Fellmans Movie Reviews

Red = Spoilers 

Thunderball is a fun Bond film, because it’s kind of crazy how much weird stuff is going on. I know there’s usually a lot of weird stuff going on in a Bond film, but this time it’s a lot of underwater action and you can’t hear anybody talking, so there’s not a whole lot of dialogue with a lot of it. So, some of it’s just kind of a visual thing… 

What’s it about? So, we start Thunderball at a funeral that Bond is attending where he sees some woman getting into a car. He goes into a room to find that the woman isn’t a woman at all, but a man, and he has to fight him. He kills the would-be mourner and escapes the room to a jetpack, stashed across the roof, which he escapes with. Later in a hotel, Bond finds the dead body of Francois Derval, who several SPECTRE agents have planned to use in a plan to hijack several nuclear bombs. MI6 learns that the bombs have been stolen and sends all 00 agents on assignment to find them. Bond recognizes the person in his picture as the dead man he saw in the hotel and asks to be reassigned to Nassau to contact Derval’s sister. He learns she is the mistress of Largo, an agent of SPECTRE, and the two engage in a game of cat and mouse. After a large underwater battle, and Bond chasing Largo onto his ship and fighting him, Bond eventually finds a way to subdue Largo and finish off this chapter. 

What’s good? This is a good story as far as Bond movies go. I really like Thunderball. The underwater bit. The entire scene where they’re chasing them through the parade. I liked that part. I mean, an underwater battle? That’s crazy.  

What’s bad? Not a whole lot. I think it’s a pretty good movie all the way through. 

The acting? The acting seems to be done well by everyone. Maybe some of the action scenes aren’t the most realistic stunts ever done, but it was the 60s. What are you going to do? 

The effects? It was the 60s. You have to give them credit for what they had to work with. They were doing the best they could do at the time. And it was good enough. Nobody’s complaining. People know that’s what things looked like back then.  

The mourning lady pulls a Mrs. Doubtfire. Bond just punched that lady for no reason. He could’ve been wrong and just punched an old lady in the face. But he’s James Bond. He’s not going to be wrong… 

Bond and Moneypenny. The Bond/Moneypenny relationship is tenuous at best. She wants something to happen, but she knows that he’s going to slip away the moment that she lets him get in close. So, she never does.  

The crazy French palm-out salute. Those crazy Frenchmen and their wacky way of saluting. It’s almost comical.  

SPECTRE killed that pilot guy as soon as they could. SPECTRE took all that time to get that guy plastic surgery and teach him to train to be like that pilot, and then killed him as soon as possible. He was still strapped into the plane and Largo just comes up and is like “Oh, you’re stuck? Let me just cut this for you…” 

What I did, I did for King and Country. Bond says he slept with Volpe “For King and Country”. He tends to do that a lot. Is it “For King and Country” every time? Or is he just having sex with hot women? 

I think he got the point. The Bond one-liner in Thunderball that gets the thumbs up from me is “I think he got the point” after shooting somebody with a harpoon gun… Classic Bond… 

There’s sharks everywhere. For some reason, there are sharks everywhere. And I mean, everywhere. Not just in the ocean, but in pools, in tanks, underneath the camo net where the plane is supposed to be hidden. How did they get under there? It was nailed down. They weren’t supposed to be able to get in there.  

The underwater sea battle. The underwater sea battle is a stroke of brilliance in my mind. I’ve never seen an underwater sea battle before. And this is just insane. You don’t realize that guns don’t work underwater, so they have to use harpoons and knives. And it’s like an old samurai battle, but underwater. 

The five-second-long lobster shot. And again, for some reason, there’s just this five-second-long shot of this lobster right in the middle of the underwater battle. In fact, there’s a couple of different shots of ocean creatures that have small cameos. There’s an octopus that’s just kind of hanging out. And an eel that’s just kind of sitting there for about five seconds. It’s like they shot this footage and then when they were editing, they were like “No, no, leave it in…” 

What about the guy at the end? At the end, the guy in the Disco Volante jumps out into the water with James and Domino, but nobody gets into the lifeboat with them when the plane drops off the lifeboat. What happened to that guy? That guy just disappeared… 

So, yeah. See Thunderball. It’s a really fun James Bond movie. A lot of great stuff is going on in this film. And the intro song is great too. And as always, keep on watching, with a smile on your face…