The Sean Connery Collection, 2025.
Directed by Terence Young/Guy Hamilton/Lewis Gilbert.
Starring Sean Connery, Bernard Lee, Lois Maxwell, Desmond Llewelyn, Joseph Wiseman, Charles Gray, Donald Pleasance, Anthony Dawson, Putter Smith, Bruce Glover, Pedro Armendáriz, Adolfo Celi, Burt Kwouk, Jack Lord, Gert Fröbe, Harold Sakata, Honor Blackman, Lotte Lenya, Robert Shaw, Akiko Wakabayashi, Walter Gotell, Ursula Andress, Martine Beswick, Rik Van Nutter.
SYNOPSIS:
4K UHD Box set containing the six official Sean Connery James Bond movies.
There is a fallacy that when a movie is given a 4K UHD upgrade that it somehow becomes this ultra-clean, crystal clear image with no grain and a polished look akin to a video game. Whilst it could be argued that this might apply to some modern CGI-driven effects extravaganzas, with older movies it really means that the image is closer to the filmmaker’s original intent, free of artificial enhancements and showing off a more natural look, and if there is an example that best represents what a 4K UHD can do for a movie then this collection of six Sean Connery-led James Bond movies is surely it.
With the Bond franchise in something of a flux right now after the controversial conclusion to the Daniel Craig movies and long-time producers Eon selling creative control to Amazon (which has just tapped Denis Villeneuve to direct the next instalment), looking back at how it all began feels somewhat comforting and, for use of a better word, refreshing. Of course, this box set is going to be a must-buy for Bond obsessives with a 4K setup so a breakdown of each movie’s plot and technical specs feels like a redundant exercise, but looking back at these movies in relation to how the franchise has evolved over the years – especially since 2006, when Daniel Craig took on the role in Casino Royale, which served as a reboot for the character – is an interesting exercise in how to not only build a franchise, but to maintain it and keep it going in the face of changing attitudes and filmmaking techniques.
And most of the attitude of those early movies comes from Sean Connery who, over six decades since he first lit a cigarette and uttered the words “Bond… James Bond”, is still for many the quintessential Bond. From that iconic moment in 1962s Dr. No, Connery laid down the gauntlet for everyone else to pick up, the actor being relatively unknown and not of Hollywood stock or the British upper classes, relying on his natural charm, brutish manner and raw sexuality to portray Ian Fleming’s character.
Watching it through a 2025 lens, Dr. No has issues that can be put down to how things were done at the time – the obvious one being the casting of Canadian Joseph Wiseman as the titular Chinese/German villain, the actor having to have prosthetics applied to his eyes to give him an Asian appearance (it is worth noting that, in his autobiography, Christopher Lee claimed he was considered for the role of Dr. No, but thought himself too young at the time. Lee had played Chung King, the leader of a Hong Kong crime syndicate the previous year in The Terror of the Tongs for Hammer, and would go on to play Fu Manchu throughout the 1960s wearing similar makeup appliances to Wiseman).
There is also a big pacing issue after such a strong start, with Dr. No himself not being fully seen until 20 minutes before the end of the movie, but 90% of what Bond and the franchise would become is here – the guns, the beautiful women, exotic locations, M (Bernard Lee) being dismissive when he hands Bond his mission, Bond’s wit and, probably most importantly for the character, the sense of duty that drives him. Let us not forget, Bond is an assassin and the scene where he shoots crooked Professor Dent (Anthony Dawson, who would also provide the hands for Blofeld in From Russia With Love and Thunderball) in cold blood after the doctor uses up his six bullets still stands as the best moment in the movie, giving us an early insight into the character that Connery stamps as a defining moment in his tenure.
But Dr. No does not have everything we would come to associate with Bond, the most obvious missing element being Q (Desmond Llewelyn), but he does show up in From Russia With Love as we edge closer to getting the formula right. Whilst Dr. No was a little rough around the edges, From Russia With Love adds a level of class to its spy thriller plot as Bond has to retrieve a stolen Soviet encryption device from the shadowy SPECTRE criminal organisation. A direct follow-up to Dr. No – something that didn’t happen often in the Bond franchise until 2006 – this movie feels a lot older than its predecessor, its obvious Alfred Hitchcock influence giving it the feel of a 1950s film noir, albeit one with the roguish charm of Sean Connery to anchor it.
This is the one with the train fight against Red Grant (Robert Shaw) that many Bond movies since have tried to replicate but never equalled, and Connery looks a lot more confident as the world of Bond is opened up. The gadgets are realistic – a briefcase with a throwing knife and a gas cannister – the action exciting and one of the best supporting casts to bring Fleming’s vision to life, for as well as the aforementioned Robert Shaw – Bond’s enemies are always best when they are darker mirror images of himself – there is Lotte Lenya as the terrifying Rosa Klebb (complete with lethal footwear), Pedro Armendáriz as Bond’s Turkish contact Kerim Bey and an appearance from Walter Gotell, who would go on to play the Soviet leader General Gogol in later Bond movies but here he plays a SPECTRE middle manager called Morzeny – perhaps Gogol in an earlier career?
With the first two movies being Cold War spy thrillers, the increasing popularity of James Bond prompted the filmmakers to make the third movie a more defining statement, and they don’t come more defining or iconic than 1964s Goldfinger, the movie that became the template for everything that followed (again, until 2006). The formula was now complete as Bond stepped away from battling SPECTRE and turned his attention to Auric Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe), a gold magnate with a plan to contaminate the gold reserves held at Fort Knox, thus making the value of his own stock increase. He also has a chauffeur in the shape of Oddjob (Harold Sakata), a Korean mute with super-strength and a hat that will literally take your head off, and thus begins the tradition of the henchman who is a bigger threat than the main villain.
Featuring every iconic scene and gadget that you have seen spoofed and homaged over the years – painting a woman gold to kill her, the Aston Martin DB5 with the ejector seat and machine gun headlights, the villain explaining his entire plan to Bond before setting up an elaborate way to kill him, Bond forcing himself on Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman) in another example of things that wouldn’t fly nowadays – Goldfinger still stands as Connery’s peak moment as Bond. He looks amazing, his chemistry with Honor Blackman is electric and his interactions with M, Q and Miss Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell) feel more natural, the rapport between them all established. For their part, Gert Fröbe and Harold Sakata make for deadly but also fun – for use of a better word – villains, introducing the idea of the chief baddie and his goon that the later Roger Moore movies would take and run with.
The lighter tone and slick production brought in more punters as James Bond fever went through the roof, and so EoN capitalised on this by rushing Thunderball into production, and this is where things started to change, for everybody. The history of this movie and how it came to be is well documented elsewhere and would take up several volumes to go through all the details, so let’s just say that this was the point where the ugly side of copyright and IP law came into effect as Ian Fleming wrote the novel of Thunderball after using ideas contributed by Kevin McClory, the result being that McClory got a producer’s credit and EoN head honchos Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman were relegated to executive producers. That wasn’t the end of it, though, as years of legal battles and challenges came and went, resulting in Thunderball being remade by McClory as Never Say Never Again in 1983 (starring Sean Connery) and EoN not being able to use SPECTRE as an entity until the movie of the same name in 2015.
Nevertheless, we have Thunderball and despite being the biggest earning Bond movie of Sean Connery’s run, that was really off the back of Goldfinger being so good rather than the quality of this movie, as despite being a bigger adventure, it really is a bit of a mess and a chore to sit through. Connery was well aware of his movie star fame and only granted one press interview during production, his frustrations leaking out in his performance as in some scenes he doesn’t feel as invested as he had been previously.
The filmmakers had figured out how to shoot underwater with spectacular results, and so a quarter of the movie takes place underwater, which looks good for fights but doesn’t really help push the story forward any more, the end result making the movie drag for a lot of its 130-minute running time. Main villain Largo (Adolfo Celi) is a bit of a letdown as he doesn’t really do much apart from bark orders at faceless goons for most of his screentime, which is no fault of the actor and more of a writing issue, but Largo just does not have any endearing qualities about him or as much depth as Goldfinger or Dr. No, his eyepatch being the most memorable thing about him. Still, at least we got to see Sean Connery visibly crap himself as he came face to face with a shark, as the crew had left a gap in the Perspex that separated the actor from the fish without telling him.
By the time You Only Live Twice came around in 1967, things had changed drastically, not only in the world of Bond but in the general zeitgeist. After Goldfinger cemented 007 in pop culture and Thunderball proved to be a huge box office success, Sean Connery had become a major star and was getting mobbed by fans everywhere he went, and so he announced that the upcoming Bond adventure would be his last.
Returning to the lighter tone and faster-paced action of Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice sees Bond in Japan and closing in on SPECTRE head honcho Blofeld, here played by British acting legend Donald Pleasence, who is hiding out in his hollowed-out volcano base and hijacking Soviet and American space shuttles in order to start a war. To blend in, 6’ 2” hairy Scotsman Connery gets an unconvincing Asian makeover and takes a Japanese wife before leading a team of ninjas to overrun the base.
Yes, it is all a bit silly and this is probably the point in the series where you could say the goofy stuff started – although Oddjob and his hat were pushing it – but the focus here is on action and adventure rather than being a serious spy thriller. Connery looks tired and a little uninterested – certainly not the panther-like ball of energy he was in Dr. No – but he still has the charisma to pull it off without breaking a sweat, and when you have a cast that features Donald Pleasence, Charles Gray (his first appearance in the series, but certainly not his last) and the beautiful Akiko Wakabayashi there is a lot to enjoy. This is also the movie where Austin Powers got most of its jokes from so it does feel a bit overly familiar nowadays, even if you have never seen it before.
After taking a break so Australian model George Lazenby could have a go at filling his shoes in 1969s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Sean Connery was tempted back to the fold by a huge $1 million (say it in the voice and do the actions!) pay check, the highest for an actor for a single movie at that time (he did give it to charity).
That time was 1971 and the movie was Diamonds Are Forever, the supposed sequel to Lazenby’s adventure but apart from a brief fist-in-the-face to a few dodgy types during the pre-credit sequence as Bond searches for Blofeld, all connections to the previous movie are dropped and the movie serves as more of a loose follow-up to You Only Live Twice. Eon brought in writer Tom Mankiewicz to help shape the script alongside regular writer Richard Maibaum and the tone was noticeably different, with a huge dollop of camp added to spice up the formula.
This was most noticeable with the inclusion of Mr. Wint (Bruce Glover) and Mr. Kidd (Putter Smith), lethal assassins and gay lovers, which could be seen as progressive or it could be there for cheap laughs, depending on your mindset. Either way, Diamonds Are Forever saw Sean Connery a little podgier round the edges and he had visibly aged, but he was also more engaged than he had been in his previous outing and his wit shines through a lot more, making him more fun to be around. Charles Gray – who played Henderson, Bond’s contact in Japan, in You Only Live Twice – plays Blofeld, taking over from the more intense Telly Savalas by being less threatening, upping the campness and clearly having a ball being the big bad villain, and all the trademarks are there, tweaking the formula and setting up the tone for the decade ahead, allowing for Roger Moore to take over in 1973s Live & Let Die to continue the fun. Some may like it and some may hate it, but despite it being a million miles from the more grounded espionage stylings of From Russia With Love, Diamonds Are Forever is terrific entertainment and very easy watching.
So that’s the movies, but how do they look? Of course, they look fantastic because they were shot well to begin with. Digital enhancement, colour grading and noise reduction have all played a part in previous HD releases but for this set the focus seems to have been making them all look like ‘proper’ movies again, and whilst there aren’t any major effects spectacles like there are in the modern movies, the old-school charm and feel plays right into the 4K treatment. Background details like the stitching on M’s leather chair or office door are there, along with the creases in Bond’s suits, the polish of the Aston Martin and the trees and rocks of the exotic locations, and if you want some colours to pop, the explosions look fantastic – especially during the car chase in Goldfinger – and the neon lights of Tokyo and Las Vegas shine like they are really there in your lounge.
However, along with the positives that 4K brings comes the negative, that being that every composite shot looks blindingly obvious and, in the case of You Only Live Twice, a bit naff. A product of the times and there is nothing you can do about it, but the brief green screen shots don’t really hold up all that well. There are other moments where the visual quality is a little inconsistent, but that would be down to technical issues from the time – there are shots in From Russia With Love and Goldfinger where the focus goes very soft compared to the scenes around it – and it is only really noticeable if you are looking for it.
Audio-wise, the remixed Dolby Atmos soundtrack sounds great, with vehicle chase scenes being a little heavier on the bottom end and a nice balance between dialogue and action, although there are a few instances where it feels clipped, such as when Bond introduces himself to Tilly Masterson in Goldfinger and someone chopped almost half the line out, but the original Dolby 2.0 track is included if you prefer. The extras on each disc have been ported over from previous box sets, so you get the Patrick MacNee-narrated production documentaries, cast and crew audio commentaries, trailers, radio spots and various spotlight featurettes, but there is nothing new if you already have the Blu-rays.
Even after 60-plus years, the James Bond franchise is still ripe for discussion because everybody has their favourites and least favourites, and each movie will get a reaction out of audiences, not always for the right reasons. The Sean Connery era has always been seen as the ‘proper’ Bond because of the decade the movies came out in, and because Sean Connery was a tough act to follow, but despite a few niggles that wouldn’t be acceptable to mainstream audiences if these were being made today, the movies hold up incredibly well and still provide exciting entertainment.
From Russia With Love and Goldfinger are Connery’s finest moments as Bond, with Dr. No and Diamonds Are Forever being the flawed-but-fun adventures they always were. However, Thunderball and You Only Live Twice – despite having their standout moments – are the two that will bring the most criticism thanks to the former being overlong and sluggish, whilst the latter has probably lost a lot of its weight thanks to being mercilessly spoofed over the years. Still, Sean Connery’s hairpiece looked good throughout.
Naturally, the Roger Moore movies will be getting their own box set, as will Pierce Brosnan’s, with George Lazenby and Timothy Dalton’s either being packaged together or getting their own individual special editions, so for Bond connoisseurs these 4K UHD editions are going to be a must-own, but with the franchise heading into a relatively uncertain future they also serve as a reminder of just how good we had it, and it all began here.
SEE ALSO: The Magnetic Brilliance of Sean Connery
Flickering Myth Ratings
- Dr. No – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
- From Russia With Love – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
- Goldfinger – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
- Thunderball – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
- You Only Live Twice – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
- Diamonds Are Forever – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward
