Director: Peter R. Hunt
Cast: George Lazenby, Diana Rigg, Telly Savalas, Bernard Lee
Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure.
Did I Like It: If you’ve seen the film, or any of the Bond series, you probably have some vague opinion about this one, even if you haven’t seen it. Is it any good, being an aberration in the series? Is George Lazenby worth watching? Does the ending even work?
Take away the storytelling aberration of having three different Bonds in successive films, and this film manages to succeed where so many other of the films struggle. It’s a solid adaptation of Fleming’s original novel. It is low on gadgets, high on plot, and feels of a piece with a longer story told about a man who has a very strange job and doesn’t think he’s going to live very long. It is a sweeping action epic, careening towards an understanded, but inevitable tragic ending. It is also the one key argument against the whole “James Bond is just a code name, and each time the actor changes, it is a new character” theory*, before Skyfall (2012) closed the book on it forever.
I’ll admit that I’ve even proffered an opinion or two on the topic of the one and done Bond, and I’m surprised to admit some of my opinions may have changed. I’ve always said that if Sean Connery has stuck it out through this film, it would have been the best in the series, even besting From Russia With Love (1963). I’m not so sure that I believe that anymore. I believe in the final act that Lazneby’s Bond loves Tracy (Rigg). He treats her tenderly, even if there is a fundamental layer of condescending chauvinism to his affections that is true to the characters, sort of like when I have beaming pride that my cat’s meows have a growing and meaningful vocabulary behind them. Connery’s whole screen presence couldn’t have hoped to reach for that pathos. It would have played as a comedy, and an awkward one at that.
By the same token, Lazenby is at points earlier in the film awkward in the role. He’s not quite so suave, so untroubled by the insanity of the world around him. Just as Connery couldn’t have played the final scene in this movie, Lazenby would have been hopelessly at sea trying to sell the character with the same level of movie star gravitas as Connery did in the opening scenes of Dr. No (1962).
The problem with the film, ultimately, is Lazenby’s short tenure with the role. Had he stuck around, he very well might have grown into his role both as Bond and as a movie star generally**. Thankfully, this longing for someone to bring that tragedy to ruthless life is sated when Daniel Craig covered large parts of the material in Spectre (2015) and especially in No Time To Die (2021).
*How so? I’m so glad you asked, and a little hesitant to include it in the review proper. Tracy dies at the end of the film. In For Your Eyes Only (1981) Moore’s Bond visits Tracy’s grave. That’s the big one. There are a number of references beyond that that are less specific. I imagine I’ll have more to say about that in my immediately forthcoming review for Diamonds Are Forever (1971).
**Although him in Moonraker (1979) would still be a chore in any universe.