Today is the day, my friends, the day we
begin what will undoubtedly be a long… sometimes joyful…
sometimes painful journey… that being a revisiting of every
James Bond 007 film ever made. It is possible that I've
seen these movies, but with the exception of the recent Daniel
Craig Bonds, it has been decades so I don't recall almost any
of them, including the more recent Pierce Brosnan ones.
But we are going to fix that starting with the one that
started it all… Dr. No. A movie that is a classic, but
because it is so old, it is almost funny as every spy movie
that follows has copied this one to some degree, almost making
it a parody of itself.
An MI6 agent, who clearly isn't a skilled as one James Bond,
finds himself taken out by three blind men in Jamaica.
Just so you know, these three fake blind men go to
extraordinary lengths to sell the world on their
blindness. Now since this cat is missing, we need
somebody to find him and also discover why they took him out
in the first place and if the Planet Earth needs a tough job
handled, then they call upon James Bond, agent 007 (Sean
Connery) who will save this Planet Earth. Right after he
finishes his card game. And has sex with that
woman. Now he's ready.
James makes port in Kingston and notices something is off
right off the bat with his driver, who will regret trying to
run game on James Bond. Then it's off to get to the
bottom of the what and why of what's going down.
After some more action and
shenanigans, James has learned that in a neighboring island
called Krab Key, there is this odd Chinese fellow only known
as Dr. No (Joseph Wiseman) and just the mention of his island
or his name strikes fear into all the citizens of the other
islands. The odd things is that
this Dr. No seems to be one step ahead of the
agency on most things, leading James Bond to suspect the sexy
secretary Miss Taro (Zena Marshall) which kind of makes sense
since she's a fake Asian just like Dr. No. How does one
discover if she is the one leaking sensitive
information? By having sex with of course! That
James… I tell you. James could've totally avoided that
sex thing to get what he needed, but that's crazy talk.
James knows that secret lies within Krab Key so he needs his
man Quarrels (John Kitzmiller), whose scared to death of Krab
Key due to the dragon… it's complicated… to help him
infiltrate. Here they also stumble upon Bond Girl #1,
she of the legendary white bikini… it's more beige to be
honest… in Honey Ryder as played by the legendary Ursula
Andress.
Eventually Dr. No will capture James and Honey… poor Quarrels
had issues with the dragon… and after introductions Dr. No
will painstakingly lay down his plan for world domination by
he and his organization of SPECTRE. I can't remember
exactly what SPECTRE stands for, but I do remember the words
Terrorism and Revenge are in there somewhere. I also
can't remember what Dr. No's plan is, at least not
completely. Something to do with rockets and NASA, but
Dr. No spent most of his time talking about how awesome he
was, more than the actual plan.
What Dr. No needs to do is shut up, kill Bond and Honey, just
like he did that other agent and his secretary, and make this
nefarious plan happen. He's totally not that going to do
that. It would've been real easy too. He's going
to regret that.
Let's take into consideration, before weighing into Dr. No,
that as of this writing this movie is 52 years old. It's
older than everybody I know except my parents. There are
people that are in this movie that died before I was even
born, and I'm not a young man, and most of the people that
were in this movie are no longer with is… notably the original
Steve McGarrett, Jack Lord. We miss you Jack. Just
my round-a-bout way to mention that this movie might be a
little bit dated.
Ah… dated, but still plenty awesome. There's almost
something magical, even fifty years later, in watching Sean
Connery cock an eyebrow, kick ass, bed the ladies, avoid
really convoluted and complex methods of death until
eventually saving the world with the clock ticking down to
triple zero. All of these elements are classic James
Bond with the emphasis being placed on watching our dynamic,
magnetic star work his way out of dire situations and into
soft beds, and less so about having a coherent story to
follow. I mean come on now, Dr. No's plan and his
roundabout way of executing his plan was plenty silly, but
then this would become a staple of the early Bond films, and
this is kind of what made them special. One thing is for
certain, watching Sean Connery work his magic, you can see why
so many fans feel that the character of Bond begins and ends
with this gentleman.
There are few things one could take offense with, still
recognizing this is a fifty year old movie, if we were the
critical type. The objectification of the female species
had been going on since the beginning of cinema, but James
Bond turned it into an art form. In future segments Bond
girls will have more to do than simply being on the receiving
end of some James Bond tough love, or simply be hot and
endangered, but that sure didn't begin with Dr. No. The
treatment of Quarrels might be construed as a little racist… I
mean James did tell this grown man, in the middle of a mission
on this dangerous island, to 'fetch his shoes'. I
would've told James to fetch his own damn shoes. Then I
would've bitch slapped him. Who the hell does he think I
am? We could also take offense at the white people
playing Asians, but heck… they still do that today. And
I'm still not completely sure what Dr. No's endgame was.
But that's just mindless prattle. It's Sean Connery
cocking eyebrows, kicking ass, knocking off the ladies and
saving the world for the very first time. And it was a
very good time. Let's see what's up with 'From Russia
with Love' in a couple of weeks.
