M sends him to Shrublands, a natural health clinic, to recover. With nothing but paperwork to do, he has given in to drinking, smoking, and gambling. The novel opens with Bond in a depressed state. Bond finally foils these modern-day pirates in a spectacular underwater battle.
Soon, Bond is whisked off to the Bahamas in search of SPECTRE, a criminal organization threatening to explode stolen nuclear bombs. During his stay, he tangles with a criminal who, unbeknownst to Bond, is involved in an international blackmail scheme. But whatever the truth it’s faithful to the original release.James Bond, agent 007 with Her Majesty's Secret Service, is sent to a health clinic to recover from over-drinking and over-smoking. I’m also curious if some of them aren’t entirely appropriate the BSA motorbike used in one action sequence sounds like Russian tractor. Sound is remixed into six channel DTS-HD from the original stereo sources, although some of the stock sounds seem unsubtle when presented in this quality. In the Bond restorations I’ve seen so far this is the best yet, and I was blown away by the others. All the footage they shot in Nassau looks incredible, even the night photography avoids any excess grain. I don’t think underwater photography got this good again until The Abyss.īut even above the waves Thunderball is of a high standard. Where it slaps you across the face like a well aimed trout is in the underwater sequences they’re glorious in the vibrancy and saturation they’ve managed to capture. In my previous two Bond reviews I’ve mentioned the work of Lowery Digital in restoring these movies, and the work they’ve done on Thunderball stands out in the colour department. How good does it look on Blu-ray? Thunder-bloody-tastic! Which neatly brings me to what buying this one gives you above beyond the various DVD versions we’ve been offered. Those who like the Dionne Warwick’s rendition of the alternate Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang theme, it’s on one of the two additional commentary tracks they’ve put on this disc. In retrospect it isn’t the best theme by Tom Jones, but the superbly crafted John Barry incidental music more than makes up for it. Ken Adams contributed his usual stunningly architectural set design, demonstrating that the Bond production team was operating at flank speed.
Connery looks entirely relaxed as the misogynistic 007, and all the other peripheral characters such as M, Q and Moneypenny all make appearances to maintain series continuity. The audience knew what to expect by now, and here it’s delivered by the bucket. Thunderball might not have the gritty edge of From Russia with Love, but it’s a finely polished product now operating within clearly regimented guidelines. Fleming wasn’t alive at this point, but I can’t accept it was taking liberties with the already established genre.
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