You Only Live Twice

You Only Live Twice is quintessential Bond.  A version of most everything that someone expects from the franchise, spoofs in a send up like Austin Powers, or associates with the Connery era Bond can be found in this film.  Does this make it the best Bond film? No. Among the Connery movies, I would place it better than Dr. No but worse than the rest. Oddly, despite being the film Connery first retired the character, although he did come back later for Diamonds Are Forever, it seems the most detached from what made films like Thunderball work so well.  You Only Live Twice feels incredibly camp even by the standards of 1960s era Bonds, in stark contrast to Connery’s other films which had perfected the formula of over-the-top male fantasy fun, with action, girls, and gadgets, without sacrificing consistent characters, clear motivations, and clever plots.

You Only Live Twice isn’t made worse by its cliches, however.  The movie doesn’t suffer for the villain’s overly complex plot to incite war between Russia and the United States by kidnapping astronauts… in space.  Nor does it suffer for its inclusion of a secret base hidden in a dormant volcano, or the arrival of the first fully faced Blofeld complete with (now iconic) facial scar and milky right eye.  Those are the things that make it Bond in all its Cold War era glory. What really lets down You Only Live Twice is all the subtle things: the writing, the characters, and the lack of wit. For example, in the scenes between Bond and his Japanese compatriot in the second act, the dialogue, especially Bond’s, lurches roughly from exposition point to exposition point with very little of Bond’s stereotypical charm.  One could argue that Connery’s appeal as Bond was his ability to play both animalistic and debonair with equal facility but this performance is all gruff and no fluff.

This is especially apparent in the relationships Bond has with the women of the movie.  While Bond usually charms his way into the hearts, and beds, of several women in each film, in this movie Bond sleeps with his conquests despite their apparent complete disinterest in him.  In other Bond films, the girls either show an immediate attraction to Bond or they start cold on him and then he warms them up over the course of the film, making the sex in both cases at least logical, if a tad juvenile.  In You Only Live Twice, however, a female character’s opinion on Bond’s desirability would switch on a dime for no reason at all. In one almost comical case, the henchwoman’s opinion shifted just long enough for him to bed her, only to revert back again as soon as the scene was over.  Perhaps this was supposed to be a calculated betrayal, but the scenes are so poorly handled it didn’t necessarily read that way. This, combined with the death of the first love interest and her abrupt replacement by another in a set piece that is weirdly both totally unnecessary and shockingly culturally insensitive, makes the ending with Bond floating away with a girl in his arms, another staple of the genre dating back all the way to Dr. No, feel all the less earned.

All that being said, I still enjoyed myself.  In essence, it is a serviceable Bond film whose ideas, some new, some old and improved, became mainstays of the franchise for decades to come.  It is just let down by the fact it often feels like the characters do what they do or say what they say because their actor read it in the script, rather than because it made sense to them in the moment.

Would Recommend: If you like Bond movies.

Would Not Recommend: If you don’t like Bond movies.