If there’s one thing we haven’t had enough of in James Bond films, it’s deaths at the hands of sharks. Fortunately, this film gives us plenty of these in spades.
It’s a bonus, I guess. It also gives us the first James Bond film without the slack-jawed racist Sheriff, so there’s another fortunate bonus for us. It also gives us Jaws, who’s actually not a bad Bond villain and somehow iconic.
This film also gives us one of the best pieces of Bond music ever with Carly Simon’s “Nobody Does it Better.”
And, if you ask my ten year old son, this is the greatest Bond film ever made because it features a car that goes underwater. If you ask me, though, I think this might be Bond’s worse car. Being so close to the 60s, they seemed to have abandoned the classic elegance that Bond was. Roger Moore wore digital watches and drove the latest car, instead of the coolest. It was all very blah.
If, like me, though, you’re a warm-blooded adult who enjoys the promise of what James Bond can be, you’ll find that this isn’t all that great of a movie, but as I rewatch the Roger Moore films, I find that this might be the most bearable of his oeuvre. The convoluted plot involves an evil “Hank Scorpio” style super villain who has taken control of American and Russian nuclear submarines and plans to unleash nuclear war on the world while he lives peacefully in his underwater community.
The most interesting part of the plot (especially for 1977) is that Bond is forced to work with a KGB agent (Agent XXX) whose lover he’s killed. I also quite loved how they played up Bond’s background as a Commander in the British Navy. He’s seen in uniform and even referred to as Commander. It’s sad to think that it’s one of the few elements the Moore era did right and the Craig era seems to have done away with entirely.
“The Spy Who Loved Me” might have the best, wry Bond one-liner that ends any of the films. “Bond, what are you doing?” M asks, after finding Bond and Agent XXX in an escape craft on the water, half-naked or under covers.
“Keeping the British end up,” he replies, before closing the curtain and the end credits begin to roll.
It’s also interesting to note that the end of this film promises that Bond will be back in “For Your Eyes Only” but Moonraker is the next to come out. Citizen-bot will be back with a review of that tomorrow.
This might be the peak of Roger Moore’s Bond era and one of the few Moore-era Bond’s that isn’t a chore to watch. For that, I’ll give it 2 martinis.
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.
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is often a forgotten Bond film. It interrupts Sean Connery’s tenure with a single film starring George Lazenby, and was the victim of a bad reputation for quite a long time. The only thing that’s chipped away that bad reputation is time. Audiences have had time to view it in the context of the time it was released, and audiences today are much more accustomed to the changing nature of James Bond actors.
For others still, this film gains more and more ground, climbing the ranks of the “best of Bond” lists, finding its way near to the top.
The first thing that ought to be talked about is Lazenby himself as a replacement for Connery. So, without further ado, we’ll turn it over to the robots:
Swank-mo-tron: For me, Lazenby ranks right up there with Connery. He’s a much tougher Bond, and more dynamic. His upper-cut in the opening montage is nothing Connery was capable of. He’s at once like Connery, but somehow more smooth, more vulnerable, and tougher. I think he nailed the part and every time I watch the film I get increasingly angry that he only did one.
Shaz-Bot: This is actually the first time I’ve watched this particular Bond film. I really liked it, and a big part of that was because of Lazenby’s portrayal. He doesn’t play Bond as vulnerable, per se, but I think he definitely plays the part of a Bond who can fall in love a bit better than Connery. Don’t get me wrong, Connery is awesome, but he does have a kind of dickish swagger that makes it a little hard to believe he could love anyone in a real way.
Citizen-bot: What I love most about this film is how different it is from all others. It’s more grounded, more realistic, the characters and situations are more plausible and real. Beginning and ending with Bond. There’s a bit of world-weariness that he brings to Bond, though, and I think that’s what’s key. In no other film (except Casino Royale) does the character of Bond actually have any sort of character arc. He grows, and Lazenby’s Bond seems like he would be content to give it all up. Connery and Moore’s Bond just kind of glide through the movies and seem just as likely to keep womanizing and swilling martinis and foiling baddies until the end of time. When we hit that break with “We have all the time in the world”, Louis Armstrong’s voice is almost like a metaphorical record scratch. We’re kind of re-setting Bond. Of course, then he goes back to infiltrating Blofeld’s hideout and starts bedding every girl he can, but there’s some difference when he then runs into Tracy again.
Swank-mo-tron: Another thing that must be spoken of is Telly Savalas. When you tell people that Savalas was in a Bond film they get a curious look on their face, tell them he played Blofeld and you’ve just blown their mind. He’s fiendish, diabolical, but gleeful. Pleasance was much more menacing, but Savalas wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty in a physical sense.
Shaz-Bot: Telly Savalas as Blofeld. Who loves ya, baby? That would be me. This was just awesome. He kind of played Blofeld as a cultured thug. Yeah, he wants to hypnotize his angels to make him a lot of dosh, but he other motivating factor is to legitimise his heritage. It was kind of cool to see. As an aside, Bruce Timm was once quoted that his take on Lex Luthor in Superman: The Animated Series was based on Telly’s Blofeld. I can totally see it! His mannerisms, along with the tone and candor of his voice, are exactly what Clancy Brown ended up emulating in the show.
Citizen-Bot: I talked about Bond being world-weary. In this, Blofeld’s scheme is, quite literally, to get immunity for his previous crimes and have enough money and a landed estate to retire on. Of course, he’s willing to commit genocide to do it, but the point is he wants out as much as anyone. The fact that he and Bond foil each other propels them back to one another again and again after this altercation. But this somehow always seemed more plausible than, say, ransoming the world for millions of dollars with stolen nukes, or trying to start a war between American and the USSR. I guess the thing that really differentiates this film for me is it is so grounded. There’s nothing in here that seems so fantastical, and I think only From Russia With Love really compares in that sense: no ridiculous car chases, no hyper-reliance on crazy gadgets, or ninjas in volcanos. .
Swank-mo-tron: I think we need to speak of Diana Rigg. Everyone talks about how great Vesper Lynd was for 007, but the Contessa was absolutely perfect for Bond in every way. She was so much his opposite but so much like him. She was beautiful and strong willed, much different than the average Bond Girl fare.
Shaz-Bot: Diana Rigg… Ah in my pre-pubescent years she and Julie Newmar were it for me (I watched a lot of 60’s TV). She does admirably in this movie, and doesn’t suffer fools at all. She’s sharp, strong, and cool under fire. The way she handled herself as Blofeld’s guest cemented it for me. “This woman is definitely the one for Bond.” And it goes without saying, her Cougar XR-7 convertible is awesome.
Citizen-Bot: Shaz, you took the words right out of my mouth. Julie Newmar and Diana Rigg (and Donna Reed for me, too, but that’s another story), and so if I thought I liked her before this film, I fell in love with her as much as Bond did.
Swank-mo-tron: The thing I might love most about this movie, though, is the heart of it. It’s the most heartfelt of the James Bond movies. And the ending is gut-wrenching. Of every Bond film, this one has the most perfect ending. Period. It’s tragic. It hurts. And I love it. And they ended it where they needed to, with the hurt, instead of tacking on another act to the film… *cough*Casino Royale*cough*
Shaz-Bot: Yes, I knew the ending of the movie before I watched it. That didn’t lessen the impact of it. In this movie Bond is actually able to open his heart and let someone in, then it gets torn from his chest and drop-kicked into the waste bin, just when he thinks his life is going to be sunshine and rainbows.
Citizen-Bot: Swank, you and I were IM’ing about a writing project you were working on (I think it was an early draft of the first few chapters of Operation Montauk?) the first time I watched this. I don’t know if you remember my reaction. I was flabbergasted. I don’t know another time I’d ever seen a movie that made my jaw drop like that. I imagine it’s like what it would’ve been like to have seen Empire Strikes Back for the first time, or the way my wife reacted in Fellowship of the Rings when Gandalf and Boromir died. I did not believe what I had just seen. And it was so intensely emotional. I’ll plead the fifth as to whether I shed a tear or not. Again, only in Casino Royale (extra, unnecessary act notwithstanding) has there been a death that was that impactful in any of these films– or for me, among most films in general. I think the most tragic thing of all, though, is this didn’t reverberate into any of the other films. When Bond confronts Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever, he doesn’t act like a man out for vengeance, he’s the same old Bond. Same old Connery Bond. Which, again, was why this was so tragic there couldn’t be more followup films to this.
And as heartfelt as this is, we forget how badass it is! A coordinated helicopter attack on a mountain lair? It’s no ninjas in a volcano, but on the upside it’s not as silly as ninjas in a volcano. Stuff blows up in this movie, and it’s a lot of fun. But yet, they don’t need to resort to ridiculous explosions to make the movie exciting.
The biggest problem this film has is its unfortunate and predictable comparisons to Connery’s Bond. I take the opposite view. You like Connery so much? Then why, when they tried to bring him back after Lazenby and this film, did Diamonds Are Forever suck so bad? How is it that On Her Majesty’s Secret Service did everything so well, that as I’m making my way through the first several Roger Moore movies, all I can say is, “Saw it done. It was better in OHMSS.” For instance: compare the ski chase in The Spy Who Loved Me to this (or better yet, the craptastic ski chase in A View To a Kill). This ski chase scene (and I should point out how great the score is at this point, as well) has some of my favorite henchmen deaths of all time. “He had lots of guts” and the guy who falls off the cliff for s-i-x-t-e-e-n s-e-c-o-n-d-s all the way to the bottom of the mountains. It’s ridiculous and awesome. Blofeld and Bond have a chase scene on bobsleds. Yes. Is it cheesy? Nowhere near as bad as driving a moon lander through the Nevada desert in Diamonds. “Oh, but the floozies he beds in Blofeld’s mountaintop retreat are so unrealistic.” Yeah? And “Bambi” and “Thumper” are your idea of good? I’ll take any action sequence in this film over any of them in any of the next several Connery/Moore films. Nobody Does It Better? Hardly. Lazenby does it better. So is there an unfair comparison to the previous 5 Connery Bond films? Yes. But an even more unfair comparison is this to the next 5 Connery/Moore films, none of which can stand up next to this.
Compare the relationships Bond has with Solitaire, with Agent XXX and the one with Tracy. Tracy is a true equal- the only person really worthy to marry Bond. Who else in the entire series was the driver in getting Bond out of a jam? And, as Shaz pointed out, her car kicked ass– probably my second or third favorite Bond car behind the Aston Martin in the entire series. She saved his ass! Compare that with the sexism of “Oh, the little woman can’t drive the big truck” in Spy Who Loved Me. What was so perfect–beginning the film with her suicide attempt–this is a broken woman. Bond is a broken man. Seriously. Bordering on sociopath. But somehow they seem to fix each other– like the way Sasha healed Raskolnikov’s soul in Crime and Punishment. Which is why her murder is so intensely tragic.
Swank-mo-tron: As I’m watching these movies over again, I think this film has, once and for all, eclipsed Goldfinger as my favorite James Bond film. Lazenby is perfect, Savalas is fiendish, Diana Rigg is incredible, the emotional core of the film is the strongest of any Bond film. Out of 4 martinis, this film gets 5. Or 6. Or maybe one giant martini that adds up to 8. In my opinion, at this point, unless Skyfall blows my mind, this is the best James Bond film ever made.
Shaz-Bot: I’m not sure if I can rate this one above Goldfinger, although I did very much enjoy it. I think some of the skiing action scenes went on too long, and I didn’t like how they had to dub over Lazenby’s voice when he was doing the impersonation thing. Those aside, the movie gets props from me for a lot of the little moments. The subtle nod to Connery’s performance at the beginning, as well as Ms. Moneypenny crying at the altar when Bond is married are icing on the cake to an excellent film. I’ll give it 3.75 out of four Martinis, but with an extra olive for good measure.
Citizen-Bot: I’m with Swank. I mentioned when we did Goldfinger the heresy that it might not be the best. I’m still waiting for a final viewing of Casino Royale so I can compare them more in context, but this has the potential to be the best of all of them. 4 Martinis, which makes the average above four: our cup runneth over of vodka and vermouth. As well it should.
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.
IGN got a new Skyfall trailer, replete with Adele’s new title track for the film. It’s a great song and much more worthy of being in the Bond mythos than some of the songs we’ve had. (I mean, really, have you listened to the song for Octopussy? It sucks worse than Octopussy, which is saying something…)
Skyfall comes out next month and be sure to watch this space as we’ll be leading up to it with a Bond retrospective.
