Review of On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) by Troy F — 23 Oct 2012

Now here's a Bond film that despite having George Lazenby in place of Sean Connery, has been considered one of the finest in the franchise. Never thought I'd disagree, but I most certainly have to.

To start off, George Lazenby isn't exactly the problem. He's most certainly no Sean Connery, but he pulls off a charming role that makes him acceptable as Bond, though he took time to adjust to.

Though I had a little problem with Donald Pleasance being replaced by some other actor as the villain Blofeld, whoever he is, he's a decent actor but I struggled to adjust to him too, I'm too used to Pleasance as him.

The film does have its smart plotted sequences too, but here are other problems: some of the cinematography is pretty bad, and what's worse is that it sometimes gets mixed in with choppy editing, another issue.

This happens most often in some of the action scenes of the first half, but my god is it pretty distracting whenever it happens. Next in line, despite some good scenes in the first half, it's quite dull and things never really pick up till the last hour.

But when the action does come in, its pretty entertaining, but nothing remotely exhilarating. But lastly, it lacks compared to the other Bond films. The tone just seems a little different and there's the lack of gadgets this time, the one thing that was prominently featured in the other films.

It offers some good action entertainment, but offers nothing worthy or significantly original, or very memorable. However, it gets the "decent" rating because it does have its revealing moments and it's an important entry in the series as the plot is connected with the other Bond films that preceed it (excluding Goldfinger).