a review of 007之女王密使

Not quite the misunderstood masterpiece I had been led to believe; if anything, the lower budget makes it look like several episodes of a hypothetical 007 TV series strung together rather than one of the post-Goldfinger Bond films. The casting of George Lazenby (who is likable in the role but markedly guileless compared to Connery) also sets off my "made for TV" alarms, although the presence of actual TV actress Diana Rigg feels all right; I wish her character had been maybe a bit more like Mrs. Peel from The Avengers, but we can't have everything. My main gripe with this movie is that Telly Savalas' take on Blofeld -- memorably played by the great Donald Pleasence as an ice-cold oddball with the good sense to leave the fighting to his henchmen -- feels more like a Batman villain-of-the-week than the austere mastermind of the preceding movies. I had a good time watching the movie, but I agree with the conventional wisdom that it feels off-brand compared to what came before and after.