Review of On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) by Wojciech K — 04 Feb 2009

OK, I've re-viewed this sixth official Bond film. I remember my gut reaction from the first time I saw it being that it wasn't very good, and that still stands. So what do I think is wrong with it? I'll try to explain. I think it was just a bad mix of new director, new Bond, and new story. It's a scrambled mess of trying to be too much like a Sean Connery Bond movie and at times trying to be different (more focused on the love story less on gadgets). It starts confusingly with M and Q and Moneypenny wondering where Bond is with Q presenting the ridiculous radioactive lint. Then Bond, in a fedora again (did Connery really wear one that much after Dr. No?), is out for a leisurely drive when he has to save a suicidal Diana Rigg. Of course the filmmakers obscure giving us a really good look at him til he says "Bond, James Bond." It's anticlimactic and it's only the beginning. Rigg plays Tracy and her father, who happens to be a mob boss, had some of his men follow her, and they pick a fight with Bond. I was bothered by the technical limitations of the filming in this one too. In the late sixties almost seventies external shots don't always look so good. Even with digital improvements it still looks grainy and too shadowy. I thought most of the fight scenes were edited terribly and the director, Hunt, had even been an editor on several of the previous Bond films. The cuts for the fights particularly and the car and bobsled chases are really choppy and fast and made me think of Daniel Craig's Quantum of Solace that I saw recently, but just not as good. Lazenby had only appeared in a couple TV commercials, he had modeled, but never acted before. The director mistakenly thought you could put any man who looked like Bond in the role and make a successful picture. Lazenby trying to change his Australian accent to British ends up mumbling a lot and is stiff. After Rigg runs away from him, before the opening credits, Bond delivers the line "This never happened to the other guy." Heresy, I say! Bond is timeless and the actors shouldn't acknowledge that someone else has played the part.

The opening credits are a series of images from the past Connery films and I did not enjoy the song. Goldfinger also used images from the couple of previous films in it's opening credits according to IMDb trivia, but this seemed like a cheap attempt to keep on referring to Connery. Lazenby is then at a casino and plays the same card game and is shown in many of the same camera angles and situations as Connery was in in Dr. No. Lazenby tries to deliver a few humorous quips throughout like Connery had done before, but a couple times he walks out of a room or turns away from the camera when giving the lines so you can't really appreciate them. Blofeld's fortress in the Alps with lush living quarters that have sliding doors with no controls on the interior mirrors where Connery had to stay in Dr. No's lair too. And Lazenby is childlike and whiny when M tells him he's no longer on the case to find Blofeld, it's surprising that that's all it takes for Bond to threaten to quit. But that whole scene is just an excuse for Bond to start packing by pulling out old gadgets and mementos he has kept in his office.

Well Moneypenny has fixed it so Bond gets a vacation instead. He runs into the thugs who work for Tracy's father and they take Bond to see the man. What sinister plot could this villain have in store? He wants to arrange for Bond to date and marry Tracy because she disobeys her father and she needs a man to dominate her. Oh my! Lazenby has said in interviews that he wanted to play Bond as more feeling, understanding, with pop music under the scenes, as less of a beast, but that the filmmakers didn't agree with this. He thought that Bond might not last in the new culture of the 70s. Well some of that sentiment made it into the movie with Bond falling in love with Tracy and the love song montage of the two of them frolicking around taking as much time as it did. Then eventually Bond does get married and his honeymoon ends before it begins. But I think Bond falling in love with Vesper and losing her and seeking revenge in the newest additions to the series handle that sort of thing better.

There were a couple other special effects that were used for the first time in this film that showed that they were trying to do something different and push the envelope beyond what had been done in the Connery Bonds. But I'll remember this one more for Lazenby wearing the ruffly shirt (two of them actually), a kilt, another silly undercover disguise for traveling to the Alps, and pretending to be ambiguously gay at first when meeting the 12 international, mind controlled women of Blofeld's world domination scheme. George Lazenby is not James Bond.