Thunderball (1965)
8/10
The idea of the British Government having Big Ben strike seven times at six o'clock is brilliant...
8 July 2005
Warning: Spoilers
A NATO Vulcan Bomber carrying two atomic bombs had crashed in the Caribbean… To make a serious situation even more critical, SPECTRE then informed the British government that it had hijacked the plane's cargo… Unless a ransom of £100 million was paid in seven days, a major city in England or the US would be destroyed…

M16 called in all its top agents, but only one had a lead: James Bond… With four days to go, 007 flew to the Bahamas, where a femme fatale, a beautiful avenger, and a big game predator fish collector, a tough Italian mafia type posing as a millionaire adventurer in Nassau, called Emilio Largo awaited him… Largo (Adolpho Celi) is actually the ruthless one-eyed SPECTRE No. 2, who can easily turn from charmer to killer when SPECTRE business is at stake…

Fiona Volpe's introduction while wearing a sheer negligée in Derbal's (Paul Stassino) bedroom was definitely an early highlight of "Thunderball." Luciana Paluzzi is a very sexy ruthless villain… Definitely one of the better female characters in the series…

Bond appears to be a bit cavalier at times—spending far too much time bedding one conquest after another—when duty calls, he responds quickly and decisively… After three films, the 007 character has been established… Now, it's time for Bond to have a little fun—as shown in the scene where he consumes Conch Chowder, Beluga Caviar and Dom Perignon '55 (he once scorned), or the scene in the French château where he kills SPECTRE's agent and takes time to throw flowers on the body or the scene in Shrublands where he discovers the body of a NATO aerial observer and steals a bit of fruit as he leaves… Touches like these set "Thunderball" apart from other Bond movies…

With ingenious gadgets provided by Q, wonderful underwater sequences, great special visual effects (rewarded with an Oscar), nice music score, and exotic scenery, the film remains as a lavish tropical paradise where sandy beaches, coral reefs and bikinis prevailed... The viewer suddenly gets a tremendous sense of the tropics, of carefree vacations, cool tropical drinks, and moonlights romance
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