13 September 2010

The Bond retrospective - Number 12

I've been giving this next entry some thought, it's getting rather tight now - this could be controversial






12. Thunderball
Jetpack - Blue Peter  

Ah, the one that’s main claim to fame is that it has its own lottery game. Thunderball is notable for one) having a huge amount of underwater scenes, two) the iconic scene around the SPECTRE table, and three) the archetypal plot of stealing nukes and holding the world to ransom. Thunderball is in fact one of the most straightforward plots to follow, nuclear loaded plane gets hijacked and hidden in sea, Connery swims around for two hours, finding the nukes in the end. To be honest there are no real moments of brilliance, Connery is better in his past performances and the next one in my opinion, and there are no stand out scenes, it’s just a lot of water, and the finale is similar in tone to that of Moonraker, with an immeasurably large harpoon battle that fails to capture the imagination. That said, all in all it’s a good solid romp with a climactic action scene, however it suffers from lengthy and slow underwater scenes and what with this being one of the longest Bond films it really doesn’t help the situation, definitely a middling film.

Pros:
Shark pools
Domino

Cons:
Way too much trudging around the seabed

1 comment:

  1. Goldfinger introduced the DB5, that's usually regarded as the iconic one, and it had the ejector seat, Thunderball is the other main one with a classic DB5 - but Goldfinger was first... and is a way better film

    I noticed ITV have been playing them a lot again at weekends, mostly Moore stuff though

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