Thunderball

U.K. / 1965 Directed by Terence Young Starring Sean Connery Claudine Auger Adolfo Celi Color / 130 Minutes / PG Format: DVD (R1 - NTSC) MGM Home Entertainment

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New 2006 Utimate Edition

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8     10   10 = Highest Rating   Guest Review by Troy Howarth

Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi), a top ranking operative in the SPECTRE crime empire, threatens to detonate stolen nuclear warheads if his demands are not met... and it's up to James Bond (Sean Connery) to stop him.     Following the phenomenal box office success of Goldfinger (1964), the James Bond franchise became big business. What started off as sleek, efficiently produced spy thrillers morphed into super-sized productions with plenty of sexual innuendo and tongue in cheek humor — in short, they became box office gold. As their follow-up project, producers Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman selected Thunderball, the 1960 Ian Fleming novel based on an unproduced screen treatment the Bond creator had developed in collaboration with Kevin McClory and Jack Whittingham.     Thunderball has the earmarks of a film that aspires to outdeliver its predecessors — it's overlong, sometimes sluggish and, most detrimentally, helped push the series into over the top, overproduced territory from which it seldom recovered. (On Her Majesty's Secret Service is a notable exception, as is the well-intended but ultimately tedious Licence To Kill.) But it succeeds admirably as slick entertainment. Director Terence Young, who helped create the Bond mythos on film in a way that is only just now beginning to be appreciated, pulls out all the stops, staging some spectacular fight sequences on land and underwater (!) as well as the usual stunts, car chases and the like. The film definitely bears his elegant fingerprints, with more careful attention to beautiful women, locales and use of lighting and camerawork than in the comparatively bland Goldfinger, helmed by uninspired journeyman Guy Hamilton. The plot, of course, is secondary to the usual Bond ingredients: sexy women, an ultra cool hero and a slimy villain. The latter capacity is well filled by Italian character actor Adolfo Celi, who two years later played a similar role for Mario Bava in Danger: Diabolik. Though dubbed by another actor, Celi's Largo enters the top tier of Bond baddies — he's credibly intelligent, stylish and imposing and plays the role with just the right mixture of seriousness and deadpan humor.     The Bond films are, of course, renowned for their lovely scenery (i.e., the ladies) and Thunderball offers two of the series' sexiest: Claudine Auger (Bava's Twitch Of The Death Nerve) and Lucianna Paluzzi (The Green Slime). Auger is the sympathetic Domino, while Paluzzi is femme fatale Fiona. Auger (dubbed, like Celi) gets to sport a line of bathing suits and bikinis that challenge Ursula Andress in Dr. No, and if she's ultimately there more for window dressing than anything else at least the script enables her the chance to play some genuine pathos. Paluzzi, in contrast, is evil personified, her sexy exterior enabling her to ensnare Bond, albeit temporarily. As Bond, Connery shows just why nobody else who has inherited the role has ever lived up to him. To be brief, he's just so effortlessly cool. He looks terrific in his designer suits, fights like a champ, makes non-smokers reconsider their stance on tobacco and has probably encouraged more men to try a vodka martini ("Shaken... not stirred") than all the Smirnov ads combined. The man also has the uncanny penchant to make even the hokiest one liner sound like pure gold. In this time of wisecracking action heroes (look no further than Ah-nold's "Talk to the hand" in Terminator 3), not one of them can carry off something along the lines of "I think he got the point" (after shooting a henchman with a speargun) with so much authority and charisma.     The Bond character, of course, didn't enable the actor to show his range and for this reason, during the mid '60s he sought to branch out by working for respected directors like Alfred Hitchcock (Marnie, 1964) and Sidney Lumet (The Hill, 1965), hoping to shake the Bond image in the process. His boredom with the role manifested itself in the next film, You Only Live Twice (1967), but even if he ultimately escaped "the Bond curse" to become an Oscar-winning actor, he will forever remain James Bond in the minds of audiences.     The first of the truly 'huge' Bond films, Thunderball's extravagant budget extended to lavish sets by the great Ken Adam (Dr. Strangelove, Salon Kitty) and widescreen cinematography by Ted Moore. The end result looks good, and with its thrilling John Barry soundtrack (Tom Jones belts out the theme song in true Las Vegas fashion) it doesn't sound too shabby, either. Thunderball may not be great art, but it's great entertainment — a trifle clumsy, definitely overproduced, and overlong by about 20 minutes, yes... but still great fun.

MGM's DVD of Thunderball is one of the best entries in the series. A small point but I have to say that I think the cover art is perhaps the most stylish and evocative of any of these releases. Never judge a book by its cover, but this enticing package holds a fine presentation that improves upon every other VHS or laser edition of the film to date. The anamorphically enhanced 2.35 image looks fantastic, with accurately rendered colors (essential with all the dreamy underwater set-pieces) and — aside from some dirt here and there — not much in the way of print damage. Audio quality is spectacular, with a newly mixed 5.1 surround track sounding just right.     As usual, MGM has prepared a copious amount of extras, including trailers, TV spots, promotional materials and a factoid-crammed booklet. Better still are two audio commentaries, one featuring surviving members of the cast and crew, and the other devoted to late director Terence Young. The tracks have their ups and downs but offer up enough info to satisfy the heartiest Bond enthusiast.     A lot of these comments spill over into the accompanying Making of Thunderball documentary, a newly produced piece that examines the production's troubled history. A second documentary, The Thunderball Phenomenon, examines how Bond mania was at its height when this film was released. There's also a featurette, Inside Thunderball, produced to publicize the film's release in 1965. Trivia Note: think the Tom Jones title track was always intended for the film? In fact, a Dionne Warrick song ("Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang") was originally slated for use — it's included on one of the alternate audio tracks so you can decide for yourself which one was the wise choice. 1/12/04

UPDATE OOP for a couple of years, Thunderball was reissued in November 2006 by MGM. This completely remastered 2-disc edition — with new, additional extras — is a part of The James Bond Ultimate Collection Vol. 2, which also contains four other 007 films. (Audio/visual quality is simply stunning.) In February 2007 MGM released this "Ultimate Edition" in stand-alone, single-disc form. (You get the film and a commentary, but none of the Disc 2 extras.)

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