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Yes, and I also love Bond's reply to Largo, who asks him, "Are you as good a loser as you are a winner?"
Bond; "I wouldn't know, I've never lost."
Plenty of eye-candy.
The battle with Lupe was one of the best in the series.
Bernie Casey was WAY better than most of the Leiters in the series
Bad: The production quality
The dated 1980's score and attire
the climax
zero chemisry between Bond and Bassinger
the Domination game was a poor (and overly long) replacement for baccarat game
One thing that struck me about the production values and design is how much it reminded me of LTK; both look like a typical 80’s television show.!
Connery looked so great, and slid back into the role so well, that one thing that crossed my mind, what if in an alternate universe, what if following FYEO Moore had called it a day and Connery returned for OP. Moore was great as t in the film but it would have been incredible as a curtain call for Connery.
"(HA): You made it to Hollywood as one of the few Austrian actors (among others with the James Bond film "Never Say Never Again", 1983, "Out of Africa", 1985). You once described the Bond film as an operetta. Why?
(KMB): In the 1930s and 1940s there were some actors from Austria and also from Hungary there. I wasn't the only one there. I was very lucky and that gave me a lot of pleasure. I won't tell you how many films I didn't make. And Bond, what else could it be but an operetta? I can also say they were cold war films. That's what they were there for. In the East is the devil, they said. There we take German people who play the bad guy - it can be an Austrian sometimes. It's a game. An excellent one, by the way. Also in terms of the text. It's fabulous. I like to watch it. The Bond I made, though, least of all."
I think that the choice of Christoph Waltz for Blofeld is a direct continuation of Brandauer's role in NSNA. But I enjoyed Brandauer more.
EDIT: I corrected the movie titles in the first paragraph. They were a correct translation of the German titles of the movies, but not equal to the original English titles.
I've never heard the Bond films described as operetta before, but now that I think about it, the comparison is somehow apt.
I don’t disagree; I think Brandauer is excellent. But to be fair NSNA has a rubbish Blofeld too :)
Maybe it’s the material he’s given or maybe his performance is slightly too toned down for my taste, but I just never felt his Largo reached the heights of being genuinely scary. A bit creepy maybe, but not especially threatening.
LALD and LTK have the same problem.
I think he's close enough to being scary, he does seem a little more on the edge than the usual Bond villain. I definitely get the impression that Zorin was inspired by him, Bond villains hadn't really gone full psycho before and then suddenly we have two, young, blond ones in a row- a little suspicious!
Good point. And hey, getting Zorin out of that isn’t a bad thing. I do think Walken has a more natural charisma/weirdness to him that makes him more suited to playing a Bind villain.
I think I've said this on here before (I know I have on Twitter, same username btw) but I count the following Bond villains (both literary and film) as the maddest of the lot: YOLT novel Blofeld, Max Largo, Max Zorin and David Dragonpol (Gardner's NSF). Witness how both Largo and Zorin use an axe as a weapon. The scene where Largo smashes the room up with the axe is madness at its finest. Ditto YOLT Blofeld luring suicidal Japanese to his Garden of Death, Zorin carrying out the treacherous mine massacre and Dragonpol killing notable victims simply because he's good at it and he can.