Director: Peter R. Hunt
Year of Release: 1969
Should you watch it? It’s skippable but also kind of interesting.
Why?
It would be easy to scapegoat Lazenby for this film but it would overall be unfair. The movie is is just plain weird and never fully comes together. At times, it feels like a Batman ’66 movie. Then they start taking their action set pieces extremely seriously. Then there will be a stretch where it seems like they want the film to be a genuine romance film with Bond and Diana Rigg despite doing none of the heavy lifting to earn it. At times, it feels like the film is designed as a push back against some of the weakest and gross parts of the Connery era. But then also they sometimes cannot let go of the Connery tropes which undercuts that entirely. I don’t know. The movie has a zaniness and chaotic energy that I cannot help but admire. It just did not quite work and the biggest attribute the film has is you can say it’s not boring. This movie kinda feels like a template with what they did (way more successfully) with Daniel Craig’s James Bond.
How is the Bond?
George Lazenby is the only one-and-done James Bond in EON history. He is as uncharismatic as it gets and is merely a barely-handsome face. He is less of a sex pest. He seems a little dopey. He comes across as more of a himbo. The film seems both trying to make him different than Connery but also makes token gestures at making him like the Bond everyone already knew well. And like, the way they dress Bond makes him so uncool. He’s literally wearing the Seinfeld puffy shirt at times.
How is the Bond Woman?
After nearly every woman in this series has just been a 2D cardboard cut-out, Diana Rigg is one of the few in this first decade of Bond to feel like an actual human being. She even saves herself at one point in the film instead of waiting for Bond to do it. Beyond that though, she is not that interesting. Her falling head over heels for Bond feels kind of more sad and tragic than anything given the oppressive environment she grew up in with her overbearing and rather sexist father. Rigg getting assassinated by SPECTRE to end the film feels even more tragic. But also just makes Rigg feel like an evolved “object.” She pops in and out of the film as needed by the story and is merely defined by how the men of her life treated her. In many ways, this is spiritually barely any different by what has come before with only token gestures of “progress” to make her characterization to seem more impressive than it actually is.
How is the Bond Villain?
Blofield is the villain again. There’s a new actor in the role, and the story takes place before his last appearance so this is the first story in the chronology where Bond and him meet. It’s a little awkward but not really important in the grand scheme of things given that it is the 1960s. The bigger issue than the chronology is still not much of an interesting villain. Taking over the world is just kinda dumb. It’s pretty funny though that he is attempting to claim the title “Count Balthazar de Bleuchamp” and that is his undoing by giving Bond a way in. On the Blofield scale, this is perhaps the best he has ever been as a result.
Does the film irresponsibly present the West as the hero of the world and thus promote imperialism and colonialism as inherently positive?
Yes.
The Reel World 