On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)

I was spurred to revisit these older Bond films by a recent article claiming that Secret Service is now recognized as one of the best, which is not at all how I remember it. The film reflected a turn towards a more gritty and realistic James Bond, but is remembered largely for the disastrous choice to replace Sean Connery with Australian model George Lazenby.

It does feel extraordinarily modern, particularly in the editing (action shot with the fast cuts now de rigeur; an early fight scene is almost Bourne-like) and the attempts to give Bond's relationships emotional depth. Donald Pleasance's cartoonish Blofeld is replaced by a charismatic Telly Savalas.

One key failing is in its technical limitations. It is illustrative to look at a ridiculous late action sequence in a luge track, which intercuts gripping shots of stunt performers with reverse angles of Lazenby and Savalas gamely mugging it against a bluescreen. Another sequence has the same problem, cutting beautiful wide helicopter shots of cross-country skiers with laughable bluescreen medium shots. It's a strong example of filmmakers' reach very much exceeding their grasp in what the technology could do well. In some ways this is admirable: this is a film ahead of its time.

But the elephant in the room is Lazenby. I wonder if some of the positive attention is because of Americans' notable tin ear for accents, but it's certainly even harder to take ocker Aussie bond seriously than it was Scottish Connery. This might have been tolerable if his delivery weren't so wooden.

It's as though the modern Daniel Craig films had been produced as-is, with grit and emotion, but if instead of Daniel Craig they'd cast David Hasselhoff. He's a drag on every scene he's in -- which is almost all of them.