Being from Edinburgh, Scotland, being a regular attendee of the EIFF whose patron has long been Sean Connery and living approximately half a mile from his birthplace (we also went to the same primary school, 40 or so year apart admittedly) it's difficult to avoid the man and his at times uncomfortable influence on Scottish film culture, such as it is. (When I hear the word culture I reach for my...)
Without Bond, Connery would likely be little more than a footnote: Hell Drivers is a great film in its own way, but it's also more a Cy Endfield and Stanley Baker film, while the less said of Darby O'Gill and the Little People the better...
Bond made Connery an international star: Marnie, The Hill, The Molly Maguires, The Offence, The Man Who Would Be King, and other great films ensued.
Plus Outland (High Noon in space, how original), The Rock and just as many, if not more, not so great ones...
All this is a long preamble to wondering what Sir S. thinks about OK Connery AKA Operation Kid Brother, starring his younger brother Neil alongside Adolfo Celi, Lois Maxwell and Bernard Lee from the Bond films. (Moral of the story here: Sign all your cast to contracts which prohibit them from appearing in pastiches, parodies and passing-offs; put them into bondage...)
Superior to Casino Royale - and I say this as a Val Guest fan - it's the XXX of its time, with tongue firmly in cheek.
Dr Neil Connery, a plastic surgeon, is recruited by the British secret service after his more famous brother, 00X, proves unavailable, the final digit presumably being unmentionable for legal reasons.
All sorts of weird stuff happens thereafter, which I won't pretend to understand or to have fully taken in.
This doesn't matter, however, as it's all a Mcguffin. (Hitchcock was annoyed at the way Dr No / Bond drew upon North by Northwest, but since he didn't introduce a franchisable character that's his failing.)
Neil Connery can't act, but so what?
What matters is that his presence - or rather his associations - keep things moving and the results are a lot of fun...
OK Connery = OK bullshit in French, after all...
2 comments:
Where is the widescreen DVD release? Love this film. I bought the Ennio soundtrack.
I watched it via an AVI downloaded from Cinemageddon. A proper DVD would be very welcome though. Indeed I'm sometimes surprised that no company appears to have started a Eurospy collection.
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