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Ranking James Bond Films: #14 – “Thunderball” (1965)
The fourth Bond movie in four years, Thunderball starts to show the straining wrinkles that would plague overstuffed Bond movies set to come in the future.
“James Bond heads to the Bahamas to recover two nuclear warheads stolen by S.P.E.C.T.R.E. Agent Emilio Largo in an international extortion scheme.”
Director: Terence Young
Writers: Ian Fleming, Kevin McClory, Jack Whittingham, Richard Maibaum, John Hopkins
Cast: Sean Connery, Claudine Auger, Adolfo Celi, Bernard Lee, Desmond Llewelyn, Lois Maxwell, Rik Van Nutter, Guy Doleman, Molly Peters, Martine Beswick
Release Date: December 22, 1965
IMDB
The fourth Bond movie in four years, Thunderball starts to show the straining wrinkles that would plague overstuffed Bond movies set to come in the future. There are the first signs of absurdity with jetpacks and man-eating sharks, yet despite the first cracks in the Bond visage, Thunderball still holds up as a good movie.
For the first time in the franchise, the Bond girls in this movie are not brainless. I’m not sure I would call them wise, but Domino and Fiona call out Bond for his normal tendencies with women. The wooing for help and sudden change of heart are not as drastic in Thunderball compared to other egregious oh my moments
From Russia WIth Love and Thunderball both do a great job of expanding the lore of SPECTRE. The slow unveiling of Number One and his attitude toward his subordinates is eyebrow-raising. Who is this man who has remote controls over fancy office chairs to kill those whom embezzled from his organization?
One could argue that Thunderball is Terence Young’s best-directing job. The man who directed three of the first Bond movies stretches his limits in Thunderball. One has to appreciate the commitment to underwater sequences. There is a full-on Revolutionary War-style charging at each other scene with loaded harpoon guns scene at the end of this movie. While it goes too long, it’s still visually and technologically impressive for 1965.
STANKO RATING: B-
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