A winning formula
The one that started the world’s most famous action movie series wasn’t even named after its hero, but the villain. Almost all of the James Bond trademarks were already there since day one – the opening “shot”, dancing silhouette intro, music, “Bond, James Bond”, loose women, casinos, Walther PPK, M, Moneypenny, Major Boothroyd a.k.a. Q (though not played by Desmond Llewelyn yet), licence to kill, dry vodka martini (stirred, but not really shaken yet), Caribbean setting, one-liners, gadgets, Felix Leiter, eccentric foreign villains, cheekily-named bimbos, baddies with mechanical appendages, secret bases that gets blown to bits in the end, and an over-elaborate plot to take over and/or destroy the world. The difference is that this Bond is more a spy than the one-man-army who kills by the dozen and outruns explosions that we’re more familiar with. He’s also more of an anti-hero who kills in cold blood and can be quite ungentlemanly with the ladies, all in the name of Queen and country.
The story’s about a mysterious force that’s disrupting test rocket launches in Cape Canaveral, and a British agent was about to pinpoint the source of the interference before he was assassinated. The movie feels like a spy procedural where field agents take extreme precautions even when doing rudimentary stuff such as checking into a hotel. But all that realism is shot to hell once Bond meets up with a particular girl with a particular name, wearing a particular swimwear on a particular somebody’s beach. The movie aged quite ok thanks to a more ruthless than usual portrayal of Bond, but anyone expecting action a la Casino Royale 2006 will be summarily bored.
James Bond was conceived by British Intelligence operative-turned-writer Ian Fleming, and Dr. No was based on Fleming’s novel of the same name. - BMF
Directed by Terence Young (From Russia With Love, Thunderball) and screenplay by Johanna Harwood (Call Me Bwana, From Russia With Love), Richard Maibaum (prolific Bond screenwriter), and Berkely Mather (Information Received, The Long Ships). Stars Sean Connery, Bernard Lee, Lois Maxwell, Joseph Wiseman, Jack Lord and Ursula Andress. Based on the novel by Ian Fleming. |
