Technically I started watching Octopussy yesterday, but didn’t finish it until today, so I missed posting about it. I watched A View To A Kill today as well, so hopefully, I’ll be caught up by the end of day today (though with Jersey Shore coming up, it might be close). Anyway, I was a little skeptical about Octopussy because For Your Eyes Only felt like it was treading on a lot of old ground, plus Roger Moore was starting to look a bit old. Well, I thankfully didn’t have that problem with this flick. I knew I was in for a treat when the beginning of the movie involved Bond sneaking around in Cuba trying to well, do something, getting caught, having a beautiful woman help him out and then escaping thanks to a tiny plane hidden behind a fake horse butt that lead to a pretty great plane chase. It’s a great beginning that actually felt like the end of a movie, which is how these things are supposed to work.

THEN we’re immediately shown another Double Oh agent dressed as a clown being chased down and murdered by twin knife throwers from a circus. AWESOME. A big part of the plot involves Faberge Eggs or something, a ring of female criminals run by Octopussy and possibly the best assortment of villains in any of these Bond flicks (the knife throwers, Kamal Khan, a giant turbaned man, a bunch of  cracked-out Thuggee-looking dudes and then a dude wielding a bladed yo-yo type thing. It’s pretty great. Forget all that junk about too many villains from superhero movies, it just works here. As do the locale changes as they hop to India and other places, giving this movie a look that the others lack, which is impressive because the world seems to be running out of exotic places for Bond to bed women and kill badguys in.

On the action front, the flick doesn’t disappoint. There’s some great fight scenes (though shot in a way as to not reveal that it’s not actually Moore throwing or receiving the punches), but the real fun comes at the end of the movie when Octopussy’s army of sexy carnival women roll in and attack the bad guy’s giant palace and who else is helping them out? Q in the house, actually doing stuff. Octopussy really renewed my faith in this series. And, spoiler, A View To A Kill‘s pretty dern fun too!