I can't hate a movie featuring Sean Connery. This sure is a weird situation, Connery coming back to compete with Roger Moore. They're friends I think, and enjoyed the parallel film releases. Surprisingly, as weird as this one gets at times, I still really enjoy it. If we could go and edit this together with the franchise staples they had to drop, I'd probably like it even more. One great plus is the way they treat Bond like he really is: old. The main villain is played so crazy and interesting too. Only major issues I have are M and Q in this. Normally I love those characters, but this time they just don't feel personalized correctly. But who cares, this time we get Mr Bean.

Proof positive you need much more than Sean Connery to make a Bond movie. Whatever his reasons were to come back (having a say in the casting and creative influence f.e.) this movie turned out bad. And he looked about ten years older than he actually was. Which at least the'd taken into account. Well, they couldn't use all the trademarks and it shows everywhere. From the opening scene this doesn't feel anything like James Bond. Funny enough some scenes actually do look like late 60s. Concerning the cast: those aren't bad actors. But their acting is bad. But I guess they act like they were directed. "M" seems like a persiflage, totally over the top. Barbara Carrera is just a hanger for designer fashion. Her performance is one of the worst I've ever seen. I don't understand the Golden Globe nomination at all. And her final scene the most ridicolous thing. Brandauer is very bland as the villain. You can't say anything else above him. And talking of blandness - re-heating an old story doesn't help. Seems to be that an original script would've been to expensive. And it takes about 1.5 h before the first decent stunt. It's also about the only significant one. I wonder where all that budget went. 36m $ compared to the 27.5m $ for "Octopussy" (all numbers imdb). Guess a lot went into Connery's pocket (actually it was 3m $ which was stupid money to pay for an actor back then). In case you'd like to know, roughly multiply the figures times 3.7 to compare it with today. Like I said, in my eyes an unnessessary and forgetable movie. Well, since the boxoffice numbers were inferior to "Octopussy" we were spared another rogue Bond movie.

There are Bond films that feel out of place in the saga, and this is one of them. It doesn’t belong to the official EON line, and although Sean Connery returns to the role, it feels like a somewhat forced comeback. Seeing him again in the tuxedo with a gun is intriguing, but it’s also clear that time had passed and the character no longer fit him naturally. The story, a reworking of Thunderball, lacks the vibrancy of the stronger entries and drags at times. The script tries to balance this with humor and secondary characters, but the classic Bond spark only shows up intermittently. The real highlights come from Klaus Maria Brandauer’s intense villain and Barbara Carrera’s magnetic presence. Visually it delivers, with solid settings and polished cinematography, but it never reaches the elegance or freshness of other films in the series. It stands today as a curiosity, almost a collector’s item, letting us see Connery’s final 007 performance—more of a rare artifact than an essential entry.

I wanted to hate this movie from the start because it's not part of the family. It just isn't. I will not ever count this as a Bond film. That said....it's okay. It is better than Thunderball, but hey that is maybe my least favorite Bond film of all time, so that doesn't say much. This movie isn't so bad.

Very mediocre flick, although in theory, it has it all: Sean Connery, (a lot of) beautiful women and gadgets. But the story just does not cut it!