Review of Thunderball (1965) by Kai82 — 10 Dec 2020

The fourth James Bond movie. While it is by no standard a bad movie in the franchise I find it a bit underwhelming especially after Golfinger raised the bar for James Bond movies. Maybe it is the curse of being the follow up movie to one of the best and most acclaimed entry in the franchise.

The story is enjoyable as SPECTRE sets up their biggest coup (Wont go into details as it pretty much spoils half of the movie). It is however also nothing special or original enough to raise my rating while I admit that it has its moments. I always return to comparing it with other James Bond movies and it lacks an interesting villain like Goldfinger, Scaramanga, Jaws or Blofeld (More screentime / main villain as he is in the movie). Later I learned that this was planned as episode of a TV series and expanded to a movie. This explained a lot. Other than the story we get some cool gadgets from Q and some solid action. For the actors there are no missteps. Sean Connery is good as always, Claudia Auger does a good performance and while I don't have Emilio Largo on my top villains list I think he did a good job. I think I finish my review here with my conclusion. It is an enjoyable James Bond movie but nothing in it will be remembered well or land on a top 10 list easily. Worth watching but fast forgotten. It was the curse of being in the middle of 2 better James Bond movies.