Reviews Film / Thunderball

A Great 90 Minute Movie Stretched Out Too Long

Thunderball is a frustrating movie to me because I wish I could like it. There's so many parts of it that I do like. The dialogue is sharp, the locations are beautiful, Fiona Volpe is one of the most fun villains in the series, Domino is a surprisingly solid take on the 'kept woman' trope, and Connery is still solid. But there's just one unfortunate problem with this movie: the pacing is at a crawl.

We spend somewhere around ten minutes in a health clinic as Bond and a S.P.E.C.T.R.E. agent pointlessly tweak each other before another fifteen are spent showing us the villains enacting their plan in exhaustive detail. It feels like all the wrong lessons were taken from From Russia With Love. While we did get to learn the evil plan early in that film, it was neither as long a segment of the film nor as detailed. We know enough to see that Bond is walking into a trap, but not when or how the trap will spring. That creates suspense and tension. But here, there is no trap. We simply see the villains enact their plan and then wait for Bond to figure out everything that we already know. And unfortunately Columbo this film is not.

It doesn’t help that Largo is a major step down from our last villain. The dubbing in this film really stands out, and sadly it’s very obvious that Adolfo Celi isn’t the one we’re hearing. Nikki Van der Zyl is also pretty recognizable as Domino’s voice, although with how often the series has used her vocal talents by this point that’s not surprising. Domino is probably the best written of the ‘kept woman’ the series likes to use every now and again. It’s also nice that she gets to be the one to kill Largo in the end, and particularly impressive for the 60s.

But the action in the finale is the final straw that keeps me from fully enjoying this film. The underwater battle sequence is impressive in the first minute, interesting in the second, but dull and repetitive afterwards. One of the big problems is that Bond completely disappears for much of the sequence, so we’re left watching faceless soldiers slowly attack each other. As a feat of technical achievement it’s incredible, but as an action sequence it drags. Unfortunately the fights don’t improve once Bond resurfaces. The editing of the fight is just bad, with obvious fast-forwarding going on in an attempt to convince us that the fight is going more quickly than it is. Terrence Young is a fine director, but action and motion are clearly not his forte. His strengths lie in locations and acting, and only one truly shines through this time.

So the result ends up being a disappointing mixed bag. Thunderball could have been another great Bond film if it had been half an hour shorter, but unfortunately it overstays its welcome.