| Genre: | Action |
| Year: | 1965 |
| Rating: | PG |
| Length: | 125 min |
| Country: | UK |
| Cast: | Claudine Auger - Domino Derval
Martine Beswicke - Paula Caplan
Adolfo Celi - Emilio Largo
Sean Connery - James Bond Roland Culver - Foreign Secretary
Lois Maxwell - Miss Moneypenny Luciana Paluzzi - Fiona Volpe
Rick van Nutter - Felix Leiter Rose Alba - Mme. Boitier
Reginald Beckwith - Kenniston
Michael Brennan - Janni
Earl Cameron - Pinder
Bill Cummings - Quist Guy Doleman - Count Lippe
Bernard Lee - M
Desmond Llewelyn - Q
Philip Locke - Vargas Molly Peters - Patricia Fearing
George Pravda - Kutze
Leonard Sachs - Group Captain
Bob Simmons - Jacques Boitier
Paul Stassino - Maj. Derval
Edward Underdown - Air Vice Marshall |
| Credits: | Director- Terence Young |
| Awards: | Best Visual Effects (win) Stears, John 1965
Academy |
Synopsis
The fourth of the Sean Connery James Bond films, Thunderball is definitely a mixed bag, its thrilling
action highlights separated by long stretches of tedium. Once more, Bond matches wits with the
sinister espionage organization S.P.E.C.T.R.E, which stands for (all together now!) Special
Executive for Counter-Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion (hmmm....wonder if they have a 401K
plan). This time, SPECTRE hijacks a NATO nuclear bomber, hiding the bombs under the ocean
depths and threatening to detonate the weapons unless a ransom of 100,000,000 pounds is paid.
The mastermind behind this scheme is international business executive Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi),
who maintains a pool full of sharks for the purpose of eliminating enemies and those henchmen who
fail to come up to standard. Dispatched to the Bahamas, lucky Mr. Bond enjoys the attentions of
three nubile ladies: Largo's mistress Domino Derval (Claudine Auger), British spy Paula Caplan
(Martine Beswick, previously seen as a gypsy girl in the 1962 Bond epic From Russia With Love)
and enemy agent Fiona Volpe (Lucianna Paluzzi). After a dreary, drawn-out underwater battle, the
film comes to a rousing conclusion in a runaway hydrofoil. By the time Thunderball was released,
producers Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli had given up taking Bond seriously; thus, the film is
full of groanable one-liners from Sean Connery (after nailing a villain with a speargun, he mutters "I
believe he got the point") and serial-like dialogue along the lines of "Don't kill him. I have a better
plan." Nearly kept off the screen due to a plagiarism suit concerning the original Ian Fleming novel,
Thunderball proved as a big a cash cow as the early Bondfests; it was remade in 1983 as Never
Say Never Again, again with Sean Connery in the lead.
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