{"id":3460,"date":"2024-08-28T19:00:44","date_gmt":"2024-08-28T19:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=3460"},"modified":"2024-10-13T19:11:23","modified_gmt":"2024-10-13T23:11:23","slug":"you-only-live-twice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/08\/28\/you-only-live-twice\/","title":{"rendered":"You Only Live Twice"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"You Only Live Twice <\/strong>(1967)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 United Artists\/Action-Adventure\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 117 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No MPAA Rating (mild language, violence, some sexual content)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Lewis Gilbert\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Roald Dahl\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: John Barry\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Freddie Young\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: June 13, 1967 (US & UK)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Sean Connery, Akiko Wakabayashi, Tetsuro Tamba, Mie Hama, Teru Shimada, Karin Dor, Lois Maxwell, Desmond Llewelyn, Charles Gray, Bernard Lee, Donald Pleasence.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Opening Song: \u201cYou Only Live Twice\u201d by Nancy Sinatra\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $43M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating:<\/strong> **** <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0It’s not considered a plot spoiler if I tell you James Bond (Connery) is killed before the opening credits of You Only Live Twice, is it? And would it also be a spoiler if I told you MI6 faked his death so he could carry out his latest assignment? Well, ask yourself this? What kind of James Bond movie doesn\u2019t have James Bond in it? It would be like a Jason Bourne movie without Jason Bourne. Oh wait, they did that already with The Bourne Legacy. You saw how that turned out, right?<\/p>\n

\u00a0You Only Live Twice<\/strong>, which marks the entry of director Lewis Gilbert (Alfie) to the series, is when things started going OTT. A mysterious spacecraft has swallowed up an American space shuttle and the Russians are being blamed for it. British intelligence suspects otherwise as the craft landed somewhere in the Sea of Japan. The \u201clate\u201d 007 goes right from his burial at sea to MI6 HQ (temporarily relocated to a ship) where M (Lee) sends him to Tokyo to investigate. The Americans plan to launch another shuttle in three weeks\u2019 time so Bond doesn\u2019t have all the time in the world to figure out what\u2019s going on. If he doesn\u2019t, it could mean WWIII.<\/p>\n

\u00a0No surprise here, the evil organization SPECTRE is behind the whole thing. Somebody wants to start a war between the US and the USSR. The baddie conducting the operation is none other than SPECTRE head Blofeld himself played by Donald Pleasence of the Halloween movies. Yes, we finally get to see the supervillain face-to-face. It was worth the wait. He\u2019s the biggest bad guy of them all in the Bond-verse. We\u2019re talking about a guy who feeds people who fail him to piranha. This is the fate that befalls female assassin Helga Brandt (Dor, Topaz) after Bond survives her attempt on his life (after she sleeps with him, of course). Pleasence does a great job in the role. He gets off good lines like “This organization does not tolerate failure.” and “I shall look forward personally to exterminating you, Mr. Bond.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0You Only Live Twice<\/strong>, in all its silliness, is a four-star spy movie. Among other things, it has ninjas. That\u2019s right, NINJAS! No, Sho Kosugi isn\u2019t among them [insert sad face emoji here]. Bond takes a two-day crash course in ninjutsu before heading to the island where Blofeld and his minions are carrying out their evil plan from his hidden base in a hollowed-out volcano. As far as final battles go, this is a good one.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Naturally, gadgets guy Q (Llewelyn) stops by to outfit Bond with his latest invention, a really cool mini-helicopter (\u201cLittle Nellie\u201d) that can fire machine guns, launch rockets, heat-seeking missiles and aerial mines. It comes in handy when Bond finds himself in an air battle with four helicopters. If there\u2019s one thing You Only Live Twice<\/strong> doesn\u2019t lack, it\u2019s action. There\u2019s a lot of it here.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The majority of You Only Live Twice <\/strong>is set in Japan in 1967 which means you’re going to see some blatant political incorrectness here. At one point, somebody says, \u201cIn Japan, men always come first, women come second.” to which Bond replies “I just might retire to here.” That\u2019s nothing compared to what happens a little later. Bond is made up to look Japanese in order to gain access to the island without raising suspicion. He looks about as convincing as C. Thomas Howell posing as a black student in Soul Man. Some would consider this offensive; I am NOT one of them. I think it\u2019s just silly. Also, this whole PC thing has gotten out of hand.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The usual elements are all present and accounted for in You Only Live Twice<\/strong> from the cool gadgets to John Barry’s classic score. The theme song by Nancy Sinatra is terrific. Bond still manages to sleep with almost every female character, some of whom are lethal and all of whom are gorgeous. He still likes his vodka martinis “shaken not stirred” although he\u2019s not above drinking sake<\/em> as long as it\u2019s served at room temperature. Connery is the quintessential James Bond. No, let me rephrase, he IS James Bond. Sadly, he would (temporarily) leave the series after this outing. I\u2019ll talk about that more in my next review, On Her Majesty\u2019s Secret Service.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The plot of You Only Live Twice<\/strong> is like something out of a spy comic book. Gilbert keeps things moving fast with a plot that reveals itself in its own time. The script, by Roald Dahl (YES, that Roald Dahl!), is smart and well-written. It\u2019s one of the best of the early Bond films.\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You Only Live Twice (1967)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 United Artists\/Action-Adventure\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 117 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No MPAA Rating (mild language, violence, some sexual content)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Lewis Gilbert\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Roald Dahl\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: John Barry\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Freddie Young\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: June 13, 1967 (US & UK)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Sean Connery, Akiko Wakabayashi, Tetsuro Tamba, Mie Hama, Teru Shimada, Karin Dor, Lois Maxwell, Desmond […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5698,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-james-bond-movies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/You-Only-Live-Twice-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3460"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5699,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3460\/revisions\/5699"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}