James Coburn found elusive stardom and top billing with Our Man Flint and its sequel film In Like Flint. He becomes the American version of James Bond and has to reluctantly save the world.He only gets his heart into the assignment after someone tries to kill him. Up to that point he's been ducking the assignment until a poison dart is shot at him and strikes Lee J. Cobb, nearly doing Cobb in.Science has run amuck with a group of scientists getting together and creating a climate control device. Their demands on the governments of the world, lay down your arms and submit to our benevolent rule as we know best. They've even created an island paradise and on first glance it looks like a place Coburn could love. The only problem is he likes pleasures unregulated, no one will tell him when and how much.Flint is an American James Bond, unlike Bond who leaves his indulgences when duty calls, Flint has to be coaxed. Lee J. Cobb dislikes the coaxing and Flint's undisciplined ways. Cobb overacts outrageously with tongue firmly in cheek as Derek Flint's harassed superior.Coburn too shows a wry sense of humor in his portrayal. In fact joining in the furniture chewing is Edward Mulhare, the head bad guy who just doesn't like sharing his black book, his "pleasure giving female units" with Flint.Not as stylish as the James Bond series, but still lots of fun.

As the James Bond series debuted in the 1960s and had its great success, out came the imitators and the parodies, and "Our Man Flint" is a pretty good example of those particular genres. It's not quite good enough to really make it something special, but it's solid entertainment just the same, with enough laughs to sustain it for the duration.The movie does offer what could be considered quintessential James Coburn: the film star is every inch the dashing, charismatic hero, playing world renowned secret agent Derek Flint, who works for Z.O.W.I.E. (!); this stands for Zonal Organization World Intelligence Espionage. He's the only man who can possibly save the world when the terrorist organization Galaxy starts manipulating its weather. He's a little too self interested to give a hoot at first (You can't entirely blame him. He's surrounded by four gorgeous gal pals.), but soon realizes he must get involved.As directed by Daniel Mann, this movie does have just the right tone. It's frequently funny and thus easy to watch. It's very colourful and well designed entertainment, extremely well shot in CinemaScope and accompanied by a peppy Jerry Goldsmith music score. It definitely could have used more action, though, and it moves a little slow before picking up its momentum for an exciting finish. Its scenery attractions are most effective, especially Gila Golan, a stunner of an actress who plays bad girl Gila. It's got cool gadgets, such as the lighter with over 80 functions. The supporting cast is great, from Lee J. Cobb as Flints' frustrated superior to Edward Mulhare as intimidating villain Malcolm Rodney to Benson Fong, Rhys Williams, and Peter Brocco as the trio of scientists running things. Audiences are also certain to get a chuckle out of the fact that one of the bad guys is named Hans Gruber, 22 years before Alan Rickman played a man by that name in the action classic "Die Hard".Overall, this is worth watching for any fan of espionage, adventure, and comedy. Coburn is just so much damn fun as Flint that he makes it impossible to resist. It was followed, predictably enough, by a sequel, "In Like Flint", and even a TV movie (with Ray Danton as Flint) a decade later.Seven out of 10.

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

This isn't the type of film I would normally seek out, but I've been on the lookout for it on the cable channels for a while now. Back in the early Sixties when I was in Scouting, our local troop regularly went to New York City on the Sunday at the beginning of Boy Scout Week. Our Scoutmaster had this thing for a movie and a show at Radio City Music Hall, and this is one of the films I recall from those excursions. (The others included "Days of Wine and Roses" and "Hatari" on separate trips). Amazingly, I was able to recall a few details about the flick before watching it once again today, like the reliance on scientific gizmos and the villainous plot having something to do with weather control. And the girls. You know, in hindsight, I have to wonder what our parent chaperons must have thought about our Scout leader's choice of entertainment, but the subject never came up afterward.Back then, I was too young to realize that the picture was a spoof of the James Bond and spy mystery genre. All you have to do to realize that now is catch the opening of the picture with Lee J. Cobb heading up ZOWIE and you've got it knocked right from the start. But still, this picture had some pretty clever stuff for fifty years ago, like the disappearing building and the roll away vault trap. And how about Flint's heart stop trick used effectively to outwit those Galaxy goons. The best sounding gimmick though was the electro-fragmentizer, man I have got to get me one of those.Anyway, this was my first look at James Coburn, who I hadn't come to appreciate until many years later in a variety of screen roles, mostly those multiple appearances in TV and movie Westerns. He makes for an unusually suave and sophisticated Bond clone, but when the script calls for cheesy, he's pure cheddar, and extra sharp at that.In hindsight, I'm surprised that none of the young ladies cast as part of Flint's entourage were celebrities of the day, including his nemesis Gila Golan. But hey, right there near the top of the credits was one of Charlie Chan's favorite sons, Benson Fong as Doc Schneider. That was another clever bit actually, giving him the name Schneider and calling Peter Brocco 'Wu'.Here's something I thought about during the picture as well - you could really have some fun with this concept as a director today. You substitute the weather control plot with one involving global warming, and you put Al Gore in the Malcolm Rodney role. Then when you have him do battle with the hero, he gets swooped up by a giant pro-American war eagle, who carries him off to the top of an active volcano and drops him in. The world is saved once more.Say here's something to think about - if there's no such thing as a Battle of the Bulge ribbon, how did Flint know what the phony award was supposed to represent?