007: Sólo se vive dos veces

You Only Live Twice is pure Comic Book entertaiment. James Bond is very much the superhero character he was in Goldfinger, and every scene is like a panel in a Comic Book and filled with entertaining excitement. In truth, it is though the feel and style that was vibrant throughout Goldfinger [1964] leapfrogged the dull Thunderball [1965] and found it's way to Japan. Twice is a beautiful looking and sounding addition to the Bond movies, and one is glad Sean Connery didn't really resign from the role of Bond and did indeed Live Twice.

By jettisoning most of Ian Flemmings original story You Only Live Twice, in wich an amnesiac Bond Hunts down Blofeld in Japanese castles, Broccoli and Saltzman have ridden themselves of the same problem evident in Thunderball : Slow Movement, Uninterested Audiences. Thunderball may have been a success, but this was probably due to the Bondmania wich raged through the mid sixties like a giant inferno. Luckily for the fans of the eye popping spectacles the Bond series is famous for, You Only Live Twice contains no such problems of dreary moments of boardom. In its place we have a Space Age actioneer written by childrens author Roald Dahl, and an entertaining and swift director in Lewis Gilbert, who seems more suited to Bond than any director yet.

It has been said before, but the real star of the show is Ken Adams sets. His wondefull Volcano set wich Blofeld uses is one of the most memorable in Cinema history. Add to this the Japanese sets, the Submarines [M's Offices], Tanaka's Lair, and the real sense of Japanese authenticy. Adam deserves an Oscar for this movie alone. For his total contributions to Bond and other movies, there is no Award yet created.

Donald Pleasence makes a very creepy Blofeld. He is perhaps the ultimate Blofeld. His scenes with the other cast members show the complete acting skills of a fine actor. Twice also contains one of Desmonde Lywellyn's funniest performances as Q,and one of Q's finest creations, the Little Nellie Helicopter. Little Nellie is every Bond fans dreams, personally i think it would be lovely to soar above rural England in Nellie, let alone Japan! Some guys have all the luck! Twice also has one of John Barry's most beautiful themes,and songs sung by Nancie Sinatra.

The only real let down this time is Sean Connery. He makes any Bond film look good, but this time doesn't look as though he is enjoying himself all that much. This is a petty bacause Twice itself is a very impressive and enjoyable Bond movie, with some of the best sets, Action sequences and Acting in the entire series.

You Only Live Twice is directed by Lewis Gilbert and written by Roald Dahl. It stars Sean Connery, Tetsuro Tamba, Teru Shimada, Akiko Wakabayashi, Mie Hama, Karin Dor and Donald Pleasence. Music is scored by John Barry and cinematography by Freddie Young.

Bond 5 and Connery once again tackles the role of 007. With American and Soviet space craft mysteriously vanishing from space, both nations are laying the blame at the other's door. Sensing a nuclear war could break out, M assigns Bond to Japan to investigate if there might be a third party stirring the hornets nest. Teaming up with the Japanese secret service, Bond uncovers evidence that SPECTRE is behind the plot to pitch the East and the West against each other.

This organisation does not tolerate failure.

Thunderball had broke box office records for Bond, gadgetry, outlandish stunts and a quip on the tongue had proved most profitable. It was planned originally that On Her Majesty's Secret Service would be number 5 in the series, but a change of tack to go for You Only Live Twice as the story gave producers Broccoli & Saltzman the scope for a giganticus enormous production. However, it may be set in Japan and feature a Bond/Blofeld conflict, but Roald Dahl's script bares little resemblance to Ian Fleming's source novel. Although a massive financial success with a Worldwide gross of over $111 million, Bond 5 took $30 million less than Thunderball. Strange since this is a better film. Can we attribute the drop to it being a space age saga? Maybe, the rebirth of sci-fi was a few years away, and of course Bond had lost some fans who had grown tired, like Connery, of 007 relying on gadgets instead of brains and brawn to complete his missions. There was also the rival Casino Royale production, as bad as it was, to contend with, while the spy boom created by Bond had been overkilled elsewhere and was on the wane.

Extortion is my business. Go away and think it over, gentlemen. I'm busy.

True enough that You Only Live Twice has flaws, though they are far from being film killers if you like the gadgets and hi-techery side of the franchise? Connery announced once production was over that he was leaving the role of Bond behind. He had been close to breaking point after Thunderball, but finally the media circus, typecasting, the fanaticism and the character merely being a cypher for outrageous sequences, led Connery to finally call it a day. His displeasure shows in performance, oh it's professional, very much so, but the swagger and machismo from the earlier films has gone. Although Dahl's script tones down the "cheese" dialogue and unfolds as a plot of considerable World peril worth, characterisations are thinly drawn, making this reliant on production value and action sequences. Thankfully both are top dollar. And the ace up its sleeve is the long awaited face to face meeting of Bond and Blofeld.

The firing power inside my crater is enough to annihilate a small army. You can watch it all on TV. It's the last program you're likely to see.

Ken Adam's set design is fit to grace any epic in film history, as is Freddie Young's photography around the Japanese locales, Barry lays a beautiful Bond/Oriental score all over proceedings and Nancy Sinatra's title song is appealingly catchy. The action is excellently constructed by Gilbert (helming the first of three Bond movies on his CV), with the final battle at Blofeld's volcano crater base full of explosions, flying stunt men, expert choreography and meaty fights. Along the way we have been treated to Ninjas, Piranhas, poison, aeroplane peril and the awesome Little Nellie versus the big boy copter smack down! Then there's that Bond/Blofeld confrontation. Well worth the wait, with Pleasence visually scary with bald head (setting the marker for bald villainy to follow in TV and cinema it seems) and scar across his eye. Pleasence is also very low key with his menace, which is perfect, we don't want pantomime and the scenes with Bond work wonderfully well.

It made less than the film before it and it has fierce critics in Bond and Fleming circles. But it's a Bond film that pays rich rewards on revisits, where the artistry on show really shines through in this HD/Upscale age. 8/10

My Take: Another fun Bond entry. Great Bond, fun villains, neat gadgets, and enjoyable action.

"You Only Live Twice" is business as usual for Bond. Not much new, and Connery seemed bored playing his role (explaining his disappearance in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service"). There is a lot to like in this film. Connery in "You Only Live Twice" is easily comparable to FROM Russia WITH LOVE and GOLDFINGER, but as Bond, he already has established that he is the best in the business and YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE does give him much to do.

This film does carry the original tradition of Bond. This time around, Bond is sent to Japan to investigate the disappearances of American space shuttles. While the United States suspect it's Russian interference and threaten to retaliate, the Brits faked 007's assassination, in order to clear the way for Bond to investigate what really is going on.

Some areas of YOLT are pretty campy (some of the patterns for the AUSTIN POWERS parodies are pretty evident), but the camp is part of the fun. It's a throwback to the good ol' not-to-be-taken-seriously adventure espionage fun. This is formula Bond, but loaded with great action, neat gadgetry ("Little Nellie" is one of the most beloved Q gadgets) and the glorious sets by the one-and-only Bond veteran Ken Adam make it another high-flying, if not exactly groundbreaking, Bond adventure and one of he series' more fun entries.

Rating: **** out of 5.

Solid entry in the James Bond saga – Sean Connery's fifth appearance as the secret agent in a row (his last, in fact, until DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER [1971] and, eventually, the non-series entry NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN [1983]) – featuring a lovely title tune by John Barry and Leslie Bricusse sung by Nancy Sinatra.

The relocation to Japan for the main action (resulting in impeccable photography courtesy of the renowned Freddie Young, who also contributes an inspired aerial shot of our hero at the center of a rooftop chase/struggle) adds much-needed novelty in the exotic department – though characters tend to be less well developed as a consequence. Tetsuro Tamba is imposing enough as his 'sidekick', but the all-important Bond girls have no distinguishing features – save for Karin Dor, a typical femme-fatale-ish villainess who manages to trap Bond in an unpiloted plane. Similar expansiveness was shown in Ken Adam's elaborate design of Ernst Stavro Blofeld's headquarters, hidden within the crater of a Japanese volcano; other attention-grabbing devices include Bond being 'killed' in the prologue (thus explaining the title), while he's later given an Oriental 'countenance' and even made to 'marry' a Japanese girl (an irrelevant undercover attempt, as it happens – since there is very little interaction between Bond, his local allies and the enemy before the final confrontation in the volcano interior)!

Its plot involving the abduction of space shuttles belonging to the U.S. and Russia, in the hope of provoking a war between the major powers, again plays on the fears of nuclear annihilation palpable during the Cold War era. Incidentally, this is the first time Blofeld himself steps in as chief villain (played with appropriate menace by Donald Pleasence – with a handy piranha-filled stream underneath a sliding bridge to replace the pool-sharks from the previous installment, THUNDERBALL [1965]). By the way, Charles Gray (Blofeld in DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER) appears in a bit here as Bond's ill-fated contact in Japan! The most prominent gadget invented by Q (the ubiquitous Desmond Llewellyn) in this case is an artillery-equipped mini-chopper – employed in a sequence whose filming unfortunately cost an aerial photographer his leg!; there's also a memorably violent brawl which has Bond and his opponent lashing at each other with heavy living-room couches!

The show, then, is climaxed by one of the most spectacular action bouts in the entire saga – for which Bond recruits Tamba's ninjas to fight the minions of SPECTRE; Blofeld, of course, is allowed to go free this time around…since he'd be involved in at least three subsequent direct matches with 007. Given that director Gilbert lived up to the challenge of ably following in the footsteps of Terence Young and Guy Hamilton, it was only natural he'd be asked to helm further Bond adventures – though, by the time THE SPY WHO LOVED ME (1977) and MOONRAKER (1979) came along, Roger Moore had firmly established himself in the role.

I don't blame Sean Connery with growing weary of the James Bond series, by the time "You Only Live Twice" was released they had done five movies in five years! That being said this is the last original Bond with Connery (not counting his return in "Diamond are Forever" and "Never Say Never Again). These five movies will always be the iconic Bond movies, but by the end of this film one could predict the franchise was on its way down.

This film takes James Bond to the Far East to investigate the kidnapping of US and Soviet spacecrafts which could eventual lead to war between the two powers. Roald Dahl, yes the same Roald Dahl who wrote "James and the Giant Peach" did the screenplay for this film, and he does a commendable but not extraordinary job. Some of James Bond's best one-liners are in this film, like "Oh the things I do for England," and "you sound like a commercial," most likely in credit to Dahl's creative touch.

The strength of this movie is that the franchise moved away from Europe and sent Bond to Asia. The Japanese background is excellent as are the Japanese Bond Girls, Aki and Kissy and the Japanese agent Tanaka. The action sequences are just OK. There's one good fight scene at the Osaka Corporation, it's similar to the "From Russia With Love" train scene and the opening fight in 'Thunderball.'

However compared to its predecessors, this movie fails to deliver. The editing and pace seems to slow down significantly once Bond has to get married and become Japanese. The enemy's lair seems over-the-top and fantastical, even more so than Dr. No's lair. Even with Connery's flair and grace one can see how anything less than an 100% effort isn't going to make a movie great, even a James Bond film.

Despite its minor hiccups, I still think this is an enjoyable Bond. Not as great as the preceding four films, but still solid. Yet one can't ignore the ominous signs that the Bond franchise was on its way down. For the last 40 years, minus some good films thrown in that time, the Bond franchise has never duplicated the magic and bedazzlement that it had from 1962-1966.

A Good James Bond film but not great. 6 out of 10.