The action is reasonably well-staged, but the film is overlong and occasionally draggy.
Thunderball
✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
United Kingdom, United States · 1965
Rated PG · 2h 10m
Director Terence Young
Starring Sean Connery, Claudine Auger, Adolfo Celi, Luciana Paluzzi
Genre Action, Adventure, Thriller
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A criminal organization has obtained two nuclear bombs and is asking for a 100 million pound ransom in the form of diamonds in seven days, or they will use the weapons. The secret service sends James Bond to the Bahamas to once again save the world.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
The New York Times by Bosley Crowther
[Bond] also has a much better sense of humor than he has shown in his previous films. And this is the secret ingredient that makes Thunderball the best of the lot.
Slightly bloated Bond, with too much technology and a climactic slaughter that's a little too mindless to be much fun. Still, Adolfo Celi—with his “heat and cold, applied scientifically”—makes a most memorable villain.
ReelViews by James Berardinelli
The underwater sequences, which are choreographed and directed with great skill, are Thunderball's standout feature... Thunderball is classic 007 -- not the best picture in the long-running series, to be sure, but a more-than-worthwhile diversion for the action-loving escapist in us all.
Connery [is] cruising by this point and the movie doesn't quite match the swagger of Goldfinger, but still effortlessly plies the glory Bond years, concluding with a stunning underwater battle.
The New Yorker by Pauline Kael
Not bad, but not quite top-grade Bond. A little too much under-water war-ballet.
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