As can be expected of any high budget action film franchise, the James Bond movies are jam-packed with memorable set pieces. After all, there have been 25 of these movies by this point, how could there not be a slew of iconic James Bond action sequences? It’s interesting to see how, throughout over 60 years, those sequences have changed. There are certain elements that remain the same, but on the whole, they’ve grown more elaborate and bombastic; and, yet oftentimes it’s the smaller, more intimate brawls that stand out. Just missing the cut in our top 10 was Bond and Camile Montes storming Dominic Greene’s compound in Quantum of Solace and the fight aboard the submarine in The World is Not Enough.
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Missing the cut by a country mile? Stuff like the use of “California Girls” by The Beach Boys in A View to a Kill‘s opening ski chase, the chases involving the insufferable J.W. Pepper in Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun, Bond defusing a bomb in a circus while dressed as a clown in Octopussy, and everything in Die Another Day. Without further ado, the best 007 action sequences. These range from fist fights to tank chases and from Connery to Craig.
From Russia with Love: James Bond vs. Grant Aboard the Train
Over a decade before he was playing Quint in Jaws, Robert Shaw was the second cinematic Bond villain in From Russia with Love. Shaw played Donald Grant, a SPECTRE assassin who essentially serves as James’ more sinister equal.
Grant spends much of the film actually protecting Bond, that is until the latter can steal the Lektor, a cryptography device. After he does so, Grant follows them onto the Orient Express, picks off a few of Bond’s allies, drugs his companion Tatiana Romanova, and poses as Nash, a British agent with whom Bond was supposed to meet. Too bad for Grant, Bond is on to him, and the two get into a brutal fist fight that ultimately ends with Grant dead and both Bond and Romanova slinking away from the train in the dead of night.
Thunderball: Underwater Speargun Battle
Connery’s Bond wasn’t always speeding after bad guys with his souped-up, decked-out car…sometimes he was underwater participating in a massive speargun battle. The climactic fight between the villainous Largo’s Disco Volante crew and the US Coast Guard and US Navy is as “epic” a fight as there could be in a ’60s movies not featuring Godzilla, standing in stark contrast to what was seen during the Bond vs. Grant fight in From Russia with Love.
The concept of having a full-on battle was continued in the following film, You Only Live Twice. And, while Blofeld’s volcano lair made for an interesting setting, there’s just something about being able to make an underwater battle work, given the fact all involved are slow-moving men in scuba gear.
The Spy Who Loved Me: James Bond vs. Jaws
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Deemed by most Bond fans the apex of Roger Moore’s seven movie run, The Spy Who Love Me is loaded with memorable set pieces, both bombastic and restrained. 007’s fight with Richard Kiel’s Jaws falls somewhere towards the middle of that scope spectrum.
On one hand, it’s just two individuals duking it out to the death. On the other, one of those individuals is seven feet tall and has steel teeth. Jaws felt like a legitimate threat in The Spy Who Loved Me…not so much in the goofy Moonraker.
For Your Eyes Only: Ascending St. Cyril
If there’s a Bond movie that is underrated to this day, it’s the Roger Moore-led For Your Eyes Only. From the title song to the climax, the vast majority of it works.
Speaking of the climax, the entire St Cyril mountaintop monastery set piece works. For the acrophobic out there, it’s practically unbearable. Were the audience to not be aware of what a James Bond movie is and watched it, the man would seem truly in danger. It was filmed at the Monastery of the Holy Trinity, which is sitting on top of a pillar about a quarter mile high. This set piece has several people, Bond adversaries and Bond allies alike, fall down that quarter mile.
GoldenEye: The Tank Chase
It may be a little bulkier than his iconic Aston Martin, but Bond made great use of a T-55 Soviet-Russian battle tank in GoldenEye. The first and by far the best Pierce Brosnan Bond movie, GoldenEye probably has the most consistently great set pieces of the entire franchise. Bond’s infiltration of the Soviet chemical weapons facility that culminates in the seeming execution of a fellow agent kicks things off well, but it only gets more exciting from there.
Once the thought-dead fellow agent comes back, Bond and Natalya Simonova are strapped into a helicopter with a missile en route. It’s a tense scene (as is the later train sequence) and were there not a chase through St. Peterburg featuring Bond in a tank with a smile on his face, that one would win.
Tomorrow Never Dies: Opening Scene
Pierce Brosnan, who has endorsed Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the next 007, experienced a case of severely diminishing returns in his four adventures. But at least his second film, Tomorrow Never Dies, can be entertaining in spots.
One of those is the very beginning, when Bond is sent to gather intelligence on a Russian terrorist arms bazaar. After providing some details, the Royal Navy fires a missile at the location…just before Bond recognizes that two of the torpedoes at the bazaar are nuclear. The agent shoots a bunch of arms dealers, hops onto the jet carrying the torpedoes, and flies it out of range of the Royal Navy’s missile in just the nick of time.
Casino Royale: The Parkour Chase
Among the great Bond villains is Mads Mikkelsen’s Le Chiffre, but he’s not involved in Casino Royale‘s best set piece. In fact, he’s hardly involved in any of the film’s set pieces. But that’s not to say Daniel Craig’s amazing first Bond flick doesn’t have enough hair-raising, fist-pumping sequences to keep it entertaining.
The film kicks off with an enthralling black-and-white sequence with Bond getting his “licence to kill,” and were it not for the death-defying parkour sequence that immediately follows it, that chunk of minutes would warrant a spot on this list. But the Madagascar-based sequence with real-life freerunner Sรฉbastien Foucan takes the jaw-dropping cake. For one, it perpetually makes you want to grip your seat and, two, it was something entirely new for the Bond franchise, which could not have been easy to think of after 20 movies.
Skyfall: Istanbul Train Sequence
The five-film Craig era resulted in two masterpieces, and Skyfall is the second. A box office juggernaut for a reason (which in hindsight was incredibly impressive given just how poorly Quantum of Solace was received), it’s an A+ blockbuster but also stands as perhaps the most intimate Bond film to date.
For the most part, it’s all Javier Bardem’s Raoul Silva vs. Judi Dench’s M, with Bond standing in the way. But, before Silva gets involved in the plot, there’s Bond chasing a mercenary in Istanbul. A train is involved, but it’s not quite From Russia with Love territory. If anything, it’s closer to the first Mission: Impossible film’s climax, with a speeding train and two men risking their lives atop it. It was a great way to get the audience excited before the opening credits, but it’s only topped once Moneypenny accidentally shoots Bond, who tumbles into a river. It’s then topped again, when Adele’s title tune starts playing. A phenomenal opening to a phenomenal film that was actually matched in the following film…but just in terms of the impact of its opening scene.
Spectre: Opening Scene
As a whole, Spectre is not one of the more effective Bond movies. Not even the casting of Christoph Waltz as the IP’s big bad really paid off. But those first eight minutes in Mexico City are dynamite.
Kicking off with a four-minute tracking shot, it’s an incredibly choreographed sequence, ultimately wrapping up with a helicopter spinning out over a litany of terrified Day of the Dead festivalgoers. Like with director Sam Mendes’ first 007 film, the aforementioned Skyfall, it again shows how the director was able to take Bond action sequences and make them feel just a bit more realistic.
No Time to Die: Escaping Logan Ash
After Craig made his thoughts on playing Bond again very clear after the release of Spectre, it seemed he was going to be going off on a low note. But then one final Craig 007 adventure was announced, and when the title No Time to Die was announced, fans started to wonder if the franchise was going to do something it hadn’t done for 24 movies: kill James Bond.
They did, and the whole final fight is memorable. But State Department (double) agent Logan Ash and his goons chasing Bond through the woods is better. From the shot of Ash shooting through the windshield to Bond’s crushing the traitor beneath his own car, it all works.