Thunderball, the fourth film in the Bond series, is best remembered as the one with all the underwater scenes. It also contains what has now become the most cliched of all the Bond plots. S.P.E.C.T.R.E. captures two atomic bombs and holds the world for ransom. Not for one million dollars as Dr. Evil would ask for, but for 100 million pounds. The cliché that this is the plot for all spy movies is helped by the fact that this movie was remade as the later Bond film; Never Say Never Again. Thunderball is also the last of what I would call the classic Bond movies. Future Bond films would be guilty of greater and greater excess and outlandish plots, but the first four movies, while highly improbable, are all at least plausible.
The trail Bond follows in pursuit of the stolen bombs leads him to the Bahamas where he and the villains go scuba diving in many scenes. These underwater scenes were a bit of a novelty at the time and they won a few awards. Now though, they tend to slow the movie down. The filmmakers were obviously besotted by their new underwater camera toys and each scene where they're used goes on too long. There's also a pointless subplot at the beginning of the movie involving a pilot being replaced by someone who has had plastic surgery to make them look exactly like the pilot. This impostor is the one responsible for piloting a stolen plane containing the atomic bombs into S.P.E.C.T.R.E.'s hands. Why not just have the original pilot be the one who steals the plane (as it is in the book)? I mention this because like a lot of Bond films, this one runs on for too long. Bond films shouldn't be epics. They work best as fast-paced action films with a dash of sex and charm thrown into the mix.
What everyone wants to see in these movies is James Bond in action; either seducing beautiful women or outwitting the bad guys. When Bond is on-screen this movie excels. Connery is still on form here and he's as suave and as deadly as ever. One of my favorite moments in this movie is when Bond returns to his hotel room and discovers this movie's bad Bond girl, Fiona, naked in his bathtub. "Get me something to wear," she says. Bond promptly hands her just a pair of shoes, with a devilish twinkle in his eyes. He has a few other great moments and throwaway one-liners as well. "I think he got the point," he says after shooting a villain with a spear-gun. When Fiona says, "Some men don't like to be driven," he replies, "No, some men don't like being taken for a ride."
Both of the Bond girls, the good, Domino, and the bad, Fiona, are attractive, but Fiona is the more interesting. She also has one of the most magnificent pair of breasts of any Bond girl. While her part is upstaged by Barbara Carrera's Fatima Blush, which is essentially the same part in the remake, Never Say Never Again, she's still quite good and the first of the truly bad Bond girls. Pussy Galore in Goldfinger, while working for the villain, is really only doing it for the money and changes sides at the first opportunity. A change of sides that Fiona mocks in this movie when she laughs at Bond and tells him that just because she's made love to him doesn't mean she's joining the good guys.
One thing that the Bond movies have never gotten right, even these early classics, is the character of Felix Leiter. He appears in 3 of these first 4 Bond films and each time he's played by a different actor and each time he's underused. In this movie particularly he is nothing more than Bond's manservant. He chauffeurs Bond around and generally just follows his lead and his orders. In all the years the Bond movies have been around they've never gotten this character right. He's supposed to be, according to the Ian Fleming books, younger than Bond, a jazz lover, blond, humorous and Texan.
With a few edits Thunderball could have been one of the best Bond films, but as it is, it's still one of the better ones. It's the weakest of the initial four Bond films, but still much better than what was to come later in the series.
