The Best Sean Connery James Bond Movie (& the One With the Best Action Sequence) Was Released on This Day

The late Sean Connery was renowned for starring in a number of excellent films. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Rock, The Hunt for Red Octoberand The Untouchables (the only film for which he received an Academy Award). He also starred in cult hits like Zardoz, Outlandand Highlander and played major roles in the underrated Entrapment, Just Cause, The Presidio, The Name of the Roseand Dragonheart. Even when he was hamming it up in The Avengers (not the Marvel one), he was elevating his projects. But at the end of the day, he will always primarily be known as the very first man to play James Bondand there are many fans would argue he’s never been topped.

And today marks the anniversary of not one, but two Connery fronted 007 flicks. The first is Goldfingerthe third Bond movie, and the one considered the best by the majority of fans. That opened in September 1964 in the UK but was held until 12/22 for U.S. audiences. Then, a year later, Thunderball had a reverse release strategy, opening in the U.S. first before hitting UK cinemas a week later, on 12/29/1965.

What Makes Goldfinger So Special & What Makes Thunderball‘s Finale So Exciting?

Goldfinger is the best Bond movie because it was the one that established the formula. From Russia with Love is a wonderful spy movie, but it wasn’t the one that set in stone the franchise’s quickly paced flow and introduced Bond’s jokey rapport with Q as well as the tendency for the title tracks to be more boisterous (whereas Matt Monro’s song for Russia was more romantic in tone).

This was also where Bond started to get some really neat gadgets, as seen in his iconic Aston Martin DB5, the ultimate Bond car to this day. Not to mention, Goldfinger was when we started to get some quips out of 007. “Positively shocking.”

Lastly, this is when Connery was clearly comfortable in the role. He and Bond became so linked that it was hard to imagine anyone else taking over the role in the future. But, naturally, that had to happen at some point. Long story short, Goldfinger is the, well, gold standard for Bond movies. It has a few moments that are devastating (the deaths of Jill and Tilly Masterson), other moments that are funny (Bond’s golf game with Goldfinger), and just as many moments that make you grip your seat, e.g. Bond’s fight with Oddjob.

Many of the Bond movies end with a big gun battle. Not just Bond against an army, like it’s a Rambo movie, but rather a platoon of good guys going up against the big bad and his army (usually an army of mercenaries). In Tomorrow Never Diesthe Royal Navy boards Elliot Carver’s stealth ship. In You Only Live Twice, a school’s worth of ninjas storms Blofeld’s volcano compound. In Moonrakerthe United States military tasks a full company of space marines with assaulting Hugo Drax’s space station. You get the idea.

But Thunderball has the best of these big booming finales. And it really shouldn’t even work. Having everyone underwater, where they’re moving slower than they would if they’re running around on land? It should fall flat.

Bond infiltrates Emilio Largo’s yacht while Felix Leiter enlists the US Coast Guard and the US Navy to capture the warheads that Largo stole from Nato and with which he is now threatening the United States and United Kingdom. The US Navy’s divers and Largo’s divers clash just beneath the yacht, the Flying Discwith spearguns firing and oxygen tubes being cut left and right. There are even sea buggies, which are basically underwater jet skis equipped with spearguns of their own and, if that’s not enough, bombs.

Goldfinger may have been the first Bond to end with a group vs. group conflict (U.S. Army vs. Goldfinger’s henchmen at Fort Knox), but Thunderball showed that such a thing could feel fresh. There had been war movies before the Bond movies after all, but there had never been a war movie that had a bunch of divers blasting spears at one another for four minutes of well-choreographed intensity.

What is your favorite Sean Connery James Bond movie? Let us know in the comments.