On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)

On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)

starring George Lazenby, Diana Rigg, Telly Savalas

directed by Peter R. Hunt

142 minutes

James Bond (George Lazenby) rescues Tracy Di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg) from men whom he thinks are trying to harm her only to later learn that they are bodyguards supplied by Draco, her father. Tracy is a bit wild. Draco, who is also the head of a large crime family, thinks that what she needs is to get married. He suggests that James would make a good husband for her.

No Time to Die (2021)

starring Daniel Craig

directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga

The movie opens with flashback to Madeline Swann's (Lea Seydoux) youth. Someone came looking for her father. Her mother gets killed. The killer comes after her. She shoots him but he still keeps coming after her. He chases her out onto the ice of a frozen lake. She falls through the ice and is stuck under the ice.

James Bond is still with Madeline. She wants him to make peace with his memories of Vesper Lynd. He goes to Vesper's grave. An attempt is made on his life while he is at the grave. He thinks that Madeline knows something about it. She is keeping secrets from him. She insists that she had nothing to do with it. He doesn't believe her and puts her on a train. He says he never wants to have anything to with her again.

5 years later. James is living in Jamaica. He gets approached by MI-6 and the CIA, both of whom want him to track down Obruchev, a scientist who disappeared after an attack on a secret weapons lab in the UK. Bond refuses to help MI-6 but he winds up working with the Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) and a couple of other CIA agents. He is teamed up with CIA Agent Paloma (Ana de Armas).

Spectre (2015)

starring Daniel Craig

directed by Sam Mendes

The movie opens in Mexico City as James Bond (Craig) chases a man through the streets and then on to a helicopter. They fight as the helicopter flies above Mexico City. Bond takes the man's ring and then after a struggle throws first the man and then the pilot from the helicopter.

Bond gets reprimanded by M (Ralph Fiennes) when he returns to London. Bond tries to claim that he was there on vacation but M isn't buying it. He suspends Bond from active duty. Bond goes to see Q (Ben Whishaw) who injects him with a tracking device.

Bond is supposed to stay in London but he goes to Rome, to the funeral of the man whom he ejected from the helicopter. Lucia (Monica Belluci), the man's wife, expects to be killed by her dead husband's employer. Bond saves her from that and urges her to contact Felix Leiter.

Skyfall (2012)

starring Daniel Craig

directed by Sam Mendes

The movie opens with a chase through Istanbul involving motorcycles and then a train. James Bond is pursuing a man who stole a hard drive with names and pictures of undercover agents. The man gets away and Bond gets shot by one of his fellow agents who was ordered by M to try and take out the thief while he and Bond were fighting. Bond falls from the train into a river. His body isn't found and after a few months he is declared dead.

Bond returns to London, after the funeral. He meets with M (Judi Dench) and then later Q (Ben Whishaw), the quartermaster. He follows a lead to Shanghai. He finds the man who stole the hard drive but the man falls to his death before Bond can find out to whom he gave the drive. Bond follows a lead to a casino in Macao. There he meets Severine, a woman who warns him about the men watching her. They try to stop him from leaving but with some help from the same agent, who first helped and then shot him in Turkey, he escapes.

Quantum of Solace (2008)

starring Daniel Craig

directed by Marc Forster

The movie starts with a car chase, in Italy, very soon after the end of the previous James Bond movie. Bond is in one car being pursued by another car. The road is narrow. There is lots of traffic. The chase moves from paved roads to unpaved roads. They are in the mountains and there are lots of steep drops. Bond eventually evades those pursuing him. He meets up with M (Judy Dench) and some other MI-6 agents. He has Mr. White (Jesper Christensen) in the trunk of the car.

M and Bond try to interrogate Mr. White but it turns out that MI-6 has been infiltrated. Mitchell, M's bodyguard, turns out to be working for the same organization as Mr. White. Mitchell kills one of the other MI-6 agents and then takes off running. Bond goes after him which leads to a long chase through Sienna, Italy. The chase ends with Bond killing Mitchell.

Casino Royale (2006)

starring Daniel Craig

directed by Martin Campbell

James Bond (Craig) works a case that takes him to Madagascar, London, the Bahamas, Miami, Montenegro, and Venice. He spends a lot of time in a casino in Montenegro where he works with Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), another operative but one who is not licensed to kill or even familiar with it. It is at the casino that he meets Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright), a CIA operative, and crosses paths with Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen, a financier of international terror organizations.

My favorite scene in the movie is the chase scene that happens in Madagascar. It doesn't get any better than that. There are some other tense moments but the only other one that really stands out is the scene in the building that is collapsing. The first hour wasn't bad but the movie did seem to drag a bit once they got to the casino.

Becoming Bond (2017)

This is a movie about George Lazenby, who played the role of James Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. The movie is narrated by Lazenby. It begins with his early life before he got the role of James Bond. He was born and raised in Australia. He wasn't much of a student and didn't graduate from high school. He got a job repairing cars but moved on to become a car salesman at the same car dealership. He fell in love with Belinda, a woman he met at an embassy party, and ended up following her to England, where he found work selling cars once again.

Before too long he found work as a male model. He and Belinda lived together for a time but eventually she left him after he cheated on her. George continued to work as a model until an older woman urged him to go out for the role of James Bond. He had never been in a movie before. He had to trick his way in to see the man casting the movie. Everything went well until the movie was finished shooting. The studio tried pressuring him into signing a long-term contract. He didn't like the look of things so he didn't.

Instead he grew a beard and let his hair grow long. He showed up on TV shows like Johnny Carson looking very different than he did in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. He never made another Bond movie. He worked in real estate, got married, and did some acting. Becoming Bond ends with Lazenby explaining that he doesn't regret his choice to not sign the contract.

Lazenby's story is recreated visually as he relates it to the audience. There is very little footage of young Lazenby. Most of the story is told through recreations of stories that he relates.

My biggest problem with this movie is that it is entirely told from one perspective. The narrator is also the subject. Other people have written about Lazenby and have opinions of him (in particular in regards to his involvement in the James Bond movie) which can be found online. It would have been nice if some of that could have been found in this movie. I'm not sure what the exact definition of a documentary is but this doesn't feel like a documentary to me.

I like the way the story is broken up into chapters of varying lengths. All chapter titles are all riffs on the titles of James Bond movies or one-liners from the movies.

Chapter 1 You Only Live Once
Chapter 2 The Road to Pussy Galore
Chapter 3 Try Another Day
Chapter 4 For Her Eyes Only
Chapter 5 From Australia with Love
Chapter 6 The Guy Who Loved Me
Chapter 7 Single Oh Seven
Chapter 8 The Man with the Golden Tongue
Chapter 9 Unlicensed to Kill
Chapter 10 Tomorrow Sometimes Dies
Chapter 11 Shaken Not Deterred
Chapter 12 The World Is Never Enough
Chapter 13 Decisions Are Forever