Looking back sixty years and calling this film, the one which started one of Western cinema’s most celebrated franchises, bad is silly. What Broccoli and Saltzman accomplished with minimal studio backing and a shoestring budget was nothing short of astounding, and Sean Connery comes out swinging with a strong first turn as James Bond. The Jamaica setting suffuses this first film, in a series later stereotyped as being perhaps a little too steeped in European luxury, with earthy, Caribbean exoticism, and it’s a fitting place to start, given Ian Fleming’s love of the island, where he retreated each summer to pen the original novels.
Dr. No owes much to Alfred Hitchcock, to the extent that North By Northwest and Torn Curtain are essential viewing for any serious Bond fan looking deeper into the first five films in the series. Bond here is written more as a detective. His assignment, to investigate the death of a fellow agent leading to the uncovering of a plot of interfere with American rocketry for nefarious purposes is a classic Cold War thriller plot. The interaction at the MI 6 office lacks most of the characteristic charm of later outings and amounts to little more than Bond getting a new gun.
Where the movie shines is in the direction – Bond as portrayed is suave and cultured, an extension of director Terence Howard’s own personality and sensibilities, and a departure from the neurotic arch-reactionary Bulldog Drummond knock-off which Fleming wrote. Ursula Andress, likewise, is iconic in her first scene as Honey Ryder – though every scene where she actually acts after that electric introduction leaves something to be desired, and the ADR overdubbing of her voice by another actress is very obvious. Jack Lord portrays the first, and still the best Felix Leiter – in a movie where Bond is the king of cool, it’s only natural that his American brother—in-arms have that Kennedy-esque polish to him.
Overall, a great start, but very much the Bond series at an embryonic stage, unrecognizable to those accustomed to the style of the later films.
A great start to a legendary series
Looking back sixty years and calling this film, the one which started one of Western cinema’s most celebrated franchises, bad is silly. What Broccoli and Saltzman accomplished with minimal studio backing and a shoestring budget was nothing short of astounding, and Sean Connery comes out swinging with a strong first turn as James Bond. The Jamaica setting suffuses this first film, in a series later stereotyped as being perhaps a little too steeped in European luxury, with earthy, Caribbean exoticism, and it’s a fitting place to start, given Ian Fleming’s love of the island, where he retreated each summer to pen the original novels.
Dr. No owes much to Alfred Hitchcock, to the extent that North By Northwest and Torn Curtain are essential viewing for any serious Bond fan looking deeper into the first five films in the series. Bond here is written more as a detective. His assignment, to investigate the death of a fellow agent leading to the uncovering of a plot of interfere with American rocketry for nefarious purposes is a classic Cold War thriller plot. The interaction at the MI 6 office lacks most of the characteristic charm of later outings and amounts to little more than Bond getting a new gun.
Where the movie shines is in the direction – Bond as portrayed is suave and cultured, an extension of director Terence Howard’s own personality and sensibilities, and a departure from the neurotic arch-reactionary Bulldog Drummond knock-off which Fleming wrote. Ursula Andress, likewise, is iconic in her first scene as Honey Ryder – though every scene where she actually acts after that electric introduction leaves something to be desired, and the ADR overdubbing of her voice by another actress is very obvious. Jack Lord portrays the first, and still the best Felix Leiter – in a movie where Bond is the king of cool, it’s only natural that his American brother—in-arms have that Kennedy-esque polish to him.
Overall, a great start, but very much the Bond series at an embryonic stage, unrecognizable to those accustomed to the style of the later films.