Written by Mr. Mouseburger 9th Apr 2006
Kindly submitted by A Alcott
After murdering Bond's French contact, Nicole, Fatima Blush (deliciously played by Barbara Carerra) escapes the villa they rented, laughing maniacally. Bond suits up and gets on his motorcycle to continue the chase.
After driving for quite a while to some soothing jazz music, Bond is cornered in a tunnel where Fatima Blush expects him to drive into a truck where she yells "Come on!" several times and when he's finally in she lets out a triumphant "HA!" But of course, James Bond would never fall into such a trap, and he escapes.
Now, he is the one chasing Fatima and she drives into an abandoned warehouse of sorts and manages to corner Bond. Lecturing him on how women are superior to men, she tells him to spread his legs and that is where he will get the first shot! She then insists that she is the greatest lover that he has ever had in his life and she makes him write it down on a scrap piece of paper, in some form of final confession. In reality though, it gives Bond a chance to use the rocket pen, that Q branch (erm, I mean Algernon) has supplied him with.
Bond complies but reminds her "It's against company policy to write out endorsements!" and he fires the pen, but the rocket only pierces the skin and does not explode. Fatima, thinking Bond's been beaten starts cackling like a hyena, knowing she's won when the rocket starts again and Fatima explodes, blowing her to smithereens, leaving only her shoes behind.
This movie seemed very familiar, almost like a movie I saw once, certainly not like that novel based on a screenplay by Kevin McClory called Thunderball though.
Come on though, in my opinion, this movie beats out Thunderball the movie.
McClory's main purpose of this film was to be more faithful to the book (and steal the limelight from Fleming) which he just barely manages, still leaving out large plot points (IT'S NOT "JACK" PETACHI FOR GOD SAKES, IT'S "GIUSEPPE" PETACHI! AND IT'S FAST CARS AND PRETTY "GIRLS", NOT "CLOTHES"!) This movie would have improved tenfold if;
1. plot and character names were changed, we don't need two of the exact same plot done by a man with the same last name!
2. It was more of a traditional Bond film, not changing characters personalities but have a gunbarrel and dancing girls near the beginning
3. Replace Klaus Maria, Kim Basinger, and Bernie Casey's roles, the main villain sounded and acted like a major WUSS, Basinger was just bad, and Felix did not need to be black, not to be racist, because he was well acted, but to stay within canon, M can change (he is noticeably thinner here) but "M" is just a code-name, Felix is a running character!
4. I was going to say Connery, but since as it turns out Connery still looked young and healthy, despite being a bit chubbier at this point, I'd say it needed to be more like the book, Lippe a bigger part and the Petacchi guy needed to be more of a spoiled jerk type.
There were some good parts to the film, sadly, there was no Blush/Volpe character in the book and the ending to the book was inexcusably inconclusive, (I believe that I missed what happened to Largo, if anything) In conclusion I enjoyed Thunderball more, but this would have been a more acceptable inclusion in the Bond series if it was more loyal to the previous films.
p.s. Feel free to move this comment to "movie reviews"
does it count as "vanishing corpse"?
Well her corpse was blown into various bits, it didn't disappear or vaporize.
Should she really count as Baddy (Major)?
well yes she should.
I was thinking she was only a minion in Largo's plan.
As much as I love this death it's sooo contrived! Why would she want the letter anyway, it just gives him an excuse to use the pen but still it's a wonderful death!
I would call this an EXPLOSION rather than "combustion". The woman is more-or-less vaporized, leaving only burning bits and pieces around her smoking shoes.
But the pen doesn't explode on contact, it combusts first. I suppose it could be both though.
But it's not the combustion that actually killed her, it doesn't even cause damage.
I saw the scene many times in slowmotion.
The projectil that pierces her in the stomach is the first half of the pen containing a bursting charge. She looks at her injury feels only a little bit of blood and is sure that it would have no influence on her.
Then she starts cackling and laughing in victory feelings and wants to shoot Bond . But the pen has an acidfuze that starts a bit afterwards. Her belly comes in the picture and there is a small fire stuttering starting which then becomes bigger and KRAWOOM
Fatima blows up really good leaving only her smoking shoes at the floor.
It was her vanity and arrogance giving Bond the chance to use the pen that killed her finally. But there is still one open question to me. Has she realized that she will explode before it happens or not. In the moment before she blows up you can see
Bond turning on the side because he knows what will come. Fatima is standing there without any movement in the background. The scene would have been much better if her face and mimic had been shown before her gorgeous bursting in thousand pieces.
But nevertheless for me it is the best blowing up in movie history.
here is a link to a few caps of that scene
[www.moviebadgirls.com]
but it's too bad that Fatima Blush is kicked off the movie so early, it has lost all his punch after Fatima's death
False Alarm?They thought it didn't work at first at all, but then BAM!
False Alarm?
I don't understand,
It was her stupid vanity what gave Bond the chance to kill her.
Fatima was holding all the aces in her hand and then she blows up,
it's kind of funny
Fatima thought she was safe when the rocket only pierced her flesh at first, "False alarm", but then she blew up.
Yeah. That's what I mean by False Alarm.