Bill Clinton keeps on popping up saying nothing very enlightening in Steven Riley’s cleverly made tribute to the Bond movies, brought out just in time for the 50-year celebrations. He’s the least of this documentary’s pleasures, which is all the better for refusing to be a mere puff.
Its archive footage is chosen well, its interviews are honest and the whole has just the right mixture of humour and admiration. There’s George Lazenby frankly telling us that he was in it for the money and the girls, both of which he got in spades before being turfed out as an Aussie interloper who couldn’t really act.
There’s Roger Moore, UN children’s patron who is thoroughly ashamed of the scene where he chucks a small Thai boy into the water out of his own boat, and regards the 007 part of his career as a bit of an admittedly enriching joke. And there’s the depressive Ian Fleming finally smiling when Saltzman and Broccoli got it all together for the first time.
There are, however, no words from Sean Connery, the best of the Bonds, whose grudges about being paid less than he was worth would seem to last a lifetime.
No matter, Everything Or Nothing is well put together and doesn’t tell publicity half-truths. It shows what a hairy business it often was to fashion a series of world successes and how it could break as well as make careers.
Cert 12A, 98 mins
