Thunderball (Terence Young, 1965)

What is it about Bond and boyhood? I think I was probably 10 or 11 when I was first introduced to Bond via "Goldfinger" and "Dr. No" as weekend matinees at the local movie house or on television. Now my son is at that age where Bond is a big deal. Probably something to do with girls and guns. We just watched "Thunderball," which won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects in 1966. Couple interesting twists to this Bond flick of the Sean Connery variety. First, if you scan the cast it was quite ethnically diverse pulling actors from a number of different countries. Second, there were lots of interesting special effects between 007's gadgetry (including a rocket pack) and quite a few underwater scenes--the biggest being this massive underwater fight sequence towards the end of the film. I admit I am still a sucker for a good Bond film, and we have worked through many of them in the past months. So what is it about Bond? It's definitely not the sappy love scenes that are gratuitously thrown in every 15-20 minutes. Probably more the elements of intrigue and suspense as we try to navigate which of the women he's sleeping with are pawns and which are his enemies. And you always expect someone to be lurking in the corners of any room 007 enters. It's about excitement that we would normally never encounter in real life. It is then an escape. A fantasy. A moment of movie magic. And we finish the film happy to know that Bond worked everything out in the nick of time (did we ever doubt him).