Movie 7: Dr. No

Dr. No (1962) by Terence Young
starring Sean Connery & Ursula Andress

In a nutshell: Very dated, but still fun

Content: I had never seen a James Bond movie that did not star either Pierce Brosnan or Daniel Craig, so what better place to start than the beginning? I also wanted to be able to put Casino Royale in context. I really didn't have a good feel for what "Bond" traditionally felt like because Brosnan was all I knew.

Watching Dr. No was fun despite its many flaws. The acting is poor in places, as are the producion values. Most of the action scenes, except for the final one, look like something out of TV Land. That being said, this is still the movie that started a franchise that is now over 20 films deep, so it must have done something right. As it turns out, it does many things right. It is fun watching Connery being a superspy, always one step ahead. Dr. No is an interesting villain, although his motives are generally unclear. Ursula Andress was as gorgeous as advertised and I also enjoyed the scenes with M and Moneypenny.

Try as I might, I could not take the fact that it is James Bond out of the equation and judge this film purely on its own merits. I just couldn't imagine that the protagonist was anyone but Bond, which would have allowed me to more fairly review the movie. But James Bond has an aura in invincibility around him that makes you want to love his films. It's fun watching him seduce 3 different women in less than 2 hours and travel to exotic locales (Jamaica, in this instance) to defend the world from madmen.

The first instances of "Bond logic" turn up, although from what I understand, they are far worse in some later films. For instance Quarrel is killed by a fire-breathing tank of some sort from which he makes absolutely no effort to run even though it is moving towards him at a fairly slow rate, spurting flames. Another instance is when Bond's cell just happens to have a large grate that is big enough to crawl through that leads to safety. Furthermore, when he is in the duct after crawling through the grate, water comes roaring through, engulfing him as he clings for dear life. After the water passes, he continues to the end of the duct, where he lets himself out through another grate, through which the water should have exited. Of course, there is no sign of the water, which was just there to provide us with an action sequence. My last example of "bond logic" is when he and Ursula are being decontaminated by being sprayed with foam and brushed down everywhere except their exposed faces. Fine...I'll let it go. You just have to let these things go when you are dealing with Bond, but at least you know it going in.

The film has so many flaws, I almost think that it could be considered a guilty pleasure. Given my complaints, you might have a difficult time believing that I still liked the movie a lot, but I did. And I hear the next few actually get better, so I look forward to watching them. From Russia With Love and Goldfinger will be reviewed fairly soon.

I will hold off on commenting on how the old Bond movies realate to Casino Royale until I have seen a few more of them, but I think that I am already getting a good idea of what an accomplishment Casino Royale actually is.

I also have this week off, so I will be getting to at least some of those movies from last week that I have been planning on reviewing.

Rolling Rankings:
1. Sideways (#1)

2. Napoleon Dynamite (#5)

3. Raising Arizona (#2)

4. Grave of the Fireflies (#4)

5. Dr. No (#7)

6. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (#3)

7. Heist (#6)