Dr. No (1962)

    Well we did it. We all survived 2020, and now it's 2021. Now things probably won't be getting much better for a while now, but fitting for the fresh start of the new year the scratch off poster I'm using to structure this blog has led me to a survey of sorts of James Bond films; hitting a few of the highlights of bond over the years. Over the next few weeks I'll be covering Dr. No, Goldfinger, Diamonds are Forever, Live and Let Die, The Man With the Golden Gun, Moonraker, Octopussy, Licence to Kill, Goldeneye (for some reason labeled "The Golden Eye") and finally The World is Not Enough. It's worth reiterating that this poster only covers the 20th century so there will be nothing past 1999. So this week we'll start with the first Bond film: Dr. No

    My experiance with James Bond has been... spotty at best; I've only seen a smattering of them, From Russia With Love being a favorite. The first Bond film I saw was Die Another Day, when I was barely a teenager so let that set the tone for my knowledge and understanding of Bond. Naturally, being the developing elitest film snob that I was back then I wanted to go back and watch the rest of the series starting with the first. I don't think I made it through the first half of Dr. No before I lost interest. Not surprising for a young teen in the mid-late 00's to be sure, and since then I chalked it up to being an impatient little punk of a kid who needed a constant stream of action and adventure to stay invested. In hindsight I should have known better I was the same kid that happily sat through Star Trek The Motion Picture, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Dr. No, even by the standards of 60's cinema, is boring. 

    I can't imagine it's surprising to anyone that Dr. No has long since been surpassed by it's successors, but upon this rewatch it surprised me how little it had to offer to keep me compelled. At first I thought it was similar to my reaction to The Godfather, a movie so oft recreated and surpassed that it's been essentially rendered obsolete and even boring, but I don't think that is actually the case. Its not that Dr. No isn't cliched by this point. It follows all the Bond tropes and structure. There's the stylish opening credits, a scene that jumps straight into the action (at least action for a 60's movie) before Bond recieves a mission from "M" and gear from "Q", he flirts with Moneypenny a bit and takes off to an exotic location to follow a trail of clues leading to the insane super criminal and his hench people who are leveraging an advanced piece of technology to neferious ends. There are a few deviations, notably the opening credits. While they are stylish they are bizarre. It starts off normal enough with the iconic Bond theme, and some stylish if primitive animation then just as you're getting into the groove of the theme it cuts to a drum piece of a completely different tone and tempo, but we got sillohettes of dancing women so that much is expected, but then we're thrown another curveball when the music changes AGAIN to a cover of "Three Blind Mice" and the sillohettes of three blind men walking. Umm what? If only the movie continued to be so surprising but that just preceedes into the opening action scene where the "three blind mice" assassinate a government official and his secretary. From that point forward the rest of the movie is exceedingly predictable with next to no deviation.

    Bond's been around a while and reasonably successful with little to no deviation from its structure and formula so the predictability can't be the problem. So what makes Dr. No stand out for me? It's not anything it does but the things it doesn't do. Like having intreague, characters, an active protagonist... the things that make any movie compelling. Sure, Bond is the charming ultra capable masculine power fantasy that he's famous for being, but he just stumbles around and all his leads attack him first. It gives one the impression that if Dr. No had just left Bond alone he would have just gotten drunk on the beach and had some mostly annoymous sex. There is little investigating to be done in favor of a few car chases and the obligatory tratorous Bond girl. He doesn't learn all that much either. For an early example of a genre centered on uncovering nefarious plots there is very little uncovered here. We know from M's briefing that theres somthing going on with US rockets getting "toppled", and aside from learning that the man behind it is named Dr. No (No surprise there), he's holed up on an island (the island that of course no one returns from), and that he's part of SPECTRE nothing else is uncovered. There is a mystery involving a "dragon", which turns out to be little more than an armored truck with a flamethrower, that offeres some intreauge it has little to no influence on the broader plot. The experiance overall feels like a lot of unsatisfying empty spectacle.

    The only explanation I can come up with for why this movie was at all praised and successful enough to warrent a lasting legacy is the power of the fantasy Bond represents. It's no secret he's a shell the presumably white, hetero, cismale audience can slot themselves into and imagine for an hour and a half that they are a sexy, ultra-capable, super clever and witty, super spy that gets everything handed to them with little effort. Thats just not a fantasy that I connect with so I need somthing else to keep me going... maybe if Sean Connery was hotter. Oh well. I have a lot of hope that the subsequent films in the franchise are more enjoyable. I've enjoyed most of the very few that I've seen (even Die Another Day), but then again I haven't seen ANY of the films we have ahead of us so we shall see.