Thunderballs
[spoilers follow]
So I think you can understand the Bond ethos by looking at the character of Paula.
Paula is something something in the local station, and acts as Bond's assistant. She's played by the raging hot Martine Beswick, mostly in a bikini. She's the girl who drives the boat for Bond and is left marooned when he goes off with Domino. Then, in a passage I could scarcely credit really happened, Bond is with Paula and some dude. And he's like, this dude is whoever it is. And that's it. Paula's not even worth mentioning. And as they walk away, the guy he met (Leiter I think) says, who's the chick?
Then she's kidnapped and murdered. And Bond, on hearing that, immediately bangs another woman.
Thunderball is quite engaging despite that, but my god is it long. It would probably have felt a lot shorter if a/ it was written tighter or b/ it had a lot less undersea photography. Obviously, they spent money on an underwater camera and were determined to get full value.
So the plot is some bollocks about captured weapons, give us some money, and it's also all about Domino. She's the "girlfriend" (in fact, sex slave) of Largo, the villain. Played by Claudine Auger, she's unbelievably limp for the entire film, right up to some nifty work with a harpoon. Contrasting with her is Fiona Volpe, whose character is inexplicable so I'm not going to try. She's pointlessly killed about four hours in.
The action is just about all fighty. Early Bond isn't massive on anything else. The fights can be quite brutal in a 1960s way but Bond is just about always *coping*.
So I think this is barely a C. I've got to say, although Connery is watchable, I'm not loving him. His quips are often leaden (you can hear the dubbing and Connery does them in a really flat tone), he's boorishly sexist rather than wolfish -- at one point in this film he sexually assaults a woman (and the bigger concern here is that although she resists, she later sleeps with him, and you can draw the obvious conclusion from that). He does have the physicality that makes him a compelling action hero, but he can't act for shit. He just does Connery in every movie. If you're into it, you'll like it. That's true of Thunderball on the whole, I suppose.
posted by Dr Zen @ 7:42 pm
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