1962 - Dr. No
Alternate Title - Dr. No-thing To Do
PG - 110 minutes
Director - Terence Young
Stars - Sean Connery, Ursula Andress, Bernard Lee
The first official Bond movie. It opens with the signature Bond shooting at the camera but in this version Bond would have clearly missed the gunman because the gun goes off well before he has a decent shot. In all reality Bond would be dead before this movie even started. This transitions into a seizure-inducing opening credit sequences consisting of flashing polka dots which turn into dancing women. The very next scene is three hit-men pretending to be blind while the song “Three Blind Mice” plays.
Very early on Bond is treated like a bitch by M when he takes Bond’s gun away and forces him to use a different one. He mentions that Bond just spent 6 months in the hospital because his last gun jammed on him in a mission. So far he’s not seeming too bad-ass.
I’m not going to go into plot specifics because the plot isn’t that interesting for the most part. One thing I did notice is that the makers of Bond movies are obsessed with getting non-English speaking foreigners to fill major roles only to dub their lines into English. This plan worked well with the Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns because he actually shot his movies in Italy, but these movies were primarily shot in England so why not just find someone that speaks English already?
An hour and a half in, Bond finally meets the villain, Dr. No. He’s the most calm villain I’ve ever seen. He looks like a robot with a human head as he moves. His hands are literally metal and can crush shit like a trash compactor. When he speaks he barely opens his mouth and gives no facial expression. It reminded me of when people cut holes in pictures of people’s faces and talk through the hole.
Twenty minutes later and the movie is over and all Bond did to foil the villain’s plan was turn a “danger level” wheel to the right a few times. Unless you count the minutes he spent walking around awkwardly in a radiation suit pretending to be Chang, a guy he knocked out. In all seriousness, all Bond did was turn the wheel and punch a dude to get Dr. No to abandon his entire plan. Then he kicks Dr. No into the radiation water. End movie.
Overall it is a decent Bond movie. I know I didn’t speak much for the plot but for the budget they had and all the locations it required, they couldn’t really afford to do much with it. I don’t mind a simple storyline as long as it’s executed properly which this movie is. I have a real appreciation for 60’s movies and this one was ahead of its time. However I feel like if I was watching this on opening day in 1962, I would have said, “Beh, that was decent. I don’t see this becoming anything special.” I would have been wrong. I would have also been shot the next year in Dallas because if I were alive back in the 60’s I would have been Kennedy because I’m fucking awesome.