- "This is the big one, 007," explains M (Bernard Lee), and he's right. You Only Live Twice is the film in which James Bond (Sean Connery) dies, comes back, turns Japanese, becomes a ninja, prevents World War III, and finally meets the maniacal head of SPECTRE, Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Donald Pleasence). It may sound like a lot for one man to accomplish, but thankfully that man is James Bond. The trouble all begins when a mysterious spacecraft abducts an American rocket...in outer space! An identical attack on a Russian rocket pushes the two nations to the brink of war, so it's up to British intelligence to uncover the real culprits and maintain the world peace. I must confess that I absolutely adore the rocket-stealing scenes, which feature John Barry's score at its most bombastic.
- After taking the perfectly reasonable precautions of faking his own death and exiting a submarine via the torpedo tubes, Bond begins his mission in Japan. There, he must navigate through a web of cloak-and-dagger operations managed by a Japanese agent named Tiger Tanaka (Tetsuro Tanba) and his lovely and capable assistant Aki (Akiko Wakabayashi) in order to discover who is behind the attacks. Although the first lead fizzles out when an informant (Charles Gray) gets a knife in the back, Bond soon links the rocket to a company run by the mysterious Mr. Osato (Teru Shimada) and his secretary Helga Brandt (Karin Dor). Any doubt that Bond was on the right trail rapidly evaporates when musclebound henchmen and assassins start materializing at every turn. Despite having an incredibly mundane name by Bond girl standards, even Miss Brandt gets in on the fun by trying to crash a plane carrying 007 as a passenger. Whereas earlier Bond films might have taken such events quite seriously, You Only Live Twice has quite a bit of fun with helicopters dropping cars into the ocean and a wonderful long-distance rooftop tracking shot of Bond polishing off a few dozen badguys.
- So why does Bond have to become a Japanese, married ninja to topple this particular SPECTRE scheme? I'm not sure that such choices could ever really be justified, although I suppose that the Bond ethos is well enough summarized by Tanaka's claim that, "in Japan, men come first, women come second." Still, a ninja army and the terrifically-named Kissy Suzuki (Mie Hama) do help to spice up the film's final third, in which Bond leads a raid on SPECTRE's enormous rocket-launching base, which is hidden in the caldera of a volcanic crater. It is there that Bond and the audience finally catch a glimpse of the elusive "Number One," that diabolical feline-stroking mastermind who has been the bane of Bond's existence throughout the series.
- Even if you haven't seen You Only Live Twice, you would recognize Blofeld from his obvious influence on other film characters, most notably including Mike Myers' "Dr. Evil" from the Austin Powers series. With his scars, mandarin collar, and piranha-filled moat, Blofeld is the quintessential Bond villain, and he makes the usual mistake of refusing to kill Bond when he has the chance. Unfortunately, Blofeld's dramatic appearance and the film's explosive finale also signal a distinct turning point in the series. I hesitate to apply the term "jumping the shark," both because of its imprecision and since I seem to recall such a feat literally occurring back in Thunderball, but one could easily argue that the Bond films never achieve this level of entertainment again. At the very least, everyone would agree that this was the last great film to feature Connery as Bond (see my upcoming review of Diamonds are Forever as proof). Perhaps You Only Live Twice did the series a disservice by featuring such enormous sets, exciting action, and extravagant music that the films to follow were destined to seem small in comparison.
- In 1967, I'm surprised that "Darling, I give you very best duck." got past the censors.
- This was screenwritten by Roald Dahl!
