James Bond 007 - Never Say Never Again: 40th Anniversary EON Cut

In the annals of trying to turn NSNA into a BROCCOLI 007, this is so far the best.

Others have tried, but fallen short due to the excessive use of iconic music (excluding the Bond Theme which is a must ).

This edit manages to NOT fall into that trap and uses many John Barry music cues which are NOT from the 007 francise, to great effect.

It also manages to almost completely rebuild and clean up the opening credits...and though some traces remain, I for one wont mark down for that.

The other plus, is the large number of trims which clean up the narrative and remove poor joke that failed even back then. Some of these trims come at unatural points in dialogue delivery, or are too abrupt and they do pull you out from time to time, but taking it all into account, this is now my goto version.

Well done.

Recommended.

I've seen a couple different edits of Never Say Never Again now and they all succeed in bringing the movie closer to the feel of the classic EON productions, but each of them crashes against the rocks of that shrug of a third act that simply doesn't work. That said, everything precdeeding that works great. Well worth watching for any Bond fans who want to see Connery's final outing as 007 with more of an EON style.

I've always found NSNA a real slog to sit through - not any more! This edit does a fantastic job in injecting new life into this film. The pace is snappier, the jokes work better and the whole narrative zips along the way a Bond movie should. Perhaps most important of all, if ever there was an edit to demonstrate the importance of a film's score then this is it! From the opening sequence, to Shirley Bassey singing Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and every gorgeous John Barry piece that follows, the improvement on the original score is immeasurable.

This will be the only version of NSNA I watch going forward.

The best rescored edit I've seen/heard. Fantastic music choices that feel they were made just for this. I also love the pacing of this version. It feels far more energised than the plodding original. The new titles and removing of the original credits was also a highlight for me.

Very welcome update at trying once again to improve this Bond film, which always had better DNA than its theatrical version suggests.

My pros and cons are pretty much what the other reviewers have said, with one major pro to add: this is a masterclass not only in replacement music and cue choices, but in audio mixing. Not once is the dialogue made unintelligible by the score. I find that happens a lot with fanedits when music is reedited or substituted. Kudos to the editor for such fine attention to detail.