I've watched the film quite a few times and don't recall now whether I had difficulty with the plot the first time through. It's certainly no problem for me presently. The main script problem, I think, is that the tone of the narrative is completely mismatched to the tone of the filming. The story has all the makings of a tense thriller but the film's style abandons all semblance of realism in favor of parody, slapstick, and general silliness. During the safari scene, for example, Bond even does an imitation of Tarzan at one point. He also encounters a tiger and nervously instructs it to "Sit!" which it does. In the street chase in Delhi, Vijay fends off attackers with a tennis racket while Bond borrows a sword from a sword-swallower and later, returns it to the man, saying, "Here, you'd better put this back yourself." Instead of approaching Octopussy's floating castle in a wetsuit, Bond uses a fake Crocodile. In short, this Bond film goes further than any previous one in the direction of slapstick parody of the spy thriller genre, almost to the extent of an Austin Powers outing. Where the Austin Powers films also have ridiculous plots, however, Octopussy tries to have it both ways: a tense, action thriller plot and slapstick action. Whether that combination works is really a personal issue for each individual viewer. The dialog is equally loaded up with inane one-liners. Some are funny but some are too stupid to be funny ("Here, take this. You'll need it to play with your asp."). Roger Moore hams it up with smug looks and sarcastic quips. It is difficult to understand why director John Glen went from taking the Bond series back into more serious territory with his preceding effort, For Your Eyes Only, and then went to the other extreme with Octopussy, to provide the most farcical entry up to that time.
The locales are terrific for this film, especially the Indian ambiance and, later, the circus atmosphere. There're plenty of beautiful Indian palaces and luxury hotels as well as elaborate street scenes. The stunt work in this film is very impressive, but the discontinuity between Moore's scenes and the stunt work is more obvious in this film than just about any other I've seen. We often realize that it isn't Moore clinging to the plane or falling from the speeding train.
In any case, the tension of the action scenes is continuously undercut by foolishness. There's one aspect of the foolishness, however, that I personally think works especially well: the clown business, both at the beginning and the end. There's a reason that 009 and, later, Bond are dressed up like clowns – in order to penetrate the circus to spy on the goings-on and to evade suspicion. That each of the secret agents encounters a crisis while in the clown costumes is believably explained. There's a superb irony in Bond having to deal with a nuclear device ready to blow up while dressed in a clown outfit. By contrast, the earlier scene in which Bond is hiding in a train car in a gorilla costume is just ridiculous and detracts from the seriousness of the story.
The casting for this film has the usual mix of strengths and weaknesses. Roger Moore is not at his best as Bond, being both too old for the role and too cynical about the role at this stage in his career. He had made himself into a self-parody. Louis Jourdan is outstanding as Kamal Khan, with a full range of expressive reactions and subtle body language. He's not the most physically intimidating villain ever, in the Bond series, but he makes up for that with solid acting. Steven Berkoff is very much over-the-top in the role of Gen.Orlov. Certainly he does an effective job at being extreme in his looks of exasperation, crazed obsession, and sinister disregard for everything but Soviet prestige. It takes considerable skill to give that kind of performance, but it is a performance that plays into the cartoonish aspect of Octopussy. By contrast, Jourdan plays his part comparatively straight. It's unusual for a Bond film to give approximately equal billing to two villains and it proves to be somewhat ineffective.
Kabir Bedi as the chief henchman Gobinda is fairly ordinary among Bond henchmen. He's an intimidating presence but has too little to say or do to achieve a memorable status. I actually prefer some of the lesser henchmen, such as the man with the scarred face and sinister laugh and the one who wields the saw blade. I also found the twins, Michka and Grishka, quite effective. David and Tony Meyer, who, I imagine, might be actual twins, played the knife-throwing brothers.
I'm not impressed with the Bond women in this film. Maud Adams and Kristina Wayborn are certainly attractive women, but both are the kind of implacable beauties who reveal precious little of their inner selves. I didn't feel that either one had any genuine chemistry with Moore. They just fall into bed with him, without any real emotional connection. In the case of Wayborn's character, Magda, she's merely using Bond and he's using her as well. She wants the egg and he wants her to have it. There is one scene with about five seconds of tenderness between Octopussy and Bond, if you want to call it that, when he forces a kiss on her. The best Bond girl in this film, in my opinion, is Tina Hudson as Bianca in the pre-credit sequence. She has more personality than all of the women of the Octopussy Cult combined. There is a nice supporting performance from Vijay Amritraj as Vijay. Walter Gotell has one of his best outings as Gen. Gogol. Likewise Desmond Llwelyn as Q.
Bottom-Line: If you buy the special edition DVD for this film, you get an exceptional package of extras, including a commentary track with John Glen, a documentary called "Inside Octopussy" about filming difficulties, another documentary "Designing Bond" about the design skills of Peter Lamont, a music video, and four trailers. There are animated menus and optional subtitles. If you like the spoof-style Bond films, this is among the best of that type. If you detest Moore's tendency toward self-parody and satirizing of the genre, this one will drive you up a wall. Here is my Overall Certified Gold Bond Rating for this film, using my system that facilitates comparisons across the series:
Bond: Roger Moore, as caricature Rating: 3/5
Villains: Kamal Khan (Louis Jourdan) 4/5; Gen. Orlov (Steven Berkoff) 2/5 Overall Rating: 3/5
Henchmen: Gobinda (Kabir Bedi) 3/5; saw blade wielding and other assassins 4/5; Grishka and Mishka (David and Tony Meyer) 4/5 Overall Rating: 4/5
Primary Bond Girl: Octopussy (Maud Adams) 3/5 Rating: 3/5
Colleagues/Recurrent Characters: Q (Desond Llewellyn) 5/5; M (Robert Brown) 4/5; Miss Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell) 5/5; Penelope Smallbone (Michaela Clavell) 3/5; Sir Frederick Gray (Geoffrey Keen) 5/5; Gen. Anatol Gogol (Walter Gotell) 5/5; Vijay (Vijay Amritraj) 5/5; Sadruddin (Albert Moses) 3/5; Jim Fanning (Douglas Wilmer) 3/5 Overall Rating: 4/5
Storyline: Kremlin Art Depository treasures stolen and auctioned to raise money for Gen. Orlov's nuclear plot 3/5; use of circus for smuggling 5/5 Rating: 4/5
Action: Pre-credit Cuban raid 4/5; slapstick chase through Delhi 3/5; slapstick Safari after Bond 2/5; assassination attempt at Floating Palace 4/5; fight atop train and subsequent showdown with last twin 5/5; crisis at circus 5/5; attack by Octopussy Cult on Monsoon Palace 1/5; fight atop plane 4/5 Overall Rating: 3/5
Toys: Tiny jet 5/5; homing device 3/5; pen with metal eroding acid 4/5; ultra-sensitive listening device 3/5; fake crocodile 2/5; hot-air balloon 3/5; wristwatch with crystal diode screen for video transmissions 4/5 Overall Rating: 3/5
Character Development: Bond as caricature, shallow Bond girls, undeveloped villains Rating: 2/5
Music: mediocre credits song "All Time High" sung by Rita Coolidge 3/5; decent score 3/5 Rating: 3/5
Locales: Cuba, East Berlin, London auction house, Delhi, circus at U.S. base in West Germany Rating: 5/5
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Overall Certified Gold Bond Rating: 40/60
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