Bond-a-thon: Thunderball

For the fourth entry in the Bond series, we have Thunderball, another thrilling entry in the series that just keep getting bigger and bigger as they go along. While there is plenty to be impressed with, my overall feelings with this one are a bit more mixed than than the previous film, Goldfinger. 

This film sees the return of criminal organization SPECTRE as they conspire to steal a couple of nuclear warheads and hold them ransom, demanding 100 million dollars in diamonds in exchange for not detonating the bombs in an unspecified city in either the United States or England. The man selected to carry out this mission is Emilio Largo (played by Adolfo Celi), a high ranking SPECTRE agent. Once the ransom is made, James Bond (played once again by Sean Connery) is given the assignment to try and track down and retrieve the stolen warheads. Teaming up with his frequent CIA counterpart Felix Leiter (played by Rik Van Nutter) and later Largo's mistress Domino Derval (played by Claudine Auger), they have to try and locate where Largo has stashed the warheads and retrieve them before he can detonate them.

While Thunderball has plenty of impressive action, it also has some flaws that keep it from ranking with the best of the Bond films. Among the things I liked was Connery's performance and Bond and the partnership he has with Felix in this entry, which has the biggest role for Felix thus far in the series. The film works best for me when it has Bond working his detective skills trying to find the nuclear warheads with the aid of Felix and later Domino. But when the film moves underwater, it starts to suffer with long, drawn out fight sequences that make it difficult to work out who is fighting who. This is made all the worse by being accompanied by what has to be some of the worst music score I have ever heard that sounds more like a cat being strangled than anything thrilling or enticing to the ear.  

Terence Young once again returns to the director's chair with this outing after Guy Hamilton declined to return. You can tell they had more money to work with for this one, with plenty of impressive stunts, including the underwater fight sequences and Bond's jet pack escape from the beginning. The film also looks more polished and for the first time in the series it was filmed in Panavision 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen which only adds grandeur to the cinematography. However, clocking in at two hours and ten minutes, the film has a tendency to drag in places and could have used some tighter editing.

Overall, Thunderball, is a still a strong entry in the Bond series and for the majority of the film it works well, but I find myself cringing anytime it goes underwater. It's not as strong an entry as Goldfinger, but it is still suitably thrilling for much of it's run time and that's not bad.