Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Clunky but still fun, 3 Nov 2008
'Here comes the biggest Bond of them all!' screamed the ads. But while this is still the high water mark of the series at the box-office - selling more tickets than any other Bond, inflation-adjusted to today's prices its box-office take would exceed a billion dollars - it's also pretty much the clunkiest Bond in its determination to throw everything and the kitchen sink into the mix.
Opening with an excellently choreographed but very badly over-edited fight sequence, the formula is fully established here: the megalomaniacal villain, the ruthless disposal of underlings, perverted villain ("Vargas does not drink, does not smoke, does not make love. What do you do, Vargas?"), the obligatory three women for Bond to dally with and the archetypal Maurice Binder title sequence replacing Robert Brownjohn's earlier efforts (here an underwater ballet of men with harpoons pursuing silhouetted naked girls). It does tend to drag in places, but is still markedly superior to the majority of Roger Moore's efforts.
Much has been made over the years of the film's convoluted legal history. Fleming's novel was an unauthorised adaptation of a screenplay he co-wrote with Kevin McClory and Jack Whittingham in an earlier, unsuccessful attempt to launch the series. After much wrangling, McClory was awarded the screen rights and formed an uneasy alliance with Broccoli and Saltzman to co-produce the film, a move that was have legal consequences beyond remake Never Say Never Again and lead to decades of law suits.
The new cook in the broth leads to a rather more schoolboyish Bond, but the film does take a few enjoyable swipes at him, such as Lucianna Paluzzi's villainess taunting his sexual arrogance - "I forgot your ego, Mr. Bond. James Bond, the one where he has to make love to a woman, and she starts to hear heavenly choirs singing. She repents, and turns to the side of right and virtue..." The saddest sight is Earl Cameron, the black actor who distinguished such 50's British films as Sapphire and Flame in the Streets reduced to the role of messenger boy, though at least he fares better than Quarrel in Dr No. If the role of Felix Leiter was intended to paper over gaps in the narrative, Cameron's Pinder is there only to drop Bond off at the next setpiece.
Although it appears there is no definitive version of the film - there are various cuts in circulation because of the rush to get the film ready for its premiere, while the `James Bond will return in On Her Majesty's Secret Service' caption seems lost forever - this is as close to it as we're likely to see, though a featurette does handily point out the differences between various versions. Handily one of the audio commentaries also offers the chance to hear the original Dionne Warwick title song Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, possibly the best song ever written for a Bond film ("He's smooth and he's sharp/And like a shark he looks for trouble/That's why the zero's double/Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang") only to get ditched for the Tom Jones song built around the title for promotional reasons. There's also a 48-minute TV special The Incredible World of James Bond, a radio spot advertising a beauty contest to find girls for OHMSS (planned as the next Bond film), production designer Ken Adams' home movie footage, the famous documentary A Child's Guide to Blowing Up a Motor Car and more besides on a well-packed two-disc set.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thunderball, 28 Feb 2009
Classic Connery!
A truly entertaining & enjoyable film, one you could watch over & over again.
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1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Junk Bond No. 1, 28 Jun 2009
Sean Connery's first dud in the Bond series was also the first `event' Bond movie, going out to prove that bigger was better, and in this case, failing. Connery's thinning hair will raise a smile, and Luciana Paluzzi's nymphomaniac villainess will raise something else, but the film itself is a smug, uninvolving piece of formulaic movie-making; the underwater climax is overlong to the point of being dull, and the editing is all over the place (the film reportedly exists in several different versions). Good theme song from Tom Jones, though.
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