It’s infuriating to think that this was the film that followed up George Lazenby’s stunning turn in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Connery is showing his age and it isn’t the most graceful aging he did in his career. We could have had a much different era of Bond if any of the other actors up for the role in the wake of Lazenby’s resignation had accepted the part. My favorite of the pool might have been Michael Gambon, Dumbledore himself, who turned it down because he was “in terrible shape” and had “tits like a woman.”
I also hate they followed up On Her Majesty’s Secret Service without even a passing mention of Theresa’s death at the hands of Blofeld. There you have Bond tear-assing around the country searching for the man who killed his wife, but makes no mention of it whatsoever. It was incredibly inconsistent.
The villains in this movie are easily the lamest I’ve seen in the series so far. Blofeld, played as a british dandy by Charles Gray, might be the worst iteration of the character ever, save in For Your Eyes Only. There is no menace to him whatsoever, particularly as he’s marching through a Las Vegas hotel in drag, cat in tow. And his henchman, Mr. Kidd and Mr. Wint? They were awful. I get that they were trying to diversify the lineup and add some gay characters into the mix, but these are downright evil, sociopathic, stupid people. Again, they had no menace, either. They were cartoon characters.
And to make matters worse, there’s the female bodyguards named Bambi and Thumper. You read that right. Bambi. And. Thumper.
And the Felix Leiter in this film? It’s the first one where I thought they went to a community theatre and found a guy whose day job was a construction worker. There is no suave or intelligence to this Felix whatsoever.
This is the beginning of the end for the dark middle ages of James Bond that wouldn’t get repaired until The Living Daylights (though Live and Let Die was only slightly better.) You can tell they wrote a script as a reaction to people not seeing Lazenby’s Bond, going in the exact opposite direction, and it’s a huge letdown. It has some laughs, but it doesn’t blend any of the best elements of Bond films in any meaningful fashion. It’s like oil, vinegar, and urine.
Sean Connery deserved to leave the official Bond franchise on a much higher note than this.
This film gets 2 Martinis. It has a few funny moments, Connery Bond, and Q gets to scam a casino. I’d give it more, but an argument could be made that this was the first of the Roger Moore Bond’s and that’s really not good news for anybody.