This film is a major turning-point in the Bond series. It was to be the last film featuring Sean Connery as Bond, as he claimed the media attention surrounding the role was just too much. He would return to the role in Diamonds are Forever and Never Say Never Again which is unfortunate and You Only Live Twice would’ve been a perfect cap on his career as Bond rather than returning for two bloated, self-parodying, middling pictures.
The plot is fairly straightforward: Bond fakes his own death in order to better investigate the disappearance of an American spacecraft, stolen by SPECTRE, which the Americans are blaming on Russia, but British Intelligence has traced the landing point to somewhere near Japan. Bond is dispatched to Japan to investigate.
You Only Live Twice divides a lot of critics, as people who love the film point to the sets, the action sequences, and the first full appearance of Blofeld as a villain onscreen. Its critics, amazingly, point to almost the exact same things. It’s big, it’s rowdy, it’s little more than cinematic candy, but it’s good cinematic candy. As we pointed out in previous reviews, the Bond films kept attempting to one-up themselves. Goldfinger had a raid on Ft Knox, Thunderball an epic underwater shootout, and this has. . . well, it has ninjas attacking an underground volcano lair.
For fans of Austin Powers, so much of that film owes itself to You Only Live Twice. Yes, the volcano lair. Blofeld has a pit of piranhas he can drop people into (inspiring the ill-tempered sea bass). The space scenes where they capture American and Soviet spacecraft. And, of course, Donald Pleasance as Blofeld (my personal favorite incarnation of the character).
Pleasance emits a cold, sadistic charm as he goes about attempting to start a nuclear war between America and the Soviet Union. Even during the first half of the film where we only see him, as previously shown in the other films, with just his torso and stroking his cat, there is more characterization here. He emotes through petting the cat, as ridiculous as that seems. But with just those deft hand movements, we get everything from anger, to a kind of compulsive angst, to a serenity that comes from a plan working out as foreseen.
The script, written by noted children’s author and friend of Ian Fleming Roald Dahl, is pretty good overall. The score and the theme song also are incredibly evocative, and just as hearing Goldfinger lets you know which movie you’re watching, so does this. You may have also heard this sampled by Robbie Williams or the song You Only Live Twice covered by Coldplay or Bjork. More than any other Bond music, this is an earworm that I can’t get out of my head once it’s in there.
Now, what isn’t so good? Well, there’s a point where Bond has to go “undercover” with the locals in Japan, going so far as to put him in a wig and give him slanty eyes. And the fact that his wig doesn’t really make him look Asian, but kept reminding me of Romulans from Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. It just all seemed really forced and silly, all in an effort to eventually get to. . .well, ninjas in a volcano. Also, the sexism in this movie gets turned up to 11, where Bond travels to a Japanese bath house and learns that the major problem with how we treat women in the western world is they’re not servile enough. Great. . . but if you can look past the sexism and racism, this is a fun movie.
But, what is best in this movie? Well, ninjas in a volcano! It’s silly and over the top, but still somehow manages to keep from devolving into the camp that we’d get even just two movies later and throughout the 70’s and 80’s iterations of Bond. The inclusion of Little Nellie is also a fun action piece. Also, I have a thing for redheads, so Karin Dor as femme fatale Helga Brandt was great for me.
You Only Live Twice is great as long as you don’t expect too much from it. I like it more than Thunderball and Dr. No, but not as much as Goldfinger or From Russia With Love.
3 1/2 martinis — and make it a double. Because you only live twice.
