You Only Live Twice

007__#5__The attractive setting of exotic Japan and a beautiful central musical motif (“borrowed" by Robbie Williams in his successful hit “Millennium”), but the action sequences have already been somewhat dented by the ravages of time. Incorporating the element of ninjas that was so fashionable at the time (training in the Ninja Academy) doesn't really fit, especially since they don't show anything of their fighting skills in the decisive battle (just pew-pew from firearms). The main villain, the No.1 man of the Spectre organisation played by Donald Pleasence, who only appears in the last twenty minutes, is more of a caricature, and during the exaggerated final shootout with the storming of the command bridge, which seems to have fallen out of Bond's The Spy Who Loved Me, I realised how often James Bond films resemble each other. (02/10/2005)

Too many technical gimmicks and various improvements at the expense of plot density and genuine entertainment. The action in Japan may have benefited Bond, it truly feels fresh and unconventional, but they are trying something technically that doesn't work too well. The mass scenes, the megalomaniacal action with rockets, among others, it all feels cluttered and, with a distance of years, even laughable, and no matter what, Bond should have a timeless impact. Not just as a persona, but also in terms of themes and visual aesthetics. That is not the case here, not even by accident. (30/12/2013)

Here we go. Not even the Japanese could keep their women safe from this extremely invasive British agent and so it’s not rare in Japan to come across citizens speaking Japanese with a strong Scottish accent. The leap into the realm of sci-fi is more than obvious, and despite the plot being far-fetched beyond belief, the film does have a certain charm. (03/08/2016)

What definitely needs to be appreciated are the scenes in space, which definitely do not look bad. On the other hand, Bond is moving into a completely different genre and one has more of a feeling that it was not an artistic intention, but purely commercial, to keep people entertained. "Thunderball" was already a bit of the same. The beginning can really excite you because Bond dies here, but then you find out why he lives twice. Then you just wait to finally see Blofeld's face. Donald Pleasence was a great choice. However, Bond as a Japanese is a bit too much. (03/03/2014)

An amusing shoot-’em-up. Until it starts to get tiresome. The fact that this installment is in some ways the most iconic addition to the series doesn't speak well for it. Clearly the biggest disaster, in any case, is the script, cobbled together from deus ex machinas, afterthoughts, unnecessary situations, and ill-timed plot twists. This was Dahl's first work on a film script, and on top of that he sincerely hated Fleming's source material, feeling that it was essentially a tourist guide to Japan from which you couldn't even tell what Bond was up to. What isn’t much better is the villain, and that's right from the moment the little brooding imp shows his face. Suddenly, he's the hurt little guy from the head of the class who got beaten up by the boys and never got picked for teams. And his plan to take over the world doesn't work cinematically because he's working with the threat of a global conflict that will wipe out most of humanity in minutes, but it's demonstrated by adorable little Pac-Man satellites adorably eating other satellites. In the end, the best thing in the whole movie are the surprisingly aggressive and wild contact action scenes, that or the undeniable cringe element. And there's a lot of those morsels to choose from. Connery remade into a Japanese man must have really reaped worldwide acclaim, especially in Litoměřice. The scene in which he drags his Japanese beauty in a bathing suit thirty miles up a volcano to tell her to run thirty miles back down again and then swim to the mainland (!!!) for help while he goes off to fool around in captivity sort of sums up Bond in general. But my favorite sequence was the brief one where his pretend wife refuses to share the same bed with Agent 007, leaving him up all night because of the throbbing in his log. "Things I would do for England..." (08/07/2019)