Good evening everyone! I hope you all had a fun weekend, and a very fun Father’s Day yesterday. Tonight, we get back into the swing of things, as we dive into yet another installment that involves that spy, who goes by the name of James Bond. This time, this review comes in the form of the fourth installment of the 007 movie series, by the name of Thunderball.
Plot: The story takes James Bond to the Bahamas, where he must stop an agent from SPECTRE named Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi) from using two nuclear, which Largo acquired earlier, as a ransom against NATO. With some new friends that Bond meets along the way, can he prevent Largo’s diabolical plan from taking place?
Friends, let me just be upfront with you all, and say that Thunderball may yet be one of the best, if not the best, of the 007 James Bond movie franchise. First off, the people who worked on this at the MGM studio did a great job of deciding to go a little over a hundred and twenty minutes this time around by making this film have a running time of a hundred and thirty minutes. Considering that the previous three films were around ten, or fifteen minutes under the two hour mark, one can likely consider that something special for a long while, until future James Bond movies made similar moves. Now yes, there were some moments that could have possibly felt a little random, they don’t seem to last long enough to distract the audience members from the actual meat of the story. In fact those random moments might have helped this movie along, as well as helped maybe foreshadow the events to come in this film. Hard to believe, is it not? Anyway, as far as both the good guys, and bad guys go this time around, they both seem to advance very well this time around. I mean picture this! Imagine if a guy were to go out on a date with a girl, and they both agreed that on the first date, they knew instantly that they for sure were right to marry each other in the near future (assuming the guy and girl marry, and STAY married). Okay, this may sound somewhat like a corny metaphor. However, it doesn’t seem to change the fact that that’s how quickly a good majority of these characters are developed well within around the first act, or shortly after. Heck, when you know how much of a good heart any of the good characters have, you can can catch on with that rather quickly. Same goes for the villains, you can really sense how malicious, and evil they are without having to worry about foreshadowing it throughout the film. What’s more is that the character development seemed to be taken to a whole new level in comparison with the other three movies that preceded this one. This goes not just with many of the characters shining to their full potential, but some of the relationships seem to feel much deeper, and can make you want those relationships last longer this time around. There’s also some very good creativity when it comes to certain scenes. Why? The reason for this is because, well, you might find yourself predicting a a lot of moments, only for those times to happen alternately. Trust me when I say you’ll know what I mean, if you don’t now. The Thunderball song that plays at the beginning of this film is also very fun, and catchy. I was surprised to discover that Tom Jones was in this film singing that song. Man, can you believe that he went from singing this song to singing the song, “A Perfect World,” in which he played a character called the Theme Song Guy in the Disney film, The Emperor’s New Groove thirty-five years later? Wow, considering that Disney basically bought out MGM somewhere down the road after this movie was released, it’s safe to say that perhaps Disney seemed to really like singers such as Tom Jones well enough to bringing him back for singing for a second round, or more, eh? Additionally, the action was really taken up a notch this time around too. Honestly, with the action scenes, or the rest of the scenes that were shot for this film, it may make you wonder, how many times did it take to make those scenes work well, you know? Finally, if PG-rated films were still considered okay even for young kids to watch at this point, children should be warned about how violent this film could potentially get at certain points of the film.
And that’s my review for 007: Thunderball. The movie seems to do really well with making almost everything stepping up a notch. It has fun action, and a great plenty of hilarious moments. If you haven’t seen this 007 film yet, please make time to do so. You may yet appreciate a great plenty when it comes to this film. That is probably more so than you might have the previous three films.
Final Grade: A+
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