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United Kingdom · 1969
Rated PG · 2h 22m
Director Peter R. Hunt
Starring George Lazenby, Diana Rigg, Telly Savalas, Gabriele Ferzetti
Genre Action, Adventure, Thriller
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James Bond tracks his arch-nemesis, Ernst Blofeld, to a mountaintop retreat in the Swiss Alps where he is training an army of beautiful, lethal women. Along the way, Bond falls for Italian contessa Tracy Di Vicenzo, and marries her in order to get closer to Blofeld and stop a devious scheme involving germ warfare that could kill millions.
George Lazenby has so much reserve as James Bond that he makes Sean Connery seem almost frenetic by comparison. Director Peter Hunt manages to inject some life into this 1969 exercise with a wonderful ski chase, but otherwise the film is a bore.
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is the only Bond film that gets beyond the dirty boy’s-book spirit of the series to a core of real emotion. It also has what are probably the best action sequences of any 007 adventure.
Time Out London by Geoff Andrew
The Bond films were bad enough even with the partially ironic performances of Connery. Here, featuring the stunning nonentity Lazenby, there are no redeeming features.
ReelViews by James Berardinelli
The film contains some of the most exhilarating action sequences ever to reach the screen, a touching love story, and a nice subplot that has agent 007 crossing (and even threatening to resign from) Her Majesty's Secret Service. The problem is with Bond himself. Following Sean Connery's departure after You Only Live Twice, the film makers had to come up with a replacement. The man they chose, a model named George Lazenby, is boring, and his ineffectualness lowers the picture's quality.
Hunt, who served as editor on the first three Connery films, gives Lazenby’s fist fights a whipcrack intensity and the ski-jumping, stock car-racing, bobsled-sliding finale is one of the series’ best.
Is it an awful movie? Objectively speaking, no (although it does feature one of the worst endings ever inflicted on an audience). But as a Bond movie, it’s an abomination.
This is the Bond flick blessed with the best plot, a genuine sense of emotion and a spirit closest to Ian Fleming’s novels.
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