The fourth James Bond film and one of the biggest box office blockbusters of all time, THUNDERBALL comes in somewhere in the middle of the pack in 007 films for me.
Connery is in fine form as Bond, tracking down two nuclear warheads stolen by Spectre, who is bribing the UN for diamonds in return for the surrender of the bombs. But for every strong point such as the opening pre-credits sequence, there is a weak point like the overlong underwater sequences that seem to drag on forever. John Barry's music score is great, but Rick Nutter as Felix Leiter displays some of the worst acting in the series (until Denise Richards as a nuclear scientist many years later...). Claudine Auger, a former Miss France is stunning and terrific as Domino, but Adolfo Celi is wooden as the villain, Largo.
It's easy to savor the good parts mentioned above, as well as Tom Jones theme song over Maurice Binder's classic title credits, any scene with Luciana Paluzzi (can my friend sit down here? She's just dead...) and Connery at his smoothest. The concluding explosion when Largo's yacht explodes is one of the biggest ever on film, it shattered windows many miles away in the Bahamas. I wish all of the film was that big of a blast. I'll roll Thunderball a B-.
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