After the opening credits we see a clown being pursued by a pair of knife throwing twins in East Berlin; they hit him but he manages to stagger to the British embassy where he crashes trough a glass window clutched a high quality fake Faberge egg. It turns out that the real egg is due to be sold at a London auction so Bond goes to see who turns up to buy it; suspecting correctly that with the fake lost the somebody may be willing to pay whatever it takes to retrieve the original. The buyer is Kamal Khan a wealthy Afghan prince living in India. When Bond gets to Delhi he soon gets the attention of Khan which leads to an entertaining rickshaw chase through the backstreets. It becomes apparent that Khan is involved with jewel smuggling with a woman known only as Octopussy. Of course there is no way that Bond would end up investigating something as trivial as smuggling; it turns out that Khan is using Octopussy's smuggling operation to help a rogue Soviet general to smuggle a nuclear bomb into West Germany!
It must be said that this is one of the sillier Bond films; with Bond crossing a lake in a 'crocodile submarine', hiding in a gorilla suit and defusing a nuclear bomb while disguised as a clown! Still it is silly things like this that add some laughs to the rather thin plot. As one would expect of a Bond film there is plenty of action including the aforementioned rickshaw chase as well as fighting on the outsides of both a train and a plane! Roger Moore continues to do an entertaining job as Bond and Maud Adams did a good job as the eponymous Octopussy; at almost forty she may have been a bit older than most Bond girls but she still looked great and brought some maturity to the role. Louis Jourdan was suitably suave as the villain Khan and Steven Berkoff was delightfully over the top as the somewhat barmy Soviet General Orlov. For the most part the silliness added to the fun but occasionally it when too far; for example I could have done without Bond swinging through the jungle complete with 'Tarzan screams'! Overall it is still worth watching if you are a Bond fan and I suspect younger fans will get a good laugh from the silliness.
It must be said that this is one of the sillier Bond films; with Bond crossing a lake in a 'crocodile submarine', hiding in a gorilla suit and defusing a nuclear bomb while disguised as a clown! Still it is silly things like this that add some laughs to the rather thin plot. As one would expect of a Bond film there is plenty of action including the aforementioned rickshaw chase as well as fighting on the outsides of both a train and a plane! Roger Moore continues to do an entertaining job as Bond and Maud Adams did a good job as the eponymous Octopussy; at almost forty she may have been a bit older than most Bond girls but she still looked great and brought some maturity to the role. Louis Jourdan was suitably suave as the villain Khan and Steven Berkoff was delightfully over the top as the somewhat barmy Soviet General Orlov. For the most part the silliness added to the fun but occasionally it when too far; for example I could have done without Bond swinging through the jungle complete with 'Tarzan screams'! Overall it is still worth watching if you are a Bond fan and I suspect younger fans will get a good laugh from the silliness.