Viewed in
2010
Formats
HD TV
Premise
In the second of Sean Connery's reign as 007, he goes to Turkey to help a beautiful Russian spy steal something, only they're being played as pawns of SPECTRE.
Loved
Very fun Bond moments.
Hated
The redundant, pace-killing scenes in the first/last acts.
Thoughts
A mostly entertaining movie with fun scenes, ruined by bad story-telling.
You could see the franchise "finding its voice". There were some great MI6 HQ moments, such as Q's introduction (as Boothroyd), Bond's flirtations with Moneypenny. It had a really cool self-contained action scene, and a plethora of beautiful ladies falling all over for Connery. Robert Shaw's character might be one of my favorite villains: no exaggerated gimmicks, just a cool, silent killer, and a true arch-rival in skill and strength. Also, I liked how it tied itself to Dr. No, like a sequel.
What I absolutely hated was how this movie was written. After Shaw's character was defeated, there was still half an hour of false endings to slog through. Worst of all were the redundancies, there was all this plotting in SPECTRE in the first act (already a bad idea since Bond lost screen time) that Shaw's character ended up regurgitating at the end, which led to all those "wait, it's not done yet?" moments at the end. I guess the movie makers wanted SPECTRE to have a bigger presence, but it was done at the cost of movie's plot.
Just like the first movie, a lot of scenes have have lost their impact over time due to the Austin Powers parodies, mainly the SPECTRE characters.
I loved some of the awesome Bond moments, but too many unneeded scenes at the beginning and end killed my enjoyability of the movie.
What I would change
Got rid of the Kronsteen scenes, and the recruiting of Shaw's character. They were the biggest parts of the redundant problems.
