You Only Live Twice is the fifth James Bond movie where Bond is sent to Japan to prevent SPECTRE from starting World War Three and finally comes face to face with Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the leader of SPECTRE.
Plot (contains spoilers)
In the film’s opening sequence, we see two USA astronauts in space in the middle of a mission, one in the rocket and one tethered to it outside when a mysterious rocket turns up and engulfs the rocket, also severing the tethered line and killing the second astronaut. This sparks a diplomatic crisis between the USA and Russia, with America believing Russia is behind the actions to spark a new world war.
The UK acts as a neutral power in the middle and believes the rocket came from somewhere in Japan and tells the ambassadors their man in Hong Kong is about to investigate it. This man turns out to be Bond who is in the middle of a romantic liaison with a woman when she traps him and he is shot dead.
After the titles we see Bond’s funeral where he is dropped into the sea, being a naval commander officially and his death is all over the media with his obituary appearing in the newspapers. However it is pretty obvious from it being only the first five minutes that Bond can’t die this early into his own movie as divers pick him up where he is wearing scuba equipment. It turns out the assassination we saw at the beginning was a ruse to get SPECTRE of his trail.
Bond is then sent to Japan to investigate the missing rockets, with the help of the Japanese secret service. Once he arrives he is sent to a sumo tournament to meet Aki who is a female Japanese secret service agent. She then takes him to meet Dikko Henderson who is a local MI6 operative but when he is killed by a masked man, Bond kills the hitman and seeing his driver in their getaway car he takes his clothes and in disguise hides in the car.
The car takes him to Osato Chemicals where Bond steals some documents and escapes with Aki’s help who then takes him to see Tiger Tanaka, the equivalent to M for the Japanese Secret Service. They discover one of the documents is a photo of a ship called the Ning-Po and someone was murdered over taking the photo.
This piques Bond’s interest in Osato Chemicals so he returns as a prospective buyer and meets Mr. Osato and his secretary Helga Brandt. However both work for SPECTRE and though they don’t recognise Bond they realise he is a spy and try to have him killed again.
Again Aki helps him to escape and the two head to Kobe where the Ning-Po is docked to continue investigating it. There they are set on by henchman and try to escape but Bond is captured whilst Aki flees. He is taken to Brandt who interrogates and seduces him. She then flies him back to Tokyo but en route seals Bond in his seat and jumps out of the plane, although he manages to land and escape before the plane explodes.
Back with Tiger and Aki, they discover where the Ning-Po docked and Bond requests Q to come over with Little Nellie, an autogyro to investigate where it docked. As he flies over an inactive volcano however he is suddenly set upon by four helicopters confirming his suspicions of a secret base somewhere around there.
Meanwhile Russia launches a rocket which is also stolen in space, heightening tensions further. We also see the rocket return to the volcano which is actually a lair for Blofeld an we find out SPECTRE are stealing the rockets to instigate a war between the USA and Russia for an unknown third power.
Blofeld summons Mr. Osato and Brandt and tells them it was Bond they had in their capture. Osato blames Brandt for his escape so Blofeld feeds her to his piranhas by dropping her into their pool.
In Kyoto, Bond begins to train with Tiger’s ninja’s to investigate the island further and is told he must disguise himself as a Japanese man and marry a local woman who is another agent of Tiger’s and is an Ama diver. That night Aki is killed in her sleep by a SPECTRE agent sent to kill Bond.
Bond is then introduced to Kissy Suzuki and the two are married and return to the island. That night, Tiger informs Bond that the Americans have moved their next rocket launch forward to the next night. Bond and Kissy scout the island and find SPECTRE’s lair and so begins a race against time to prevent World War Three.
Thoughts
You Only Live Twice is a movie that overall I have mixed opinions about which makes it very hard to give it an overall rating. I feel some parts of the movie are done really well but other parts haven’t aged very well at all.
I’ll begin with the positives and I think this movie of all of Sean Connery’s Bond movies is the best paced. In comparison to Terence Young’s Bond movies which have a definite lag in the middle and even Goldfinger has a section where Bond is captured with quite a few dialogue scenes which slows the flow a little.
This movie is the first of three in the Bond series directed by Lewis Gilbert and it is a fast-paced movie which is efficiently told, with plenty of action sequences to keep the movie engaging.
Japan is also a gorgeous location and some of the landscape shots still look beautiful and retain their feeling of exoticism and mystique today. I also really like many of the Japanese characters in this movie, especially Aki who seems a very capable agent who helps Bond out of numerous situations in the first half of the movie which makes her death scene very impactful on the audience.
Also being the movie which finally introduces Blofeld in person, a character who has been a continuing recurrence in two of the previous four movies, the location of Japan and also his volcano lair is an attempt at creating an epic sense of scale and conclusion to this particular plot point.
I also need to mention the beautiful theme tune and title sequence. Sung by Nancy Sinatra this time, the song doesn’t go for the big brassy sound of Tom Jones and Shirley Bassey’s previous songs and instead adds a sultry exotic feel to the song with a much quieter vocal. It is also one of the few themes to cut through in popular culture, having many covers and of course Robbie Williams sampled the song for his track Millenium in 1998, which is a track I heard when I was younger years before watching this movie.
