The Best Of The Bonds

I was a James Bond fan long before I saw any of the movies. 

As a kid I saw the posters in movie theaters, the promo trailers on TV, and of course all the cool toys inspired by the series. 

I watched knock offs like The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Get Smart, Secret Agent (my personal favorite TV spy show which later morphed into The Prisoner), and The Incredible World of James Bond TV special promoting the series.

Somehow I managed to convince my parents to buy me the Signet paperback boxed set (wish I kept that) and read every article on the movies I found, including the really good Esquire article on the making of Thunderball which I cut out and saved for years.

And the music -- wow!  John Barry’s incredible jazz compositions remain favorites to this day, and starting with a Frito-Lay sponsored tie-in to The Incredible World of James Bond, I bought every LP long before I first saw the movies.

The Bond films didn’t just provide popular entertainment, they also helped shape pop culture in the 60s, heavily influencing movies that came after them.

We’d see a much different pop culture today without the Bond films.

The first actual Bond films I saw were a double bill of Thunderball and You Only Live Twice sometime in the early 1970s, followed by a triple bill of Dr. No, From Russia With Love, and Thunderball yet again. 

I missed On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in the theater but saw Diamonds Are Forever on the big screen.

By that point I was drafted and in the Army, but managed to see Goldfinger on TV.

After that I caught all the Bond films in theaters up to the Eon Production of Casino Royale.

By that time, I felt pretty much action-adventured out.  While I still enjoy older action films, I’ve lost interest in action for action’s sake.

I watched the Daniel Craig Bond’s on cable, but not in order of release.

When they cast a new Bond, I’ll watch them…eventually.

At one time I had VHS copies of all the Bond films released to cable channels, but those are long gone.  I may have converted some or all of them to DVDs, but can’t remember if I did or not.

That says something about where the characters and series have fallen in my estimation, doesn’t it?

This is not a hit piece on Bond, I deny no one their pleasure. 

In fact, I’m not even going to mention any of the negative feelings I hold on certain films in the series, just the ones I like and recommend.

In reverse Bond order…

• No Time To Die (2021) is the most interesting to me because Eon Productions packed the stones to actually kill 007 off.  In my mind it really doesn’t feel like a classic Bond movie, but then it wasn’t trying to be a classic Bond movie.  The Craig Bonds’ overall story arc marked a new direction for the series (which previously offered standalone films, a few of which might refer to earlier productions but weren’t direct sequels).  Craig is the best actor to star in a Bond movie, but despite his character being called James Bond I could never really embrace him as the character.  As the star of a series of well-done spy movies, he’s well cast, and opposite number Rami Malek is outstanding as Lyutsifer Safin, the best Bond villain of the 21st century.  This isn’t the Bond movie I feel most enthusiastic about, but the best of the Craig series.

• Die Another Day (2002) is my favorite non-Connery Bond.  I know a lot of fans dislike it because it’s one of the more fanciful Bond movies, the CGI effects aged poorly, and just a general antipathy to Madonna, but I favor it because it gave us a Bond adventure we never experienced before.  The invisible Aston-Martin bugged a lot of people, too, but I give the movie bonus points for cleverly using the ejector seat to flip the car upright after it turned over.  To me the best scene in the movie -- and one of the all-time truly great Bond moments -- is when Bond -- emaciated, bearded, barefoot, wearing prison pajamas -- escapes from a prison ship, swims ashore, enters the posh Hong Kong Yacht Club dripping water behind him and he’s still the coolest guy in the room!  Pierce Brosnan is my 3rd favorite Bond, the fun Bond.

Timothy Dalton is my 2nd favorite Bond, the tragic Bond.  He looks and acts more like Fleming’s version of the character than any other actor, but The Living Daylights (1987) feels more like a Roger Moore era Bond while Licence To Kill (1989) seems more like an extended Miami Vice episode.  A variety of behind-the-scenes legal woes stalled the Bond series for the better part of a decade and Dalton eventually moved on without getting a movie truly worthy of his talents.

(And a shout out to David Niven, who was briefly considered as the original big screen Bond for Dr. No but saw producers Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli pass him over in favor of Connery, the kneeslapper here being Niven as a bona fide WWII commando who participated in the invasion of Normandy was more qualified to play the character than anyone else.  He did play the retiree Sir James Bond in the spoof version of Casino Royale so he garners a mention here.)

• For Your Eyes Only (1981) is the only Roger Moore Bond I truly enjoy and would watch again.  It brought the Moore era Bond series back to a more human scale, and while the pre-credits and closing scene leave me cold, all in all it offers a sound, exciting adventure.  Moore turns down the comedy several notches this time and for once he gets to be credibly ruthless in a couple of scenes.  Add to that an interesting twist on the requisite Bond car chase and a unique setting for the climax.  I didn’t care that much for the other Moore Bond movies but have come to recognize them as the comedy Bond series.  (And as a sidebar I’ll add Bond’s underwater escape from gunman by breathing air from the tire of a submerged car in A View To A Kill is one of the coolest Bond moments ever.)

• On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) is the one that got away, the Bond movie that Connery should have played, only his legal conflict with Eon Productions precluded it.  While I agree Telly Savalas wasn’t the best choice for Ernst Stavo Blofeld, Diana Rigg leads me to forgive a multitude of sins and shortcomings.  If Connery couldn’t star in this one, it should have been pushed back to be George Lazenby’s third or fourth outing as Bond after he had a chance to get settled into the character (but of course Lazenby himself torpedoed his own career).  An unusually plotted film, ABC re-edited it for American TV to tell the story in flashback form, thus putting an action sequence earlier; they also included some deleted scenes.  To be honest I prefer that version over the theatrical cut.

• From Russia With Love (1963) is my 2nd favorite Connery Bond, and like For Your Eyes Only one of the few Bonds that scaled itself down to a more human level.  In a very real sense, this is the movie that made the Bond series possible.  Dr. No was the first Bond movie and while they didn’t have the mix quite right yet, it proved successful enough to warrant a sequel.  At that time a typical sequel only did 30% of the box office of the original, so Eon Productions took advantage of United Artists’ money locked up in Turkey to make a smaller scale film there (a similar situation that led to Star Wars filming in Tunisia).  To everyone’s surprise and delight, From Russia With Love did far better than Dr. No and justified spending even more on Goldfinger, thus kicking off the most successful film series in history.  It’s the first Bond film with a pre-credits sequence, the first to really feel like what we know now as a Bond movie, a trio of the best Bond villains ever (Lotte Lenya, Robert Shaw, and Vladek Sheybal) plus the first glimpse of Blofeld (played onscreen by Anthony Dawson, voice dubbed by Eric Pohlmann), plus the best line ever uttered by James Bond:  "Red wine with fish. Well, that should have told me something."

• Goldfinger (1964) is the gold standard of Bond movies, starring many folks’ (including me) all-time favorite Bond, Sean Connery.  It’s one of the rare Bond movies that fires perfectly on all eight cylinders (minor quibble for a Beatle joke that aged badly aside).  Its breakthrough worldwide success insured the Bond series would continue on solid footing for decades to come, continuously trying to top themselves.  Great story (although Bond spends much of the movie as a prisoner), three of the best Bond females (Shirley Eaton and Tania Mallett as the doomed Masterson sisters, and Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore*), great art design by Ken Adams, great music by John Barry with Shirley Bassey belting out the theme song, and of course, the best Bond baddies of all time, Gert Frobe and Harold Sakata as Goldfinger and Oddjob.  Bonus points for the best line ever in a Bond movie:  “Do you expect me to talk?”  “No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to DIE!”

We’re now in a lull period as Eon Productions weighs what to do next with the character series.**  I don’t know what Bond’s future holds, and while I’m unlikely to see them in a theater, I’m sure I’ll eventually catch up with them on TV.

© Buzz Dixon

*  Seriously, Ian?

** If I were king of the forest (or perhaps M), I’d make Putin, Trump, Boris Johnson, Musk, and Jeffrey Epstein the villains in the next series of films.