My memory of this movie wasn't strong - I remembered too many underwater sequences, an overlong running time and a feeling that it was undeservedly popular off the back of Goldfinger's excellence - but it actually holds up very well. This is due in part to a very strong story - well, a very strong baddie plot anyway (regular Bond writer Richard Maibaum once said the key to Bond screenplays was figuring out the villain's caper).
SPECTRE are a highly impressive organisation here, with tentacles across the world, even if they don't have the best employee relations policy (Blofeld again kills several of his key unsuccessful employees, Largo knocks off a few as well too). They've put a lot of time and effort into their plan - getting a man to have surgery to impersonate an air force officer so they can steal a nuclear bomb and holding it for ransom. Indeed the only way Bond gets involved is via luck - he's recovering at a health resort where one of the baddies is having an operation. (I wonder if anyone's done fan fiction of Bond's adventures in Canada where he was supposed to go - I note how polite the head of the Canadian branch was about Bond not going there.)
The series was getting more extreme by now - well, it always was full on (Dr No was about knocking down rockets), but the stakes were getting bigger, the budgets more elaborate, the gags more frequent, Sean Connery's toupee less convincing.
This was also the first movie which felt like elements were being reheated - the precredit title sequence, British colony tropical island setting (Bahamas instead of Jamaica), an initial fake out where we're led to believe Felix Leiter might be a baddy, an ally who is killed, a black helper on the island (a surprisingly small role though).
Still, like I said, there's lots of good stuff going on. Adolfo Celi is a terrific antagonist - imposing with his eye patch, very hands on (he gets in there and leads the diving teams) and a pool full of sharks. Luciana Paluzzi is a spectacular villainess, all flowing red hair and sexiness, who'll sleep with Bond but not be converted to goodness by him (she gives Connery his two best moments - when she asks him to give her something to wear while in the bath, and when he says he didn't enjoy sleeping with her). I also enjoyed some of the second tier henchmen, like Guy Doleman's slimy Count Lippe and Phillip Locke's pure Vargas.
On the side of the goodies, Rik Van Nutter is another un-memorable Felix Leiter, but Claudine Auger is incredibly good looking and voluptuous as Domino (she is a more passive Bond heroine, rather like the one in From Russia with Love, not doing much non-sex-wise until killing a baddie at the end, but as in that one she's counterbalanced by a strong female villain. She and Bond have their first kiss/sex underwater which does seem a little strange.) I liked Martine Beswick too as the doomed Paula, Bond's assistant who kills herself with a cyanide pill while being tortured. There's Q, M and Moneypenny and a bunch of other agents at the beginning who are all given different jurisdictions (Bond is meant to go to Canada but manages to go to Nassau instead.)
The final underwater battle goes on too long, Bond's tight shorts are inadvertently amusing, its full of colour and movement.
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