Thunderball

After the Bond movies continually seemed to get better through the first three, the fourth felt like an honest misstep. You get the feeling that the technology they used to film underwater must have been new and impressive at the time, because they spend an absolutely unreasonable amount of time there. The movie is fun as always when Bond stays above the surface, but the insistence on having so many major plot turns take place with everyone wearing breathing equipment and floating around turns into a real drag. It culminates in the big fight scene where dudes writhe around trying to choke and stab and shoot each other with harpoons, and I couldn't even tell which one was James after a while. It's hard to make a major action sequence actually boring, but they managed to pull it off.

On the good side of things though, it did continue to inspire future movies and spoofs with things like an eye-patched, high ranking henchman to the still mostly-off screen principal villain and a board room where inadequate employees can be conveniently executed from their seats. Bond's sneaky and the Bond girls are as nice as ever, and they even subvert the formula a bit this early on when one of the villainous ones asks incredulously if he expected her to change sides after he slept with her, something that worked quite well in both previous films. Number 2 is a solid primary antagonist, and shockingly the fourth in a row that Bond doesn't actually kill directly. The action scene where they duke it out on the bridge of a runaway boat is unfortunately quite dated at this point, as the sped up footage of the ocean superimposed on the background is laughably absurd looking. You can sort of see in this movie of the roots taking hold that would transform the series from interesting spy films to high budget, silly action fests. They're still enjoyable, but for me definitely less so.

James Bond stats
Theme song: "Thunderball" by Tom Jones
Foreign locations: Paris, Bahamas
Bond, James Bond: Not uttered
Martini shaken, not stirred: Not ordered
Ladies seduced: 3
Chases: 2
Kills: 14, more underwater. I lost track of who Bond was.
Non-lethal takedowns: 11

From Russia with Love

It's interesting to see how these early Bond films influenced the later series and pop culture in general. This might have made more sense to mention in the last review, but the first time he says "Bond, James Bond," it's in reply to someone else asking his name after she revealed hers using the same pattern. I was quick to find out that his catchphrases weren't nearly as consistently used in the early films as more recent ones. This movie had multiple firsts - the first opening scene between the gun barrel intro and the animated credits sequence, the first theme song sung by a popular artist, although it doesn't make an appearance until the end of the film. Dr. No mentioned SPECTRE, the secretive evil organization that became the basis for all secretive evil organizations in the future, but this was the first movie where we saw a man petting a cat and executing his numbered henchmen when they failed him.

I enjoyed this movie overall more than the first. The storyline is more overtly political as the bad guys start a conflict between the Brits and the USSR, and more adventurous as Bond gets around a bit more. He's actually fairly docile in this one, rarely getting violent outside one scene, and, unless I misread his intentions in a scene with a couple gypsy girls, not too frisky either. Part of that might be how quickly they introduce the Bond girl, because usually it's a while before she's on his side or even introduced in these early movies. I honestly liked the subdued nature of the movie, because while there's something fun to the ridiculousness of higher budgeted spy capers, this just seems closer to the spirit of what a debonair operative like Bond might actually do. It's not without excitement, as a single brawl on a train car can be just as thrilling as a massive action sequence if done properly. They actually based a video game on this film a few years ago, which I now find perplexing because it's one of the least video game-y Bond movies I've seen, and I liked it for that.

James Bond stats
Theme song: "From Russia with Love" by Matt Monro
Foreign locations: Istanbul, Yugoslavia, Venice
Bond, James Bond: Not uttered
Martini shaken, not stirred: Not ordered
Ladies seduced: 1 new, 1 repeat
Chases: 2
Kills: 8, plus possible explosion victims
Non-lethal takedowns: 3

Dr. No

So I'm gonna watch all the James Bond movies. The reason for this is pretty simple - I've usually only seen the earlier films as part of marathons on TV where everything runs together, and so my mind is full of incomplete and fuzzy ideas of what the series is. Really, the only Bond actors whose films I can actually distinguish from each other are Pierce Brosnan and and Daniel Craig. Anyway, here we start at the beginning with Sean Connery's first turn as the famous character. Dr. No does a pretty solid job of establishing the franchise as we see a lot of the key elements in place. There's no opening scene before the credits, and said credits don't feature girls dancing around or a famous singer crooning a theme with the title in the lyrics. But Bond says some clever things, romances a few girls, faces off against a slightly over the top villain, spouts a couple catchphrases for the first time, and a few things blow up.

Really though, the movie is fairly tame. Not too violent, not too long, only one major exotic location. There's not even a scene where Q gives Bond a wacky high-tech gadget, just one where he's lectured on his choice of firearm. From what I can tell this was intentional, to start a movie series on a grounded, reasonable footing before letting things get bigger and more explosive. Dr. No himself is a pretty good villain though, complete with metallic hands and a menacing dinner conversation. He's one of the only early antagonists or main Bond girls to actually use his own voice, and it's fun to watch him interact with Bond for the first time, really setting a tone for what was to come. Ursula Andress is pretty damn hot in her bikini, but although she went on to some other movies doesn't do her own voice and just sort of stands around looking pretty in the second half of the film, more femme than fatale. In the end, it's a solid movie, not great, but better than a few other Bond flicks I've seen.

James Bond stats
Theme song: James Bond theme
Foreign location: Jamaica
Bond, James Bond: 8:00
Martini shaken, not stirred: 24:40, 1:28:10
Ladies seduced: 3
Chases: 2
Kills: 3 humans, 1 tarantula
Non-lethal takedowns: 9