movie review - On Her Majesty's Secret Service
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
This is the second Bond film that I watched with my son. This is a substantially better movie than "Goldfinger", with an unusual plot in which Bond is more-or-less entering an arranged marriage with a family encountered while on a mission. Things are unusually coherent and realistic for a Bond movie, and the female lead in question seems a strong match for Bond in every respect as Bond attempts to move his mission forward in typical seat-of-the-pants fashion.
The plot then veers wildly as an entire act is set in a mountain-top allergy research facility (huh?) during which time Bond - weirdly attempting to portray a member of the royal heraldry outfit in the UK - supposedly attempts to get information on Ernst Blofeld, a recurring villain. That this was on a mountain-top is typical Bond excess and fine as far as it goes, but there's just a tonne of overhead in this thing. The investigation reveals that the villain wants to sterilize the world's plants and animals by delivering a toxin around the world simultaneously. To effect this, he's brainwashed his allergy patients. Needless to say they're all smoking hot young women. And needless to say, Bond proceeds to distract himself by fooling around with not one but two of the women. Again, this is in keeping with the skirt-chasing of the era, and possibly could have something to do with the original book being published in a serialized fashion in Playboy magazine, but they seemed to be putting together a movie with a coherent and reality-based plot prior to this act, and I think it should have been handled better.
And as implausibly and abruptly as the mountain-top act all started, it's then over and Bond's literally back in the arms of his would-be bride.
This love interest for Bond is the daughter of a wealthy Italian gangster. (She's half British so it's OK for a man of Bond's station, hruum, hruum.) She is a driving part of the entire first part of the film, but her disappearance while Bond's on that mountain-top (nailing the other women) is palpable. We're more invested in her than in Bond's frankly silly mission on that mountain-top. But once back, she saves the day, marries Bond and then dies.
I have to hand it to whoever did the camera work on this thing, there are a number of beautifully-shot pieces, such as capturing skiers descending a ridge or actually usable footage shot on a bobsled track. Brilliant! The bit on the mountaintop is to my mind so different in tone and purpose that I feel it could do with editing the way people used to do edits of the Star Wars prequels. Aside from that, this is a good Bond movie.
Bonus points for the nip-slip (which my son managed to miss, silly guy).
Recommended.
(I rather wish we'd had more of Lazenby as Bond but it seemed he didn't make it through the filming of this piece before announcing he was done.)