Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Seans 5th is his 2nd best, 28 Dec 2008
I peronally think this is one of Seans best bond movies. The writers kept the action and jokes coming thick and fast and the Japan locations are great. Donald Pleasance is the best bloefeld ever and his make-up is second to none and Akiko Wakabayashi has one of the best roles for a bond girl. My favourite parts of the film is where bond's in bed and the girl is killed next to hime with the poison silently dangled from a piece of string (a very good sceane),also when bond is to have chest shaved. The expensive gadgets and special effects are well used thoughout the film the sceanes in outer space are great (better than thre Moonraker stuff from 12 years later) and in my opinion Connery gives one of his better turns as bond.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Premium Bond No. 4, 28 Jun 2009
Sean Connery was irritated by the James Bond role by the time production began on his fifth effort in the series, and the star wears his frustration on his face in many scenes, in this (very loose) adaptation of one of Fleming's last novels. But despite its deviations from the original book (a direct sequel to the On Her Majesty's Secret Service novel, which would be the next film in the Eon series), You Only Live Twice is still an exciting, enjoyably daft Bond adventure, with the great Donald Pleasence excelling as a memorably evil (if cartoonish) Blofeld. The set design for the hollowed-out volcano is awesome, too, and Nancy Sinatra's theme song is a personal favourite. Connery gave us much worse than this.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
The biggest and best of the special effects show Bonds, 3 Nov 2008
Faced with box-office rivalry from the spoof Casino Royale the same year, EON put aside their plans to follow Thunderball with OHMSS and pulled out all the stops to promise the biggest and best-paced Bond to date. While they failed to match the phenomenal success of Thunderball - still the biggest ticket seller in the series' history by a huge margin - this certainly is the best of the special effects show Bonds, and for many it's scarred, bald, Persian-cat stroking super-villain ensconced in his hollowed-out volcano lair plotting to start a world war is the quintessential Bond movie. Departing from Ian Fleming's novel in all but name and boasting a plot the producers were so taken with that they've used it at least twice since The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, both also directed by Lewis Gilbert), but by 1967 the series was already beginning to feed off itself - the pre-title sequence where Bond is killed is more or less borrowed from From Russia With Love.
After years as an offscreen presence voiced by Eric Pohlman, S.P.E.C.T.R.E.'s Ernst Stavro Blofeld finally makes his first on-screen appearance in the form of Donald Pleasance (causing that awkward continuity problem in the subsequent OHMSS where he fails to recognise Bond), with Charles Gray preceding his turn in the role on the side of the angels as our man in Japan, getting his vodka from the doorman at the Russian embassy ("among OTHER things"). This time the villains work for a large Japanese industrial company to cash-in on the Connery films' popularity in the Japanese market while offering some colorful locations, but action, not scenery, is the order of the day here. The action scenes themselves are terrific and often imaginatively shot (as with the long overhead helicopter shot in the fight at Kobe Docks) and the production values are still the best of the entire series. Visually it is certainly the best looking of the series thanks to Freddie Young's incredible photography, while Ken Adams production design is superb and the lush score marked a real turning point for John Barry.
Roald Dahl's screenplay strangely discards Blofeld's garden of death (too downbeat said the producers) and omits Bond's Japanese counterpart Tanaka's background as an ex-Kamikaze pilot (too sensitive) but has just the right internal logic to justify its outrageous elements, as well as some neat humorous touches (such as Bond being constantly castigated for his smoking). Although many fans were critical of his approach - Dahl made little secret of his opinion that Bond was a 'resourceful but rather insensitive fellow' - he is more astute about the character than many writers in the series, bringing Bond's smug superiority to the fore in lines like "You forget I took a First in Oriental languages at Cambridge."
It's particularly disappointing that the 2-disc set only includes five minutes of the very entertaining and surprisingly comprehensive hour-long Whicker's World special on the making of the film, which revealed Connery's fondness for Custard Creams. We do get the glossier and less interesting 48-minute Welcome to Japan, Mr Bond (which makes an injoke of the fact that OHMSS had originally been scheduled to be made that year by having an unseen actress complain that she was supposed to be Mrs Bond) and Ken Adams' home movie footage, but there's not enough new from the original single-disc edition to justify the `Ultimate Edition' tag here.
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