Thunderball (1965)

June 18, 2015 5:06 AM

James Bond heads to The Bahamas to recover two nuclear warheads stolen by SPECTRE agent Emilio Largo in an international extortion scheme.

This is the 4th James Bond film adventure.

The Wikipedia entry.
ShrunkenCinema.com reviews Thunderball.
The James Bonding podcast (Matt Mira, Matt Gourley and guest Scott Mosier) covers Thunderball.

Some Top Critic reviews from Rotten Tomatoes:

TIME Magazine: "If Thunderball's gimmickry seems to overreach at times, Actor Connery gains assurance from film to film, by now delivers all his soppiest Jimcracks martini-dry."

Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader: "Slightly bloated Bond, with too much technology for my taste and a climactic slaughter that's a little too mindless to be much fun."

Variety: "There's visible evidence that the reported $5.5 million budget was no mere publicity figure; it's posh all the way."

Time Out: "The fourth Bond, marking the point at which spectacular hardware began to dominate the series. Sleek and quite fun all the same."

Bosley Crowther, New York Times: "The color is handsome. The scenery in the Bahamas is an irresistible lure. Even the violence is funny. That's the best I can say for a Bond film."

posted by doctornecessiter (10 comments total)

They were just pleased as punch with every single stitch of underwater footage they got, and they weren't going to not use ANY of it, were they. But really...This movie could have used some tightening.

I totally understand it, the underwater stuff looks great and it must have been a royal pain to coordinate, block, and film, but they could have told the same story overall in about ten fewer minutes, with fewer watch-checks from me.

Having said that, I do love the Bahamas here, and (digging in to more specifics), Luciana Paluzzi is particularly fun...She has a great little flicking-away-a-cigarette moment in conversation with Largo that I love. On the flipside: worst Felix Leiter? I think they consciously tried to make him more like Jack Lord had been after casting a pseudo-Jack Klugman in Goldfinger, but this guy is more like Ben Affleck's more-vapid uncle.
posted by doctornecessiter at 5:22 AM on June 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

Actually, I think there's an argument to be made that Rik van Nutter is the best Felix of the, well, the early series anyway. He was particularly better than the Felixes (Felices?) on either side of him, who came off as retired cops in cheap suits augmenting their pensions by doing some flatfooting for the government. And of course Jack Lord who was basically Joe Friday with an ego.

Felix has a more active role in Thunderball and van Nutter actually comes off much more believably as Bond's opposite number in the US Government's version of the 00 section.

Granted it's a little odd that Felix is suddenly a California surfer boy, but think about who the government would recruit if they wanted to come up with an American Bond. It works. He's the prototype for Johnny Utah.
posted by Naberius at 6:36 AM on June 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

I did forget that there's a Felix in Diamonds Are Forever...I can't speak with any authority on that one (I've only seen it once all the way through). Maybe it's the size of his role in Thunderball paired with this particular portrayal that I respond to negatively. He seems to me like a bro who wandered in just to be subservient to Bond...Lord came across as a more competent character, I thought. Upon reflection, I will say that at least van Nutter leaves more of an impression than John Terry in The Living Daylights.

(Upon further reflection: there really aren't very many Felix appearances after the Connery era, are there?)
posted by doctornecessiter at 7:29 AM on June 18, 2015

I think there's a better argument that "Felix Leiter" is a code name given to the American agent assigned to work with Bond than there is for the Bond-as-codename theory. At least it explains the wildly different actors from movie to movie.
posted by The Man from Lardfork at 7:39 AM on June 18, 2015

The weird thing about Lord is that he manages to project the character well without really doing anything! Felix wasn't in the book - they just shoehorned him into the story, so he gets a moment with Bond, but he doesn't really impact the story otherwise.

No, Felix kind of fades later on, with a couple notable exceptions. David Hedison being the most important - he actually played the role twice and the second time, Licence to Kill, he was actually the critical point on which the whole story turned. They kind of deliberately avoided him in the Brosnan years, replacing him with that Joe Don Baker character. Possibly because they had ripped off a bunch of his limbs in the last movie. (Finally - in Fleming's canon, this happened all the way back in Live and Let Die and Felix left government service and ended up working quite effectively for the Pinkerton agency and helping Bond out in future adventures.)
posted by Naberius at 7:40 AM on June 18, 2015

I think there's a better argument that "Felix Leiter" is a code name given to the American agent assigned to work with Bond than there is for the Bond-as-codename theory. At least it explains the wildly different actors from movie to movie.

This gets weird when you bring in David Hedison's return...Particularly when you consider that T. Dalt had already dealt with John Terry in his previous movie.

But that's one thing that I'll hand to Dalton...100% Felix Leiter quota. (Lazenby: 0%)
posted by doctornecessiter at 7:49 AM on June 18, 2015

They kind of deliberately avoided him in the Brosnan years, replacing him with that Joe Don Baker character. Possibly because they had ripped off a bunch of his limbs in the last movie.

Some of the attempts to stick to a continuity got kind of weird by then when you think about them for any amount of time...I'm looking forward to waaay overthinking it when we get to GoldenEye.
posted by doctornecessiter at 7:53 AM on June 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

Thunderball was the last Bond to win an Oscar (Best Visual Effects) until Skyfall. So maybe all those underwater scenes were useful for something.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 7:55 AM on June 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

This is the only one of the Sean Connery Bond movies that I won't watch again. When I did my rewatch about five or six years ago, I was so agitated by the part where he coerces sex out of the therapist at the spa that I couldn't get into the rest of the movie, including the cool underwater stuff, which I barely remember. I thought I was inured to the sex stuff in Bond movies, but this one really crossed the line for me.

Love the theme song, though.
posted by immlass at 10:50 AM on June 18, 2015

Johnny Cash's rejected Thunderball theme.

Would have been perfect if the movie had been about ghost riders some place.

(In the sky, for example.)
posted by doctornecessiter at 11:09 AM on June 18, 2015 [3 favorites]