Buddy Blank said...
The only James Bond for me.
What other roles did I like? Tons of them... but Zardoz comes to mind.
I've been a fan of that movie since the mid seventies, when I ran the movie projector at night (and made popcorn) in a repertoire theater while finishing up school. Saw it over and over, and can recite line after line. Zardoz eventually developed a cult following, but as John Boorman described it, "the only movie to become a hit without ever being successful".
Of course, I knew Connery from his early Bond roles. Goldfinger came out just as I hit puberty and and the gold painted Shirley Eaton (as well as the leather clad Diana Rigg in the Avengers) shaped my sexuality for decades to come (pun). After seeing Goldfinger, I read all the Bond novels and saw the earlier two movies at a double feature. Even today, I view
From Russia with Love as being the most historically plausible cold war spy drama of all the would be spy movies of that era.
Red October and Last Crusade were also excellent performances and overall re-watchable and enjoyable movies, but
The Rock was probably the best action movie of his career. We recently watched Forester again, found it still enjoyable, but could have used further editing to improve the film's pacing. But as others have said, to most people, he will
always be remembered as James Bond.