ShangLuda Admirable film.

Iseerphia All that we are seeing on the screen is happening with real people, real action sequences in the background, forcing the eye to watch as if we were there.

Bessie Smyth Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Marva-nova Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

dwrcymru I first saw this in college, a treat from our tutors at the time. 50 years or more later I still enjoy the silliness and a great way to unwind. It's a movie made in the 60's, I was a teenager then and wanted his lifestyle, hahaha.

Bill Slocum Cool, grace, style, wit. James Bond got most of the action, but Derek Flint made a mark all his own, both as breakout role for star James Coburn and uniquely clever send-up of 007, who in 1966 was taking his first year off after knocking off four big hits in the four preceding years.So it is a shame to see "Flint" stumble as much as it does once it so smoothly establishes our hero and his basic situation in the first 40 minutes.The world is being held for ransom by scientists who want to establish a new order dedicated to peace and freedom - on their terms. Since their methods involve not only wholesale destruction but hiring homicidal British toffs and ex-Hitler Youth people, you don't question the world's unified response in sending against them the uniquely dangerous Mr. Flint, master of karate, fencing, and lighter with 82 different functions - 83 if you wish to light a cigar."Is there anything you don't know?" demands his perpetually unhappy ex-boss, Cramden (Lee J. Cobb, excellent as always)."A great many things, sir," Flint replies, managing to sound both humble and smug about it."Our Man Flint" has fun with our hero, playing up his capabilities to an enjoyably absurd degree. He's so amazingly super that he not only lives with four beautiful, eminently satisfied women, but draws a grateful smile when he sends one off with instructions to prepare some deer meat for his return. One shudders to imagine how a Robert Wagner (then) or Shia LaBeouf (now) would assay such a role. Coburn enjoys himself in a natural and unaffected way that draws you in, playing up both his zen cool and his zest for life. You know he's laughing at us laughing at him, and it works because it's Coburn, so unearthly he could have played Mr. Spock if not for his kilowatt grin.To me, the first 40 minutes of this movie is '60s nirvana. You get the build-up, the tension between Cramden and Flint (which is all one way as Flint seems only amused by his ex-boss's tantrums), and a couple of clever, ripping fight scenes. One ends with something you never see in movies of this kind - the hero stopping to save the life of a red-shirt nobody.But once the film leaves a strip club in Marseilles (where Flint recognizes the bouillabaisse served from taste as the same exact recipe left on an attempted-murder clue), the movie settles into the business of resolving a steady-moving but dullish plot. The global extortion plot takes center stage, and a humdrum quality settles into the movie. The villains' plot is certainly unusual, but both the excitement and humor of the movie's first third diminish severely as Flint goes through some fairly standard spy paces.Gila Golan is as sexy as any Bond girl in her red bikini, and Edward Mulhare squeezes all the sneering bravado he can from his underwritten chief-henchman role. Director Daniel Mann finds his moments with the help of Jerry Goldsmith's gamboling samba score, like when Flint climbs a ladder and faces down two assailants on a high-up catwalk in an uninterrupted shot. But too often he seems constricted by the level of what he had to film.Early on, scenes sparkle as we visit Flint's richly-appointed bachelor pad and a New York restaurant. By the time Flint is in the villains' secret lair, Mann flails about with static tracking shots of pinwheel "hypnosis" machines strung with Christmas-tree lights. Also many babes in bikinis, nice for a while but suggesting a "bread-and-circuses" approach to the whole endeavor by about the 20-minute mark."Our Man Flint" wins points for not taking itself seriously. But it treats this too often as a license to loaf. The end result leaves you with a great set-up with a fair-to-middling follow-through, and a main character who should have been more iconic than he was.SPOILER - Some people have criticized the ending of this film as a little too bloody-minded at the expense of some well-meaning if despotic idealists. I doubt the makers of the movie gave much thought to the matter in any way, but like gridoon2012's excellent review I was left wondering about the fate of the many brainwashed women who weren't lucky enough to be saved by Flint from their doomed island. It would leave more of a pall on a better film. Here you just skate past it, because the whole movie is like that, for better or worse. - SPOILER END

Woodyanders Super smooth freelance agent and dapper playboy millionaire Derek Flint (the always amiable and engaging James Coburn on top of his game) has to stop the nefarious criminal organization Galaxy from taking over the Earth through manipulating the weather. Director Daniel Mann, working from a hip and witty script by Hal Fimberg and Ben Starr, relates the eventful and hugely entertaining story at a snappy pace, maintains a winningly sly tongue-in-cheek tone throughout, and stages the fight scenes with genuine aplomb. Coburn's supremely cool, assured, and charismatic presence really keeps the picture humming throughout; he receives sturdy support from Lee J. Cobb as Flint's huffy boss Cramden, the gorgeous Gila Golan as lovely, yet lethal femme fatale Gila, Edward Mulhare as suave killer Malcom Rodney, and Benson Fong as evil scientist Dr. Schneider. The bevy of beautiful gals (Shelby Grant, Sigrid Valdis, Gianna Serra, and Helen Funai are all quite foxy and sexy as Flint's live-in distaff companions), Jerry Goldsmith's wonderfully lush and groovy swinging score, a neat array of funky gadgets (Flint's watch and lighter are both amazing), Daniel L. Fapp's vibrant widescreen cinematography, the sharp dialogue (favorite line: "An anti-American eagle; it's diabolical"), and the lively and exciting climax all further enhance the gloriously kitschy fun. A total blast.

rstone-13 Having read all the James Bond novels by Britain's Ian Fleming -- most of which were written in the 1950s long before the watershed 1960s era of sexual promiscuity, recreational drug use, proud individuality, rock and roll, anti-establishment protest, etc. -- I think that tracing the evolution of the original Bond to the outrageous Derek Flint in so few years might actually make a fascinating sociological Ph.D. thesis. In each of Fleming's novels, the 6', 170-lb. Bond was little more than a glorified policeman (as Dr. No so aptly described him) who used thought, skill, courage, and gritty determination to plausibly accomplish his mission and survive torture, all while falling for a single woman who usually died in the end. In his way, he was practically monogamous and faithful, in addition to being deadly serious. Fleming picked the name James Bond to connote a bland, rather unremarkable cog in the wheel of Her Majesty's Secret Service, albeit with a license to kill. The first Bond film, "Dr. No", remained fairly faithful to the novel, except that actor Sean Connery oozed an almost animalistic and sexual charisma which Fleming found inappropriate. By the second film, "To Russia With Love", Bond was becoming a swashbuckler capable of fighting off a dozen men in hand-to-hand combat without getting winded. In subsequent films over the next 40 years, Bond became more and more sexually promiscuous while performing increasingly implausible feats of daring-do, all while the plots and gadgets and bad guys became more and more outlandish. But in the mid-1960s, when "Our Man Flint" was released, the cinematic Bond was still largely grounded in reality, and his tongue was only occasionally in his cheek. Flint, on the other hand, wasn't so much a parody of Bond as the quintessential expression of what so many male, American Baby Boomers secretly wanted to be: adored by harems of gorgeous young women; multi-millionaires without having to work for it; quick, witty, and gifted with devastatingly high IQs; super-athletes and sportsmen; ultra-skilled in all forms of hand-to-hand combat without losing a fight or getting hurt; Renaissance men equally at home amid fine art, fine wine, eclectic music, sophisticated gadgets, Zen masters, foreign cultures, and powerful weapons. In other words, the comparatively "boring, nose-to-the-grindstone Bond" of the 1950s had, by the mid-1960s, become the "ultra-fantastic fantasy figure of Flint". One of the reasons Bond (in the novels) smoked so many cigarettes and didn't care, was that he was convinced he was going to be killed soon; his body was already covered with scars. Flint, on the other hand, seems to feel he's going to live forever in his prime -- exactly what many Baby Boomers wanted (and still want, in some cases). The Bond of the novels was a former naval commander and dedicated government agent almost 24/7; Flint is a playboy who probably contributes articles to "Playboy" and saves the world when it suits him because he unexpectedly has a few hours to kill. In many respects, Bond and Flint are opposites, just as the mid-1950s and mid-1960s were. Each character speaks volumes about the societies in which they first appeared. On a lighter note, I found "Our Man Flint" a hysterical hoot led by the outrageous, scenery-chewing James Coburn, and I recommend the movie to those who want to take a lighthearted look at the "pop Sixties" while chuckling and shaking their heads at the silliness.