Thunderball (1965)

Starring: Sean Connery, Claudine Auger, Adolfo Celi, Luciana Paluzzi, Rik Van Nutter, Desmond Llewelyn, Bernard Lee

Director: Terence Young

Genre: Action, Adventure, Thriller

Rating: B

I think the problem with going back and watching the James Bond movies is that while some of the tropes that they used in the series weren’t necessarily old and clichéd at the time they certainly are now.  Some of the situations that Bond gets into kind of seem a bit ridiculous and over the top – more fodder for an Austin Powers movie than an actual serious action flick.  There is no single part of Thunderball that really stands out as great, although there are a few that kind of stand out as corny – notably the jetpack, the underwater jet pack, the sharks, and the underwater sex.  I realize that sex is necessary in a Bond film, I’m just saying that this sex was particularly lame.

Thunderball sees the return of SPECTRE.  The terrorist organization has succeeded in apprehending two atomic bonds, for which they are demanding a £100 million ransom – if their demands are not met then a major city in either the United Kingdom or the United States will be destroyed.  Everyone’s favourite MI6 agent, Bond (Connery), takes up the task of finding the bombs without having to pay the ransom.  Bond decides to follow Domino (Auger), the sister of the now dead French NATO pilot who had been responsible for the bombs, and discovers that she is the mistress of SPECTRE No. 2, Emilio Largo (Celi).  It’s only a matter of time before Bond succeeds in seducing Domino and defeating Largo.

Despite the fact that there’s nothing out- standing about this film and the fact that there are more than a few corny bits, I actually kind of enjoyed Thunderball.  It’s lame, but it’s fun, and that’s everything that I expect from an action movie.  They’re not supposed to be deep, introspective films, they’re  supposed to be fun and escapist.  There is nothing about Thunderball that is remotely believable and the special effects are ridiculously lame – although forgivable given that it was filmed in the 60s – but that’s okay.  In my  opinion there are two Sean Connery images that should go down in everyone’s memory as the epitome of good actors making the best of a movie – one is the rather infamous image of him in Zardoz and the other is the image of him in the jet pack in Thunderball.  Seriously – I don’t usually use screenshots, but I had to for this.

 

The film does take a long time to get started, but I’ve kind of been feeling that in general with these movies.  The underwater sequences weren’t the best… but underwater sequences are never the best.  They did have sharks, but at least they didn’t have lasers on their heads.  I think that might actually be the reason why I liked this movie – it wasn’t all that great, but at least it wasn’t Austin Powers.  I’m now going to re-evaluate my enjoyment of Thunderball.