Jan 12 2009
“You Only Live Twice” (1967) ***1/2
Preview
Starring: Sean Connery, Donald Pleasence, Tetsuro Tamba, Akiko Wakabayashi, Mie Hama, Teru Shimada, Karin Dor, Bernard Lee, Lois Maxwell, Desmond Llewelyn, Charles Gray, Tsai Chin, and Ronald Rich.
Directed by: Lewis Gilbert.
“You Only Live Twice” is the fifth film in the James Bond franchise, once again starring the one and only original Bond, Sean Connery. This time, Bond is pitted against SPECTRE members in Japan, investigating the mysterious disappearance of a US/Russian spacecraft in orbit. 007 is secretly dispatched to a private Japanese island in order to hunt down whoever is responsible - low and behold, it’s Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the head ginny of the SPECTRE organization himself, who’s been in the shadows for the whole series up until now.
The film starts out nice during the first half, setting both the US and UK against each other for a potential World War III, Bond investigating in Japan, discovering Blofeld, and so forth. The second half, however, seems to go beyond preposterous bounds with humongous rockets that take up whole spacecrafts, Blofeld’s hidden SPECTRE base inside of a Volcano, the over-focus on gadgets, and then Blofeld’s actual appearance who went partially unseen in the previous outings, his reveal is somewhat disappointing at first (i.e. small, bald-headed, a big scar) because throughout the first four films, it feels like there’s a build-up with his somewhat hidden character; however, as the franchise goes on, his appearance will grow on you and the moment he’s revealed here won’t be as much of a let-down.
The fifth Bond outing raked in over $111 million worldwide and was directed by Lewis Gilbert, who went on to direct two more future Bond films, “The Spy Who Loved Me” (1977) and “Moonraker” (1979), both starring Roger Moore as 007. While “You Only Live Twice” introduces us to a whole new level of technology and villains, plus one of the most impressive sets of the franchise (the volcano base), it is not a horrible Bond flick, but it doesn’t live up to the previous entries.
Rating: ***1/2
