I Watch Films: Thunderball

 

Thunderball

James Bond, secret agent, assassinates a man impersonating his own widow and escapes with a jet pack. Sent to a health clinic to recover he investigates a suspicious Italian man, Count Lippe, who attempts to disable Bond with an exercise machine. The physiotherapist thinks it’s her fault so Bond coerces her into sex, then attempts to boil Lippe alive in a steam bath.

Lippe is working for SPECTRE who have a plan steal nuclear weapons. They’ve had a man’s face altered by plastic surgery; he was recovering at the health clinic. He now looks like Commandant Derval, an Italian Air Force officer, who is taking part in a NATO training exercise. On a nuclear armed bomber he disables the crew and lands the plane in the waters off the Bahamas. There Largo, SPECTRE No 2, and his team offload the bombs underwater, also kill their agent.

Bond, called in for this, spots a picture of Derval’s sister Domino in the briefing pack, asks to go out to the Bahamas to investigate her. There he tries to pick up Domino, who is Largo’s mistress, and meets Largo. Both recognise there’s something up with the other and pretend to be friendly, Largo inviting Bond to his house where he has sharks in his pools. His cover is collecting marine wildlife for marine biologists – the most evil of sciences in the Bond universe.

Largo puts forward various schemes for his minions to deal with Bond; Bond tries to investigate Largo, including arranging for a power cut* so he can break into the villa. Largo sends a beautiful woman to try and seduce Bond, and then kill him; Bond turns the tables during the local festival, the Junkanoo.

There’s several underwater sequences, a couple of good stunts and a strangely extended sequence in the middle when Bond and Largo pretend to be mates. In fact if there’s one problem with the film, it’s the pacing. Lots of scenes and sequences go on longer than they need to. Largo has a very cool yacht (the Disco Volante) that splits in two and has a hydrofoil front section. Impossible to go wrong with that you’d think, but the final boat chase not only goes on too long, they speed up the footage and have back projected bits that look bad.

If you want me to talk about more than one problem we’ll be here all day.

Watch This: The long Bond obsession with water and underwater action begins here
Don’t Watch This: Incoherent, violent, Bond gets several people killed through incompetence, never has a problem about this or any regrets
The Rights To This Film: Were awarded to Kevin McClory in a frankly baffling series of events, so he remade it as Never Say Never Again

* The Bahamas were then still a Crown Colony, so Bond has the full resources of the government to call on. Since he has probable cause to get a warrant to search Largo’s boat and house fairly early on, it’s clear that Bond is actually very bad at his job.