This, the second Bond film, one I never really liked that much when I was younger. It lacked the gadgets (unless you count 007’s attaché case, and I didn’t), the diabolical mastermind (unless you count Blofeld stroking his pussy, and, as we don’t even see his face, I didn’t) and said master criminal’s hidden lair (Bond’s final confrontation is with a small Russian woman in a hotel room!)
Yet it’s now one of my favourites and for many of the same reasons. Coming before the series found its formula (that would come with the next film, Goldfinger) it stands out from the rest. Things don’t really get moving until Bond boards the Orient Express in the films action packed second half. This section is one long chase, first in the claustrophobic environs of the train, then by truck, and. finally, in the first of the series spectacular boat sequences. The film has more in common here with North by Northwest than anything in the subsequent Bond films, but of course 007 is no innocent victim.
The film may lack a lead villain but it does have one of the all time great henchmen in the macho form of Robert Shaw’s SPECTRE agent Grant. With so much testosterone on display it’s hardly surprising Connery and Shaw wanted to do their own fight scene, and it gives the sequence a raw brutal quality, aided by the close confines of the confrontation, that’s never been equalled. Both stars no doubt nursed a few bruises (in private of course).
