While Dr. No would also jumpstart the film franchise's long-standing tradition of toning down its fantastical source material (in the corresponding novel, Bond disposes of the titular nemesis with an enormous pile of bat shit, shortly before battling a giant squid), it's also the picture that most closely approximates the torturous filler of Fleming's prose--resulting in a boring, hour-long travelogue of Jamaica as told by people who don't really believe that such a place could exist. But there's that question of confidence again: no one is entirely sure of how the search for a missing Jamaican liaison can lead to a showdown with a preening Fu Manchu sporting metal hands (Joseph Wiseman), so Dr. No prefers to concentrate on how completely fucking awesome it is to be a secret agent.

All of the excitement and adventure revolves around you: the exotic locales just waiting to be explored; the assassination attempts just waiting to be foiled; and, perhaps most importantly, the ability to bed dangerous, exotic women one moment and toss them to the wolves the very next. It's precisely what helped propel the James Bond series into the public consciousness as a reliable source of masturbatory escapism, but it's almost surreal to watch this film struggle to cobble these elements together into a cohesive narrative. Of course, it's tempting to say that we've become too jaded in the span of forty years to be thrilled by Dr. No's analog antics (compared to the litany of CGI in Die Another Day, it's downright quaint for Bond to stick a hair across his closet door to confirm that it will be searched in his absence), yet its skeletal structure and stodgy racism more or less prove that it was destined for obsolescence within a few short years.

In fact, the film practically pre-empts itself once Bond finally lands on Doctor No's sinister lair on Crab Key Island. Ursula Andress' deified entrance from the sea became iconic in popular culture--a pivotal moment in the cinema's sexual revolution--because it brings the idea of culpability into the proceedings, turning the victorious he-man into a passive voyeur at the mercy of those who allow his hypersexualized derring-do to happen. Bond squirms as Andress' Honey Ryder casually relates a story about murdering an erstwhile rapist with a black widow², shortly before they're captured and sent naked through a humiliating decontamination bath for all of No's security guards to see. (Their eventual banishment to a prison cell, decorated like a pseudo-domestic modernist paradise, is nothing less than disturbing.) Even at this early stage in the game--at Honey's suggestion?--Bond acknowledges the Freudian motives that would drive megalomaniacs of No's stature ("Does the toppling of American missiles really compensate for having no hands?"), resulting in a brief, almost ineffable moment of sympathy and understanding on his part that casts the final confrontation as a complex struggle for power.³ It's too bad the movie chickens out just when it's getting interesting, bypassing a fair share of loose strings with a hastily-assembled happy ending offered by the exploding lair (which went on to become all too common in movies like this)--but the promise introduced at Dr. No's eleventh hour would thankfully be fulfilled by its immediate sequel.-

Thing is, you can get a substantial amount of the information contained therein in half the time and without the distracting eye candy of Dr. No by watching the supplemental "Inside Dr. No" (42 mins., 1080i), an origin story for the film featuring many if not all of the yakker's participants. I suppose a lot of this material will be familiar to Bond-philes besides, but the organization of it is the selling point--and I do believe this was my first official confirmation of the meanings behind the obscure names of the two main companies that produce Bond films, Danjaq and EON. We also learn the contemporary significance of Doctor No having Goya's "Portrait of the Duke of Wellington" in his lair. Oh, the jokes that are lost to time. And did you know that Monty Norman cannibalized a passage of his own score for the play A House for Mr. Biswas to create the immortal James Bond theme? Actually, I was equally if not more surprised to discover that non-musical theatre used to have scores.

Joining this doc under the heading Mission Dossier are the love-in "Terence Young: Bond Vivant" (18 mins., 1080i) and the hilariously staid "Dr. No 1963 Featurette" (9 mins., 480i), hosted by an unidentified gun fetishist. The former reiterates for the umpteenth time in these extras that Young, despite being nobody's first choice to helm Dr. No, was Bond and that his role in shaping the franchise cannot and should not be underestimated. Maybe you can never hear it enough, considering that Ian Fleming traditionally receives the lion's share of the credit for defining the Bond lexicon as we commonly know it. (In a generous move, Cork lists a complete filmography for Young at the end of the piece.) And speaking of gun porn, launching Declassified: MI6 Vault is "The Guns of James Bond" (5 mins., 480i), another retro featurette. Connery briefly appears, but most of this BBC program is given over to a British weapons expert who in not so many words calls Bond (and, by extension, Fleming) a pussy for the insufficient heat he packs in the novel of Dr. No. Said authority goes on to demonstrate the difference between a Beretta, a Walther PPK, and a .44 by firing all three at a giant juice can. It's hilarious for two reasons: 1) because English gents and Magnums are less than complementary; and 2) because it presciently satirizes the series' increasing reliance on firepower. Less ridiculous and even strangely compelling is "Premiere Bond: Opening Nights" (13 mins., 480i), a montage of footage from Bond's various premieres over the years (bypassing Never Say Never Again and predating Casino Royale) breathlessly narrated by long-time Bond producer Michael Wilson. I kept wanting to interrupt and ask questions, such as, Was it really George Lazenby's decision to not reprise the role? Hilariously, every single woman at the after-party for A View to a Kill could be mistaken for Vanna White (except Grace Jones, of course). Last but not least, we have an extensive "Image Database" that divides a "retro photo gallery" into the following categories: The Filmmakers; Portraits; Jamaica; Pinewood; The Lost Scene (i.e., Ursula Andress vs. frozen crabs); Ian Fleming - Jamaica; Ian Fleming - Pinewood; and Around the World with 007.

Simultaneously rounding out the platter and filling out the section called Top Level Access (yes, I've done this bass-ackwards) is "007: Licence to Restore" (12 mins.), a self-congratulatory look at the restoration efforts of Lowry Digital rather bafflingly rendered in standard definition. While I predictably geeked-out once they got down to brass tacks, I can't say I found it terribly cute when MGM's Scott Grossman teased that they may or may not have digitally removed a camera's reflection from a shot in The Man with the Golden Gun--you'll have to wait for the DVD (now Blu-ray) to know for sure, he says. I hope they left it alone, for what it's worth, but what really irked me is that at that moment I felt like I'd been tricked into watching an infomercial.-

1. Which is to say that the entries generally regarded as classics (From Russia with Love, Goldfinger) allow Connery to inject some much-needed humour to offset the general coldness of the character, while the later multi-million dollar fantasias (You Only Live Twice, Diamonds Are Forever) only serve to accentuate his growing boredom with the role. All things considered, Connery was incredibly lucky that he was able to play trial and error with the character. return

2. A brave implication at this early stage to so clearly associate Bond with rape--one that is timidly cast aside by film's end after Ryder is removed from Doctor No's presence to "amuse" his guards, only to be rescued without comment. return

3. Bond's brief tussle with Doctor No represents one of the few moments where the film's awkward straightforwardness benefits it greatly: Wiseman's robotic fighting techniques--swinging his bionic hands around like blunt objects--certainly emphasize how Bond and No are yin and yang locked in a battle for phallic supremacy. (No is, naturally, done in by the inherent failings of his own member(s), unable to grab onto any smooth surfaces as he descends into a pool of boiling water.) return

1.66:1 (1080p, VC-1); English DTS-HD 5.1 MLA, English Mono, French DD 5.1, Spanish Mono; English, English SDH, Spanish subtitles; BD-50; 110 minutes; PG; MGM

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Bond is lured to Turkey by Russian defector Tatiana Romanova (Daniela Bianchi), who claims to have fallen in love with Bond's photograph; she offers to trade a Soviet Lektor decoding device in exchange for safe transport to England. "You're in the Balkans now, Mr. Bond," his Turkish contact Kerim Bey (Pedro Armendáriz) tells him, "the game with the Russians is played a little differently here. In day-to-day routine matters, we don't make it too difficult to keep a tab on each other." It's really the same futile tug-of-war that Bond is used to playing with the Commies (just politely restructured), so he's more than content to use the same old playbook in his latest mission. In his travels through Istanbul, he recreates a scene from Dr. No in which he inspects his hotel room to the accompaniment of Monty Norman's iconic theme.

It's then that we realize this life is nothing more than a carefully-orchestrated détente, destined to be shattered under the right circumstances. Bond knows that he's walking into a trap but expects that the Russians are calling the shots--that it's all part of the game. Instead, multinational terrorist organization SPECTRE is behind the wheel as the unaccounted variable: in their latest bid to play both sides against the middle, they've sent Grant to kill Bond and retrieve the Lektor to ransom back to the Soviets. After Grant cuts a swath of death and destruction in tailing his quarry, re-igniting cold wars and co-opting secret code words to ingratiate himself with the enemy, the final blow is to explain how Bond's expectations have been subverted at every step of the game. These days, we mock the Bond series for featuring a villain who recounts to the hero every little detail of the master plot, yet here it serves the purpose of destroying any pretense of control over the situation that we--and Bond--have adopted. "Oh, I don't mind talking," Grant sneers. "I get a kick out of watching the great James Bond find out what a bloody fool he's been making of himself." On his knees, at the mercy of a madman who is essentially his funhouse-mirror image, Bond is forced to drop his standard rules of conduct in order to snuff out the "fellow professionals" who threaten to replace him in a brutal new world of ever-shifting alliances and identities.²

From Russia with Love was the first film of the series to completely weaponize sex, a concept that closely follows its other themes. It begins with former Soviet SPECTRE agent Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya), who utilizes a healthy mixture of physical threats and aggressive sexual advances to convince Romanova to be the bait to Bond's most obvious vices. When he finally meets Romanova in his bridal suite, ready and willing to be ravaged by the British spy, the film takes a long, sensual look at her mouth ("It's just the right size...for me, that is," Bond remarks)--and it's impossible to ignore an earlier scene in which an assassin crawls out of Anita Ekberg's own gaping maw, an escape hatch in a barnside movie poster that only makes him an easy target to be sniped by Bond and Kerim Bey. Further compounded by unwilling seductions and "girl-fights" at a gypsy camp interrupted by assassination attempts, the threat of carnal self-destruction is constant and eventually fulfilled when Grant reveals that Bond's night in the bridal suite has been immortalized on film, to be released to the press upon his death. "It must take a pretty sick collection of minds to dream up a plan like that," Bond muses; it is of course the perfect coda to this interruption of the Anglo-Soviet status quo: lust, violence, and politics alchemized with an uncomfortable familiarity.

SPECTRE's convoluted scheme was concocted by chess master Kronsteen (Vladek Sheybal), who claims to have considered "every possible variation of countermove"--but the catch here is that he's incapable of understanding that his plan's executors and intended victims can still be complete wild cards when the situation calls for it. Consider that cipher machines and chess are both capable of countless permutations that nevertheless add up to a finite number; the whole film is about trying to reclaim immutable logic in a world where arrogance, love, and pure luck play immeasurably into the equation. Grant and Bond's climactic train-compartment fight is the moment those best-laid plans go right out the window--and what's left is a claustrophobic battle royale between two headstrong brutes beating the shit out of each other. Once the plan has failed, SPECTRE leader Blofeld kills the seemingly-faultless Kronsteen, while the subservient Romanova shoots her superior, Klebb; From Russia with Love is the contemporary counterpart to No Country for Old Men and The Dark Knight: all three films argue that even the agents of chaos are subject to their own treachery.³ It's too easy to ghettoize the Bond series as a piddling genre in itself, unworthy of conversation, but through its excitement and complexity, it's impossible to deny that this is great cinema--and perhaps the greatest of all spy thrillers. Considerably meatier than Dr. No but not yet shackled to a workhorse formula, From Russia with Love is ferocious and untamed in a way that the series would not completely rejuvenate until Daniel Craig's blood-swilling anti-hero took the reins.-

Video-based extras begin under Declassified: MI6 Vault with "Ian Fleming: The CBC Interview" (8 mins., 480i), an interview conducted at Fleming's Goldeneye estate before the theatrical release of 1964's Goldfinger but aired after Fleming's untimely death that same year. There's so much prologue that the actual dialogue with the author is quite short, if impressively dense: Fleming talks about his distaste for profanity, the romantic appeal of one-man armies, and the narcissism of Windsor knots, among other things; fans will eat it up. (The exit line is pretty good, too.) Next comes "Ian Fleming & Raymond Chandler" (5 mins., 480i), an audio-only conversation between the two writers--context? Unknown--backed by photos of each stupidly animated in the Kid Stays in the Picture style for the attention-deficient, I guess. Chandler sounds like a surly Howard Hughes against the cultured Fleming, who pulls teeth to get the less-than-gregarious Chandler to say something. Nonetheless, it's a historically fascinating meeting of the minds unlikely enough as to almost seem hypothetical, with Chandler marvelling at (or denigrating) Fleming's ability to crank out a novel in two months and observing that the Bond books "always have to have a torture scene." (Fleming traces this back to a fondness for Fu Manchu serials.) Fleming surfaces once more in the slightly redundant, incomprehensibly-titled "Ian Fleming on Desert Island Discs" (5 mins., 480i), in which he outlines his writing process and briefly relates his wartime experiences. Again there is no synched video accompaniment. Finishing off this section is "Animated Storyboard Sequence" (1 min., 480i)--uncredited storyboards for From Russia with Love's boat chase, in other words, done up as an animatic.

007 Mission Control has to be the dumbest special feature I've ever encountered. Basically, it non-linearly singles out highlights from the film, assigning them unique names and chapter stops along the lines of "Dining 007 Style." Clicking on these sub-headings becomes a numbing experience that transforms From Russia with Love into some quasi-Alain Resnais flick. Seriously: what the fuck? Moving on, under the umbrella heading Mission Dossier is where you'll find the aforementioned "Inside From Russia with Love", which is almost as riveting as the film itself. Would that I could so heartily recommend the Marie Clairu-narrated "Harry Saltzman: Showman" (27 mins., 1080i), a by-the-numbers hagiography for the Selznick wannabe, although Saltzman deserves his moment in the spotlight, his flamboyance undoubtedly having contributed to the alchemy of the early Bond outings. The thrust of the retrospective, meanwhile, is that this was a troubled production saved once through last-minute rewrites and again in post, where editor Peter Hunt reordered the introductory scenes and conjured transitional shots using a combination of outtakes and optical trickery. Reconstructed here, the mock Q demonstration that Hunt created for director Terence Young's amusement is hilarious, and the account of a near-fatal helicopter crash is harrowing. And I can't think of a batch of Bond beauties that has aged better than From Russia's. (Bianchi's talking-head, for what it's worth, is dubbed.) Three trailers, three TV spots, and three radio spots for From Russia with Love make up the Ministry of Propaganda, while an exhaustive "Image Database"--organized into The Filmmakers, Ian Fleming, Portraits, Pinewood, Dressed to Kill, Lovely...Lovely, Tatiana Meets Klebb, Rosa Klebb, Istanbul, The Gypsy Camp, The Orient Express, Scotland, Rats!, Back Projection, Smoke on the Water, The Lost Scene (the scant number of stills for which necessitates a lengthy preface), and Around the World with 007--rounds out the platter. Note that the film's running time is incorrectly listed as 111 minutes on the packaging.-

1. Particularly relevant considering that SPECTRE's evil plan is brought into motion in order to avenge Doctor No's death--and that Fleming's Dr. No was the first Bond novel after From Russia with Love, which had intended to kill off its hero. return

2. Find similar ideas in Hitchcock's complex expression of Cold War fatigue, North by Northwest--in many ways a companion piece to From Russia with Love. return

3. Suddenly, the Joker's oblique resurrection of Rosa Klebb's blade-tipped shoe makes perfect sense. return

1.66:1 (1080p, VC-1); English DTS-HD 5.1 MLA, English Mono, French DD 5.1, Spanish Mono; English, English SDH, Spanish subtitles; BD-50; 115 minutes; PG; MGM

Indeed, it's the kind of scenario so ridiculously vague that you're practically encouraged to plug in Bond's familiar traits at the appropriate moments and coast through the rest on autopilot. As the victim of a long and convoluted legal battle, the Thunderball that finally made it to the screen feels like the product of too many lawsuits and committees, its various concepts treated as copyrighted properties and empty utilities.^* SPECTRE is no longer a sweeping, interfering power in the Cold War--it's become a cadre of interchangeable bad guys, collectively groomed to serve as Bond's long-term arch-nemesis. It's particularly difficult to care about the antagonists this time around: despite his alleged importance to the evil organization, literal #2 man Largo is all but defined by his eye patch, a growling supervillain prototype who doesn't lock horns with 007 so much as cross paths with him now and then to trade a clandestine "fuck you." The film seems to be onto something with femme fatale Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi), who insists that a sexual encounter with Bond at the behest of "Queen and Country" isn't nearly enough to sway her to the side of righteousness--but soon she is dead, and our attention is drawn back to the bland and uninteresting Domino. Shots are fired, women are seduced, et cetera, et cetera. While you can't deny the series its lifeblood, there's a difference between molding those aspects to fit the story's parameters and doing it the other way around. This may be only a mediocre work, but it's also the precursor to every single one of the "bad Bonds"; in its desire to standardize, Thunderball becomes the very last thing a Bond film should ever be: a terminal snoozefest.-

Two commentaries grace the disc instead of the usual one, though there's enough dead air in the second, more meandering track (featuring editor Peter Hunt and co-screenwriter John Hopkins) that I wonder if it wouldn't have been prudent to consolidate them. John Cork does hosting duty on both yakkers and emerges as an invaluable participant, bridging sometimes-banal recollections with informed insights and meticulously-researched anecdotes. It's here and from Cork that we learn the details of the Kevin McClory debacle, complete with a synopsis of the telltale screenplay on which McClory collaborated with Ian Fleming. And I think it says something positive about the eclecticism of these commentaries that I only just noticed Sean Connery's complete absence from them. Moving on to the video-based extras, the Declassified: MI6 Vault kicks off with "The Incredible World of James Bond - Original 1965 NBC Television Special" (51 mins., 480i), an allegedly landmark slice of propaganda hyperbolically narrated by golden-age radio voice Alexander Scourby. Dull and interminable, it compacts the first four Bond flicks into digest form, only occasionally cutting away to behind-the-scenes footage that is recycled and better contextualized elsewhere on the platter besides. I did kind of enjoy the relentlessly goofy montage of stock footage depicting Bond's early life (the word "orphan" cues a redheaded boy fishing alone on a riverbank), but that, too, is excerpted within the making-of materials. Equally listless, "A Child's Guide to Blowing Up a Motor Car - 1965 Ford Promotional Film" (17 mins., 480i) is edutainment with a bone-dry sense of humour as a Ford exec takes his son to the set of Thunderball, where the kid gets into all manner of Dennis the Menace-style mischief. Did I mention it's silent save the narration from writer Denis Norden? Yawn.

The titular production designer describes the content of his Thunderball home movies in "On Location with Ken Adam" (13 mins., 480i), a piece that mainly caused me to hope something similar appends You Only Live Twice. "Bill Suitor: The Rocket Man Movies" (4 mins., 480i) finds Connery's jet-packing stunt double editorializing a Super8 reel of his 21-second voyages in the apparatus, which necessitated reshoots of Connery's inserts when Suitor refused to propel himself off a rooftop at 60mph in an experimental rocket without a helmet, the big sissy. Lastly, "Thunderball Boat Show Reel" (4 mins., 480i) is an early, abbreviated version of the underwater battle cobbled together for promotional purposes nine months prior to the film's release, while "Selling Bonds - Original 1965 TV commercials" collates three short advertisements for tie-in raincoats, slacks, and of course toys. Skipping over the next section, 007 Mission Control (I said all that I can say about this "special feature"--"special" is right--in the From Russia with Love review above), brings us to Mission Dossier and "The Making of Thunderball" (27 mins., 1080i), a featurette that begins tediously (do we really need the genesis of James Bond recapped for us again?) and ends tersely, much like Thunderball itself. Ian Fleming Foundation member Cork meanwhile betrays his allegiance to the author with amusingly unflattering photos of McClory. Between the lines of this doc and the subsequent "The Thunderball Phenomenon" (31 mins, 1080i) is the message that, bolstered by the inclining success of the franchise, everyone involved in the production was cocksure to a fault. "Phenomenon," by the by, refers to Thunderball's proto-blockbuster roots: so much hype swirled around the movie that it ultimately came second to the marketing gimmicks. Even the soundtrack was rushed into stores before John Barry had finished composing the score! Capping off this section, "The Secret History of Thunderball" (4 mins., 1080i) examines the minute differences between various incarnations of the film; based on the illustrative clips, I assume this BD contains the theatrical cut.

Ministry of Propaganda houses three trailers, five TV commercials, and an unprecedented ten radio spots for Thunderball. Rounding things out, the requisite Image Database is divided into the following categories: Portraits, The Aston Martin, Chateau D'Anet, Pinder's Shop, Searching for the Vulcan, Romance Beneath the Waves, Underwater Action, The Final Fight, The Pinewood Tank, Thunderball Around the Globe, and Merchandising. Disappointingly excluded: a gallery showcasing the myriad magazine covers and titillating photo spreads for which the women of Thunderball posed. For the record, MGM has once again shortchanged the 130-minute film's length on the cover art, claiming it lasts 125 minutes. (If only.) Perhaps some intern is going by the pictures' running times in PAL format.-

*I think I finally understand why producer Kevin McClory clung so jealously to the movie rights for Fleming's Thunderball, awarded him after he successfully argued that he created Blofeld and SPECTRE as part of a committee intended to bring Bond to the screen. After remaking the film in 1983 as the fey, forgettable Never Say Never Again, he could have feasibly developed a rival series without too many complaints of recycling the same material. Roger Ebert's contemporary review of Never Say Never Again makes no mention of the circumstances that brought the movie to fruition, concentrating on fifty-something Connery's return to the role while insisting that "nothing in this movie has much to do with anything else"--like a good Bond film should, I guess. return

2.35:1 (1080p, VC-1); English DTS-HD 5.1 MLA, English Mono, French DD 5.1, Spanish Mono; English, English SDH, Spanish subtitles; BD-50; 130 minutes; PG; MGM

Led by a statelier, more businesslike Blofeld (Max von Sydow), SPECTRE commandeers two American nukes with which to blackmail NATO. Recently re-inducted as an active field agent, fifty-something Bond (Connery) follows the scent to the Bahamas, where he must face off against philanthropist/video game designer Maximilian Largo (Klaus Maria Brandauer) with the help of Largo's mistress, Domino (an absurdly young Kim Basinger). Before the release dates were inevitably rearranged, the plan was to pit Never Say Never Again in direct competition with Octopussy at the multiplex--and yet, for something pitched as an alternative to the status quo, Never Say Never Again is a let-down in almost every respect. Some see this version of the story as a psychological thriller about an aging spy in a changing world (and some find Brandauer's Largo to be complex and sensitive; I merely find him bland and tiresome), but there's really nothing to the damned thing beyond a dusty, misguided nostalgia attempting to resurrect Connery's glory days.

Despite its maverick reputation, Never Say Never Again feels more like a product of the bourgeois Establishment than the official franchise itself ever did. Maybe it's the impeccable Etruscan sets, maybe it's that Connery's perpetual superiority complex goes unchallenged, or maybe it's the simple fact that the action sequences seem restricted by a single-digit speed limit dictated by the relatively miniscule budget and the star's advanced age. The film is certainly aware of everything it must contain for street cred (guns, cars, shagging), but bringing the actor synonymous with 007 into its corner appears to have infected the production with a laissez-faire attitude--such that even when the picture does muster the will to deliver on convention, it does so without the slightest trace of ingenuity or gracefulness. There's not a single moment in all the movie's 134 minutes that doesn't feel recycled or redundant; you wince with embarrassment early on when Bond disposes of henchman Pat Roach with a jar full of his own super-urine, and once you reach the end of the inglorious mess that follows, you have no idea who's shooting at whom, or why. Thunderball may be hopelessly formulaic, but everyone from that production at least cared enough to strive for coherence--and there, too, Fleming's invincible hero had the advantage of an inherent spontaneity^* ruled out by Never Say Never Again's bad case of déjà vu. Bound by the courts of law and box-office expectations to adhere to a very limited perception of what our hero was capable of accomplishing, Never Say Never Again explicitly states its desire to ladle out "some gratuitous sex and violence," which it does--in the most blank, perfunctory way possible.

In conjunction with MGM's Blu-ray issues of their James Bond titles, Never Say Never Again arrives on the format from parent company Fox so as to set it apart from the genuine article. Still, it's evident that some amount of effort went into this restoration/remaster, as the 2.35:1, 1080p widescreen image looks...appropriate. The film's dull beige palette, wonderfully emblematic of '80s film technique (read: bland and suffocating), is rendered with an organic fidelity that only becomes problematic in optical shots and a handful of nighttime sequences that exhibit worrisome levels of grain. Similarly ideal but harder to appreciate as an upgrade to previous editions, the 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio is reedy and less than immersive--purists probably would've forgiven a from-scratch remix in this case. Occupying another track is a mildly interesting, mostly-one-sided conversation between Kershner and James Bond historian Steven Jay Rubin. Being the guy who injected The Empire Strikes Back with a welcome irreverence, Kershner was the right man for the job, though it's pretty obvious how little emotional investment he had in this particular tentpole: he spends most of the yakker walking us through the plot with superfluous elaborations on the necessity of a well-rounded narrative that are only buffered by the occasional personal anecdote. At one point, he also admits that Thunderball was the weakest of Fleming's novels in terms of its potential for cinematic adaptation.

Flying in the face of Never Say Never Again's presumably-vindicating box-office success, the disc's documentary supplements are a bit more straightforward in establishing the film's general worthlessness. For that you might consider them must-sees for cinephiles in addition to Bond completists, as they offer not only vital lessons in how the legal aspects of filmmaking affect the creative aspects, but also the ever-so-vague hope that we'll one day be equally dismissive of Michael Bay's boffo bullshit. Kershner repeats many a statement from the commentary, while credited screenwriter Lorenzo Semple, Jr., simultaneously the logical and illogical choice as the author of the King Kong and Flash Gordon reboots, explains that no love was lost when he was dismissed from the project. Script doctors Ian La Frenais and Dick Clement (Across the Universe) subsequently chime in to take pride in beating the screenplay into a workable shape but express discomfort over how their taut title sequence was marred by the picture's awful title song. In retrospect, all seem to understand that Never Say Never Again is perhaps best regarded as a cautionary tale: when a movie like this is produced as a simple prerogative of copyright, no one's going to feel terribly passionate about it. Indeed, "The Big Gamble" (16 mins., 480i) makes no bones about the forces that brought the film to life: with Connery's presence as the driving force in the midst of a lawsuit from Cubby Broccoli, Kershner and producer Jack Schwartzman (here represented by his widow, Talia Shire) smashed four scripts together and ran everything past their lawyers to ensure the film never strayed from the parameters of Thunderball. It eventually culminates in the common confession that, because everyone had grown so tired of playing Red Rover every step of the way, when it came time to shoot an ending no one gave a shit anymore. Explains a lot, doesn't it?

"Sean is Back" (8 mins., 480i) gathers cast and crew to reflect on how delightful it was to have Connery reprising his signature role after so long out of the saddle--readily ignoring the actor's listless interim career and still-obvious 007 fatigue. (The fact that Connery stopped caring around 1967 is apparent from his disastrous voice work in the equally-disastrous From Russia with Love video game, although he continues to be unrivalled in his timing of "Bond, James Bond.") Sans Basinger, "The Girls of Never Say Never Again" (10 mins., 480i) surveys the various female-types involved in the production, many of whom were relatively new to the biz--and we come to the unsurprising conclusion that all were intimidated by Connery's commanding presence. From the sounds of it, Barbara Carrera--whose role casually expanded as she collaborated with Kershner--was probably the only one having any fun on set. A HiDef photo gallery and the film's theatrical trailer (a sedate, self-explanatory thing more suited to contemporary television) finish off the platter.-

2.35:1 (1080p, VC-1); English DTS-HD 5.1 MLA, English Dolby Surround, French Mono, Spanish Mono; English SDH, Spanish, Cantonese, Korean, Mandarin, Thai subtitles; BD-50; 134 minutes; PG; Fox