Trailer

WARNING: The following review may or may not contain spoilers from the film. If you haven’t seen the movie and you don’t want it ruined, I suggest watching the movie before continuing.

I don’t want to dislike Thunderball. I really don’t. For three reasons, I was anticipating this film: 1) I am a huge James Bond fan, 2) I go to Staniel Cay a lot and I especially go to the beautiful Thunderball Grotto, and 3) it has a great reputation as one of the best Bond films. However, after seeing this film during my James Bond-a-thon, I was extremely underwhelmed. I’m sorry everyone, but I think this Bond is overrated. After a cool pre-credit sequence where Bond dispatches a rogue cross-dressing SPECTRE agent though to be dead and escapes with a jetpack, we cut to the main plot as usual. So, prepare for me to sum up the extremely short plot in under half a minute. SPECTRE plots to hold the world ransom by stealing two atomic weapons from NATO and threatening to fire the weapons on Miami and London. So, MI6 sends Bond (played for the 4th time by Sean Connery) and the other 00 agents on a mission codenamed “Thunderball” to stop SPECTRE No. 2 Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi) and fellow SPECTRE femme-fatale Fiona Volpe (Luciano Paluzzi) from firing these weapons, with help from Largo’s mistress Domino Derval (Claudine Auger) and of course Felix Leiter (played this time by Rik Van Nutter). And, that is one of my main problems with Thunderball. The plot is so dull and so clichéd that I can’t sum it up for more than half a minute. Also, almost all of the supporting characters are weak and forgettable, especially Largo and Domino. However, my biggest with the film is that the pacing is extremely slow and the movie has way too many underwater sequences. Now, I don’t mind underwater sequences. In fact, the underwater scenery is extremely beautiful to look at. But, my God, they show the underwater world way too often. I mean, HALF of the climax takes place underwater! It’s just not very engaging! I also extremely hate the fact that because of the legal issues surrounding the film rights of the original Ian Fleming novel that the movie was based on, Kevin McClory receives complete producing credit for a movie that is obviously done by Saltzman and Broccoli. However, there are a few good things about it. I think Sean Connery is still awesome as James Bond, the Tom Jones theme song is good, Fiona Volpe is a memorable femme-fatale, the cinematography is amazing due to the aspect ratio change, and the locations are still exotic and beautiful to look at (particularly Thunderball Grotto, which I mentioned earlier). However, I think Thunderball tries way too hard to be the “biggest Bond of all” and the result is a film that has an extremely predictable plot, boring and weak characters, slow pacing, and too many underwater sequences. I can see why other people like Thunderball (I mean, it looked amazing in 1965), but it just jumped the sharks in the tank for me.

6/10