Thunderball
Largo: I demand $100 million dollars. Bond: Ah shit, now what.
WHO IS JAMES BOND? For the purposes of Thunderball, this is the $64,000 question. Bond has undergone a personality change. For three movies he attacked his job with the same mischievious, adventurous spirit. There was a glint in his eye and a spring in his step. If he got pissy it was because some innocent person (usually a bird) was dragging him down while he was trying to do his job. Once the job was over, he went back to existing in what he considers man’s natural state: drinking, smoking and screwing on an indefinite timetable. But something has changed in Thunderball: Bond starts the movie grumpy and out of sorts, and never comes out of his mood. He can still charm the birds and he can still play Baccarat, but he doesn’t seem to get any joy out of it any more. In Dr. No, he postpones his trip to Jamaica to have sex with Sylvia the Lady Gambler; in Thunderball he interrupts his massaging of his nurse companion with a mink glove in order to go investigate a mysterious delivery in a spa. Work used to take a distant second to pleasure in Bond’s world, now it seems like he can’t pass up the women fast enough to get back to work, even inventing work if he has to to get the ladies off his back.