I write these Bond reviews with the expectation that everyone has seen all the movies, if not read the all the books. So, tread as carefully as it seems prudent.
Thunderball begins the high-voltage Bond adventures and the is the first of what is dubbed the "Blofeld Trilogy". The plot is pretty well known as the movie does a first-rate job of translating it pretty completely. This one began life as a movie script and shows it. More on that below. This first SPECTRE story is a cracking good super-spy adventure.
Thunderball is a movie which should be so much better than it is. It has all the elements, but somehow, someway the thing always shakes apart a bit when I watch it. The first problem is that already Connery is getting a bit paunchy to sell the role, something a little bit evident in Goldfinger. The glimmer of a virile energy he projected on the screen in the first two Bond movies is missing a bit. That said, the plot rumbles around a bodacious scheme by SPECTRE.
The movie begins with blazing coincidence when James Bond, the arch-enemy of SPECTRE just so happens to be healing up at the same facility at which the schemers are hiding their fake pilot who will infiltrate NATO defenses and make off with an atomic-laden plane. Bond gets onto the scheme before it really gets going and that makes for some weird connections to what is happening, an almost too personal relationship which undermines the professional nature of his work. It's an action-movie thing, but not a Bond thing, if you follow my meaning.
We do get to go to the Caribbean again, which is good, but this trip unlike that in the first movie lacks novelty and the helpers are less interesting. Paula (Martine Beswick) is Bond's aide and like most of them gets killed off, but not in any particularly memorable fashion. The guy playing Felix Leiter (Rik Van Nutter) this time looks like a member of the Beach Boys and not a spy. It all feels lightweight somehow. Bond finds the villains almost immediately, but his superiors never seem to send him any real help to fend off the threat to world order until the very finale. Domino (Claudine Auger) is beautiful to look at, but seems to lack the snap of earlier dames in the series. More interesting is Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi) but she gets killed off too soon.
The final battle underwater was more enjoyable for me this time. In the past I've found it a bit too difficult to decipher, but somehow it worked for me as I watched it. The battle aboard the yacht is still a low-point for the series, the weird fast-action outside the windows is like something from an old silent comedy and almost completely undermines the rough and tumble of the fight. All in all, this one has all of the moving parts, but they just don't hang as well as they ought.
Bond's encounter with a SPECTRE agent at the Shrublands where he's been sent for a health cure is more realistic than in the movie which depends much too much on coincidence to put Bond at the core of the events too soon. I like that going to the Carribean is M's idea and not Bond's. Fleming gets off a few neat jabs at health spas, it's almost like he has a grudge.
The novel depends less on coincidence than the inevitable movie will and so seems more naturalistic. There's some, but not so much as to break all credulity which the movie does, but at a tempo which doesn't allow for reflection until it's all over. Felix Leiter is back, pressed back into government service due to the international threat. In the novel we are given histories of both Blofeld and Largo as the SPECTRE organization is detailed. And as is typical in the novels, Bond suffers a lot more from his wounds, they leave mark.
Thunderball is a movie which should be so much better than it is. It has all the elements, but somehow, someway the thing always shakes apart a bit when I watch it. The first problem is that already Connery is getting a bit paunchy to sell the role, something a little bit evident in Goldfinger. The glimmer of a virile energy he projected on the screen in the first two Bond movies is missing a bit. That said, the plot rumbles around a bodacious scheme by SPECTRE.
The movie begins with blazing coincidence when James Bond, the arch-enemy of SPECTRE just so happens to be healing up at the same facility at which the schemers are hiding their fake pilot who will infiltrate NATO defenses and make off with an atomic-laden plane. Bond gets onto the scheme before it really gets going and that makes for some weird connections to what is happening, an almost too personal relationship which undermines the professional nature of his work. It's an action-movie thing, but not a Bond thing, if you follow my meaning.
We do get to go to the Caribbean again, which is good, but this trip unlike that in the first movie lacks novelty and the helpers are less interesting. Paula (Martine Beswick) is Bond's aide and like most of them gets killed off, but not in any particularly memorable fashion. The guy playing Felix Leiter (Rik Van Nutter) this time looks like a member of the Beach Boys and not a spy. It all feels lightweight somehow. Bond finds the villains almost immediately, but his superiors never seem to send him any real help to fend off the threat to world order until the very finale. Domino (Claudine Auger) is beautiful to look at, but seems to lack the snap of earlier dames in the series. More interesting is Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi) but she gets killed off too soon.
Thunderball is adapted again in 1983 as Never Say Never Again and featured a somewhat older Sean Connery return to the role he'd originated two decades before. This came about because of a complicated haggle over the rights to film the movie which led to litigation. This was because Thunderball began as a film script and then when Ian Fleming decided to just make it a novel without consulting his co-authors, and didn't give credit to the guys he'd been working with. They won and got the chance to make their own version of the movie. Despite a great cast including Barbara Carrera and Kim Basinger, this one just muddles along.
James Bond Returns in The Spy Who Love Me.
Rip Off
The posters were an interesting combination of two artists: Robert McGinnis for Bond and the women, Frank McCarthy for everything else.
ReplyDeleteI just picked up a book featuring the work of McGinnis and the artwork he did for this poster is included. You've added to my info greatly. Thanks.
DeleteA few years ago somebody involved with the British secret service admitted that the typical agent is more like Miss Marple than James Bond - and by coincidence all this week BBC radio is broadcasting an adaptation of Agatha Christie's "A Caribbean Mystery" featuring Miss Marple (a re-run from 1997).
ReplyDeleteReal spies are totally average folks who blend in. It's why they are "secret".
DeleteConnery himself, after he'd fulfilled his contractual obligations promoting 'Never Say Never Again' described it as a 'piece of sh*t'. As a Bond movie in the cinema, it didn't quite work for me (maybe my expectations were too high), but I enjoy it enough when I see it on TV. As for 'Thunderball', this has to have more continuity errors than any two other Bond films put together, and I found the underwater sequences a tad boring. Also, big Tam was definitely looking a bit bloated, probably as a result of the bigger and better restaurants he'd been able to afford to eat in since 'Dr. No'.
ReplyDeleteNever Say Never Again is fun to watch. The problem is the plot of Thunderball is goofy, so any adaptation is going to be that also.
DeleteLike the rest of the Connery Bond movies, I saw them all on the big screen when they first came out and this one was a doozy. It encapsulates most of the spy tropes and more with gadgets, gizmos and girls. Maybe I was just the right age or it was under the right circumstances, but I'd have to say it's my favorite of the first-wave Bond films. The book was cracking good, too.
ReplyDeleteThis one is the best big-screen effort. It has the scale and bombast for sure.
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