Thunderball

Super-spy James Bond (Sean Connery) tracks a pair of nuclear warheads, stolen by a shadowy organization known as SPECTRE.

Thunderball is the fourth entry in the long running James Bond series, and the first real misstep. While it opens with a dynamic, and now iconic, sequence featuring star Sean Connery spotting a disguised villain (“That’s a man, baby!” as Austin Powers would spoof many years later) and escaping via jetpack, the rest of the film is overlong and talky.

Granted, there are some good moments. Long before Arnold Schwarzenegger used the line in Commando, Bond, after killing an evil henchmen tells an onlooker that his friend is “just dead,” but these are too few and far between to equal the standard set by the series’ previous installments.

Also, the novel on which the film is based marked the beginning of a long legal battle between United Artists and Kevin McClory, who worked with authors Ian Fleming and Jack Whittingham on the original treatment. The results of which included the removal of the Blofeld character, and SPECTRE from Bond films following On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and the out-of-cannon remake Never Say Never Again starring Sean Connery.

That said, Thunderball isn’t a bad film, rather one that’s just a little north of okay, which will undoubtedly be more than enough for die-hard Bond fans, but even they, in their heart of hearts have to agree that the film simply isn’t as tight as it could be.