You Only Live Twice
For the fifth outing for Sean Connery as James Bond 007, the producers decided to stop dicking the fans around with pseudo-villains and bring out the big gun: Ernst Stavro Blofeld finally takes center stage as the primary bad guy, and with the legendary Donald Pleasence in the role, itās not a bad choice. Pleasence projects the kind of twisted malevolence and glee that one could only imagine with the past faint tastes weāve gotten of the character, and obviously Mike Myers was watching, as Blofeldās physical appearance and mannerisms here are the most direct and obvious inspiration for Dr. Evil, right down to the Mr. Bigglesworth-esque cat. The problems with the film are generally the usual thing, as once again the pacing drags like a bastard, and with Blofeld not really brought in until the second half of the film, the story drifts along for awhile with no clear or definitive villain, save for a beautiful yet inept female operative played by Karin Dor (whose incompetence earns her a dip in the piranha tank compliments of Blofeld). The locale du jour for Bond this time is Japan, and naturally, way too much time is spent showing the dĆ©cor and customs of the host country, as opposed to progressing the story along, which involves SPECTRE hijacking American and Soviet space shuttles so that the two superpowers will point a finger at each other and engage in nuclear war, thus allowing SPECTRE to emerge as the new superpower in the world (though why the U.S. and Russia would allow themselves to be manipulated like this when they already KNOW that Blofeld and SPECTRE exist is like Obama brushing off a suspected terror attack without keeping Al-Queda in mind). In his Bond directing debut, Lewis (Alfie) Gilbert tries so hard to ram the Japanese aspect of the story down our throat that they even come up with the ridiculous idea of having Bondās features surgically enhanced and given a hairpiece so that he will ābecomeā Japanese and blend right in, though the process only serves to make Connery look like a dead ringer for Leonard Nimoy. Then there is the issue of the Bond girls (the first Asian ones in the series): Bond is first paired with a secret agent named Aki (Akiko Wakabayashi), who is brave and resourceful and seems to have a major crush on 007, but then the character is killed off (in a gruesome manner) and no less than three minutes later in the film is literally replaced by a younger (and cuter) agent named Kissy (Mie Hama, who allegedly threatened suicide if she was denied the role), thus emphasizing the idea that at least in this film that Japanese Bond Girls are interchangeable and that if one dies, they just bring in another without missing a beat. Add to this the fact that at one point Bond is made to fly a ridiculous mini-helicopter complete with missiles that outmaneuvers and then shoots down FOUR fully armed choppers sent by SPECTRE to destroy it. The film gains points for bringing in Peter Maivia (grandfather of Dwayne āThe Rockā Johnson) as a henchmen that Bond must defeat early on, and for employing Roald Dahl (creator of Willy Wonka) as an offbeat choice to write the screenplay, which builds towards a big showdown inside Blofeldās underground lair inside a hollowed-out volcano (naturally) with Bond leading an army of ninjas(!) against SPECTRE employees. However, Bondās final one-on-one battle is against Blofeldās very large bodyguard, a guy who has been given virtually nothing to do the whole film, but regardless, the overall final battle scenes are a lot more exciting and rousing than the one at the end of the previous awful entry, Thunderball. Overall, just another day at the office for the franchise, and the last one (for the time being) for Conneryā¦
5/10