It's not a perfect performance. Lazenby could do a capable British accent, but its Australian remnants may have sounded odd to some British and US viewers. And Lazenby could not reproduce the snooty tones required for his Hilary Bray impersonation; that had to be dubbed. (The final result is thankfully well enough done to contribute to the overall effect of Bond as, for once, a credible spy.) Lazenby also seems uncomfortable with a few of the Bondian one-liners, notably a lame piece of writing where he despatches a henchman into the blades of a snow-making machine and is then made to remark: "He had lots of guts". On the other hand, there's a charm about the one line of dialogue he appears to have contributed to himself, the new Bond's subversive pre-credit complaint direct to the audience: "This never happened to the other fella". The understatement in his acting might have been ahead of its time. Perhaps surrendering to the more critical reviews, even Lazenby claimed later that he couldn't, at the time, act. He shouldn't talk his work down. The same performance that was called flat and wooden in 1969 now comes across as unusually believable, subtle and well-suited to its script. As a first Bond outing it's pretty damn good. As a first film performance, it's remarkable. At one point Draco's requisite beautiful female assistant delivers the movie's best one-liner: "There are many things about Mr Bond one does not know. It would be interesting to attend night