THE EXPLOSIVE REVIEW

Starring: Sean Connery, Adolfo Celi, Claudine Auger, Earl Cameron, Luciana Paluzzi, Paul Stassino, Rik Van Nutter, Guy Doleman, Molly Peters, Martine Beswick, Bernard Lee, Desmond Llewelyn, Lois Maxwell, Philip Locke, and Anthony Dawson.

Directed by Terence Young.

As the fourth James Bond film and the fourth to star Sean Connery as Bond, “Thunderball” sees the return of director Terence Young (Guy Hamilton, the director of the previous Bond flick, “Goldfinger”, was too worn out creatively to return for this outing). This is the ‘aquatica’ of the Bond films as about a quarter of the film takes place underwater.

James Bond seeks to find two stolen NATO nukes which SPECTRE holds in their possession in return for a hundred million in diamonds for not destroying an unspecified major city in the UK or US (which turns out to be Miami later on). The plot brings Bond back to the Bahamas (where he was last seen in “Dr. No”), bringing him face to face with the film’s villain Emilio Largo who turns out to be SPECTRE’s Number Two man. Bond is aided by the CIA and Domino (Largo’s Mistress) as everything boils down to a remarkable underwater battle with Largo’s henchmen.

“Thunderball” was a success, earning a total of $141.2 million worldwide (more than the previous three Bond films), however, it was somewhat panned by critics alike. The film proves itself as a worthy addition to the series, but the prolonged aquatic action can tend to be somewhat monotonous. While the underwater sequences are well choreographed and shot perfectly, they’re simply too long. It’s almost like watching an aquatic James Cameron movie.

Sean Connery is certainly more appealing as Bond here as he projects a little more confidence than usual in this film. “Thunderball” was actually meant to be the first Bond film but it unfortunately became caught up in the center of legal disputes from 1961 to the very present, involving suspected plagiarism and resulting in two versions of the flick (the 1965 original and the 1983 re-imaging known as “Never Say Never Again”).

Rating: ***1/2

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