"You Only Live Twice" 4K UHD Movie Review

You Only Live Twice

Director: Lewis Gilbert
Starring: Sean Connery, Akiko Wakabayashi, Donald Pleasence, Kari Dor, Mie Hama, Bernard Lee, Lois Maxwell, Desmond Llewelyn
Running Time: 1 hour, 57 minutes
Theatrical Release Date: June 13, 1967
4K Ultra HD 6-Film Release Date: June 10, 2025 (Amazon.com)

READER RATING:

Plot Summary

James Bond and the Japanese Secret Service must find and stop the true culprit of a series of space hijackings, before war is provoked between Russia and the United States. (from IMDB)

Film Review

Skipping ahead a year, You Only Live Twice finds Sean Connery's 007 heading to Japan for a secret mission after staging his death. Director Lewis Gilbert takes over the franchise for the first time (but won't return to directing another Bond film for 10 years), and does a decent job mixing the grounded with the absurd. For much of You Only Live Twice, while I kept feeling like I'd never seen this movie before - but knew I must have - I was thinking this was the best Connery entry yet. But sure enough, things start to get especially silly as the movie progresses. Again, it's not the kind of silliness that ruins the movie, but it does get pretty ridiculous by the time we get to the big climax inside Blofeld's volcano lair.

You Only Live Twice starts off pretty low key. Ignoring the fact that Bond's death is staged and then he's snuck onto an MI 6 submarine base in a body bag, a good chunk of You Only Live Twice feels like a spy thriller set in Japan. Even Bond taking on a pretty built Japanese thug in a penthouse feels relatively normal for the genre. It continues feeling pretty solid until his Japanese contact insists that Bond must learn to become Japanese (wait... why again, exactly?). He trains with the ninjas and takes a Japanese wife with an arranged marriage before locating the evil (or should I say "Dr. Evil) Blofeld's outlandish headquarters inside a volcano. It's a breath of fresh air to see 007 traipsing about Japan, but I suppose you can only keep a Bond movie feeling grounded for so long.

While the proceedings do devolve a bit into huge set pieces and an all-out war between super villain minions and Japanese ninjas, Gilbert keeps it all pretty entertaining from the word "go." As I've nitpicked before, director Terence Young seemed to struggle with pacing, which only worsened with the longer runtimes he played with, but Gilbert strikes a pretty good balance here. Still, that finale inside the volcano base is pretty "kitchen sink" -- it's like the Fort Knox showdown on steroids. You'll never accuse Gilbert as being subtle or holding back here. Bond's one-on-one fight with one of Blofeld's men even ends with the bad guy swimming with the fishes. (And not friendly ones.) It certainly all collectively feels like a "Bond movie," and you can take that for what it is.

You Only Live Twice
All the regular content you'd expect from a Connery Bond movie is here. Even with an indoor pond filled with piranha, most of the violence is bloodless, and the sexual content is kept surprisingly scaled back. He definitely still takes advantage of situations when he can, but it seems only slightly less gratuitous this time around. Language is infrequent, but there are several uses of "h*ll" and "d*mn" again.

Five down and only the 1971 offering of Diamonds are Forever left to go in this 4K UHD 6-movie set of the Connery 007 films. It's been fun revisiting these movies - even if this isn't my favorite era of the Bond franchise.

You Only Live Twice in 4K UHD: Like the first four movies, the 4K transfer for You Only Live Twice is crisp, vibrant, and really impressive. I'd even call it superb. Fans should not be disappointed.

- John DiBiase (reviewed: 6/17/25)

Parental Guide: Content Summary

Sex/Nudity: We see Bond in bed with a woman. He's without a shirt, but as she gets up out of the frame, we then see her with a robe wrapped around her; We see some silhouettes of topless women during opening titles, including the outlines of their nipples; Moneypenny asks Bond how the girl was and he says another 5 minutes and he would have found out; We see some sumo wrestlers wearing towels that show their bare butt cheeks; Four girls in lingerie help Bond out of his robe and proceed to wash him. They do the same for Tiger, too; Aki joins Bond, who is getting a massage, and kisses him. He picks her up and the scene fades out; Aki tells Bond she'll "very much enjoy serving under him;" He cuts the straps off a woman's dress and unzips it in the back. We see her bare back as he unzips, and the scene fades out; We see girls in bikinis style lingerie again (like before); Bond kisses Aki in her bedroom and climbs in her bed. We then see them sleeping next to each other fully clothed; We see Bond and Kissy kissing on a raft, and he makes a comment about having their honeymoon.

Vulgarity/Language: 3 "h*ll", 1 "d*mn"

Alcohol/Drugs: Bond and Henderson have a drink in his home; Bond pours himself a drink and drinks it; Bond has sake on a train; A woman pours a drink for Bond and the man he meets with.

Blood/Gore: Bond's bed flips up into the wall, trapping him inside. Men with machine guns rush in and shoot it up. The bed is then lowered and we see bullet holes in the wall and blood on the sheets under Bond; Bond stabs a man who was attacking him and we see a tiny bit of blood on his robe; We see Kissy in a bikini for an extended period of the movie.

Violence: During the opening credits, a man shoots at the screen and red comes down; A space ship swallows a little ship and cuts an astronaut's tether so he'll drift away in space and die (we just briefly see him floating after the snip); Bond's bed flips up into the wall, trapping him inside. Men with machine guns rush in and shoot it up. The bed is then lowered and we see bullet holes in the wall and blood on the sheets under Bond; Two sumo wrestling men fight in a ring; Bond takes a man's cane and smacks his leg with it to find out if it's fake; A man stops talking and Bond pulls him forward away from a wall to find a knife sticking out of his back; Bond chases after the attacker, grabs him and chokes him till he falls over; Bond and a big man fight. Bond hits him and the man flips Bond over onto the floor. Then he throws Bond through a paper wall. Bond picks up a couch and hits the man with it several times. They fight over a sword and the man swings it at Bond repeatedly. Bond hits him with another chair and then a statue, knocking him out; Guards shoot at Bond. He shoots back and hits one; The floor falls out from underneath Bond and he slides down a tunnel and lands on a chair; A man with a machine gun sitting in a car shoots at Bond while he's walking. He jumps in a car and a car chase ensues with the shooter continuing to shoot as they pursue them; A chinook with a large magnet picks up the car with the pursuers in it and drops it in the water. We see it quickly sink (presumably killing the men inside); A forklift rushes at Bond and then dock guys chase him. He shoots two of them. One falls off a high ledge; Bond shoots another guy, then punches one, and then another. He continues to fight guys as he runs across a rooftop. To get away, he jumps onto boxes below. And then does so again. He's then struck from behind and knocked out; A woman slaps Bond in the face while he's tied up to a chair; Bond uses a scalpel to cut off a woman's dress shoulder straps; A woman traps Bond inside a small plane and then jumps out. He breaks a board and levels out the plane. He crash lands and jumps out just before the plane explodes; Bond shoots flames out of his mini-copter, igniting a helicopter that was shooting at him and it crashes into a mountain in a fireball. He ejects little bombs out the back of his vehicle that hit another helicopter and blow it up. Others keep shooting at him. He shoots rockets and blows another helicopter up. Finally, he shoots more missiles that then blow up the last one; Blofeld drops a woman in a piranha pond and she screams and disappears under the water; We see a lot of ninjas training with swords and throwing stars and such; A cigarette gun explodes against a target; A man drips poison down a string. It get in a woman's mouth. She wakes up, struggles like she's suffocating and then dies. Bond shoots the man who is hiding in the ceiling and he falls to his death; We see more ninja training. Bond stabs a man who was attacking him and we see a tiny bit of blood on his robe; Bond blows open a cell lock. Guards rush into the cell and he and the prisoners fight them off; A helicopter shoots at Kissy swimming in the water; The good guys knock out the bad guy astronauts; Crater guns mow down some of the ninjas; Bond shoots a guy with a cigarette gun and the man collapses. Bond tries fighting but is stopped quickly; More ninjas get shot. One blows a hole in the volcano lair ceiling and more ninjas drop in. An explosion goes off and men fall. Ninjas shoot at bad guys and some fall off a bridge to their death. Kissy shoots a guy. We see more explosions from grenades. One guy is shown with several bullet holes in his clothing. A ninja runs around, cutting guys with a sword and then stabs a man; A man is shot and falls off a bridge. We see more explosions around the base; Blofeld points a gun at Bond and then shoots one of his own guys instead; Blofeld then goes to shoot Bond for real and a throwing star hits him in the wrist and he drops his gun; We see more explosions as well as a fire in the control room; More guys are shot and fall from a bridge; Bond shoots a bad guy; There's lots more shooting in the volcano lair and a guy falls to his death; Bond throws a grenade and two guys go flying from the explosion; Bond shoots a man who falls off a stairway. He hits a guy with throwing star and he falls off the stairway, too; Bond and a man have a fight, punching each other repeatedly. The fight ends when Bond knocks him into the piranha pool; A missile in space blows up; The volcano base self destructs and lava pours out of the mountain.

Disclaimer: All reviews are based solely on the opinions of the reviewer. Most reviews are rated on how the reviewer enjoyed the film overall, not exclusively on content. However, if the content really affects the reviewer's opinion and experience of the film, it will definitely affect the reviewer's overall rating.

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