25 August 2010

The Bond retrospective - Number 18

 It's getting hard to determine where to put these now...

Anyway, this may cause contradiction:

Who are you?
18. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

The infamous one, it remains one of the most divisive Bond films of all time, on the one hand you have some really shite acting from Lazenby and some frankly ridiculous scenes, and on the other this is the film where Bond gets married – which means it can never be forgotten, and is seemingly loved by mothers everywhere. Let’s start with the basics – the plot surrounds Bond’s hunt for Blofeld, which leads him to the top of a swiss alp where the main man is brainwashing pretty women (uh-oh!) and chopping off his earlobes so he can become a count for some unexplained reason. Along the way down the mountain Bond develops a relationship with Tracy, one of the better developed of all Bond girls, eventually asking her to marry him. Predictably, she gets captured and he gets his father-in-law (a crime lord..) to launch an attack on the alpine base in a bid to rescue her. Explosions follow and Bond escapes to marry Tracy, and then as he takes the flowers off the car, Blofeld drives past and Tracy takes one in the head, and so we witness the saving grace of the film, and probably the most poignant moment in the Bond series, as Lazenby cradles his dead wife saying ‘we have all the time in the world’. Other than that the film is a combination of dreadful acting, poor writing and stop-motion action scenes, some standout moments are Bond in a ridiculous kilt and cravatte combo, and the cringeworthy seduction where Lazenby repeats the same lines to different women. In short Lazenby is an appalling ‘Bond’, the action, the style, none of it’s there; but in his defence, there’s no way that the playboy Connery version could have pulled off love and marriage, so if you like a good action romp, don’t bother, but if you’re sentimental maybe you’ll like it a bit more than the average Bond fan. Personally, it’s always near the bottom for me, even if the ending is the saving grace.

Pros:
Diana Rigg as one of the best Bond girls
The ending

Cons:
Everything else

1 comment:

  1. There was nothing wrong with George Lazenby's acting in this movie. Then again, he proved to be better at romantic scenes than the overrated Sean Connery. And this movie called for real romance.

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