Every Bond villain with a bomb seems to buy the model with the big, easy-to-read clock on the front. It’s a strange feature for a weapon. The countdown mostly helps the hero, and the hero usually gets there.
So we went through the readings. The rule: a clock, display or spoken countdown the audience can see or hear, counting down to something bad, that someone beats before it hits zero, whether by switching it off or blowing up the thing it’s counting down to. Each one is ranked by the time left at that moment, from the most breathing room down to the closest shave. No two readings tied. If they had, the tiebreak was who did it and how, and Bond doing it himself would have beaten Bond watching someone else do it. One finish is still under review, and a few clocks that ran all the way out were too good to lose, so they’re at the end.
7 Seconds: Practically a Lunch Break
3. Goldfinger’s Atomic Device, Goldfinger (1964)
The bomb in the Fort Knox vault is a silver cabinet with big white numbers on the front, and Bond, handcuffed to it, gets a long look at them. He gets loose, deals with Oddjob and pries the casing open, only to discover he has no idea how to disarm an atomic bomb. He’s still poking at the insides when a technician reaches past him and flips it off. The clock stops at 007, which is either the finest coincidence in film history or someone in the editing room having fun. The often-repeated story is that it was meant to stop at 003, which would explain why Bond’s follow-up quip still counts three more. A classic Bond save, and Bond’s contribution was moral support.
5 Seconds: Bond Hits the Button
2. Bird One, You Only Live Twice (1967)
The clock here counts down to interception, called out in minutes over the control room speakers while Blofeld’s rocket, Bird One, closes on an American capsule in orbit. One more swallowed capsule and the Pentagon is ready to give the codeword. Bond needs the exploder button in the control room and the key that works it, which hangs on the belt of Blofeld’s bodyguard, Hans. He gets the key, gets upstairs, fights with the case around the button and blows up Bird One with five seconds to spare. Blofeld had called the place impregnable when the countdown still said eight minutes. A ninja rocket proved him wrong before it said seven.
Under 5 Seconds: Nobody Breathe
1. Bond’s Bomb on the Opium Plane, The Living Daylights (1987)
This is the one bomb on the list that belongs to Bond. He sets a timer, hides it in an opium shipment headed out of a Soviet air base in Afghanistan, and plans to be somewhere else when it goes. Then he gets spotted, and the only way out is to fly the cargo plane himself, with the opium and the bomb still aboard. Kara takes the controls so he can go back and stop it. Necros, who jumped aboard at takeoff, would like a word first, and the two of them end up fighting on the cargo net hanging out of the open ramp while the timer keeps running. Bond climbs back in and stops it with two or three seconds left. The sources we checked disagree on which, and we won’t guess, but either number is the smallest on this list. Then he restarts it and drops it on the Soviet armored cars chasing Kamran Shah’s men across a bridge. The only bomb here that got a second assignment.
Disputed Finish
General Orlov’s Circus Bomb, Octopussy (1983)
The bomb is hidden in the cannon of Octopussy’s own circus, at a US air base in West Germany, and she has no idea. Bond spends the final minutes trying to convince a tent full of Americans that a man in full clown makeup is the most credible person present. Octopussy believes him, grabs a guard’s gun and shoots the lock off, and there’s the timer, nearly out. The general says to let him go, and Bond pulls the detonator. Several accounts say the display had already reached zero. Others say one second, or less than one. If it showed one, this takes first place. If it showed zero, it’s the strangest entry in the bonus round. Either way, the detonator was in Bond’s hand and not in the bomb, and that’s the reading the audience in the tent cared about.
Bonus Round: The Clocks That Ran Out
These clocks hit zero. Bond won anyway, which is the kind of technicality we respect.
The Submarine Missiles, The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
Bond fights his way into the Liparus control room, and the dying captain tells him the captured British and Soviet submarines will fire their missiles in four minutes. About ten seconds later, Commander Carter says three. That’s a minute gone in ten seconds, and it’s a known blooper in the film. Bond can’t stop the launch, so he reprograms the targets instead, and the two submarines fire on each other rather than on Moscow and New York. The clock hit zero right on schedule. Bond just changed the delivery addresses.
The Missile on the Arms Bazaar, Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
This countdown is one of the good guys’. A British warship fires a cruise missile at a terrorist arms bazaar, with a little over four minutes to impact. Then Bond spots nuclear torpedoes mounted on a jet parked in the middle of the target, and the abort call comes too late: the missile is out of range. The impact calls keep coming over the war room speakers, and Bond steals the jet and takes off when the call is thirty seconds. The countdown ran out. The nuclear part of it just wasn’t there anymore.
The Pipeline Bomb, The World Is Not Enough (1999)
A stolen nuclear bomb is riding an inspection rig down Elektra’s pipeline, and Bond and Christmas Jones chase it on a second rig. Christmas gets to the bomb and starts working on it, then finds that half the plutonium is missing. Bond tells her to jump clear and let it go. It goes, taking a section of pipe with it, and everyone assumes the two of them went with it. The rare countdown where Bond is the one who says don’t bother.
Time’s Up
Three clocks beaten, one photo finish, three that ran out, and one quiet technician who made it look easy. Bond beat two of the main three himself, including the one he started.