Dr. NO
What I have to say about Dr. NO is that it's disappointing as a start to the series. I don't think this was the best Bond film, and it certainly isn't my favorite, but it does have many things I can like about it. It also has many things I can dislike about it, and I think that my dislikes out weigh my likes. I don't have many complaints about this film, but I do have some really big ones that I got ranting about. It isn't the strongest start for the UA Bonds, but it did get an awful lot right.
Like most films from the time period, Dr. NO is extremely hard to get through because of the extremely slow pacing. People were much more patient back in the day and I personally had a really hard time watching this, in fact I didn't even get through it and I'm writing half of this review based off of memory. It takes basically half the movie for Ursula Andress to show up, and after that they just talk. This is a very dialogue heavy movie, and a good example of why film adaptations of books need to be changed.
For those of you who may not know, this is one of the Bond films that was adapted from a novel by Ian Fleming. James Bond was a popular book series before it was a popular film franchise and this is one of the most direct film adaptations (or so I've been told).
I actually haven't read any of the James Bond novels. I haven't seen all of the movies either, but my point is this is very obviously an adaptation of a book, and also a good guide on how to NOT adapt a book to film. I've already talked about this a bit in my A Once Crowded Sky review, but taking something and putting it into a different medium is very difficult because different types of mediums tell different types of stories. Books are a very wordy story telling system because they are 100% written text. A film is a very visual medium and trying to turn one into the other either makes an excessively padded book or a dialogue heavy movie. I wouldn't want to sit through either.
This works against this film so much because it seems like it should be a big action film, but most of the movie is people sitting around talking about things and any action sequence is remarkably unimpressive. Again, for the time, I'm certain it was amazingly spectacular, but from a modern context, if I go to a Bond film, I want to see a big chase scene open the movie, not a bunch of black guys blowing away radio operators.
And really, this is my only gripe with this film. The acting is good, everything is well shot more or less, the sets are impressive for the time, and it's a pretty strong first foot forwards. However, this is lost on the action. Sure the film has some amount of suspense in the second half but the first half is boring enough that on my most recent viewing I didn't make it to Ursula Andress' introduction. Heck, I didn't make it to the Chinese girl!
After writing that last paragraph I sat down and watched it again, and I have come to the conclusion that there is just a lack of things happening. My gripe isn't that the action is unimpressive, my gripe is there isn't any action. The story of the film doesn't get interesting until half way through and if you get to that point the coolest thing that you get to see happen is a big explosion.
I had such a hard time keeping track of this story! I wouldn't mind so much if the villain's plot was laid out, but it isn't! I have absolutely no idea what Dr. No is going to do, and why it will be bad. It had something to do with a missile, and some uranium or something, but I wouldn't know Dr. No's plan if I didn't have a really big book that I can look it up in. I just don't know what's happening. Dr. NO reminds me of murder mysteries. Somebody commits a crime and the story is dedicated to figuring out who dunnit. The problem is that we already know who dunnit, and any clues that we get are just re-affirming that there's something sinister going on without any real hints at what's happening, and then when we do finally find out just what the frack is happening, it's something so unbelievably complicated that you probably wouldn't have been able to deduce any of it on your own even if the film had given you hints.
Compare this to From Russia with Love. The first 10 minutes or so are dedicated to making sure you know what's happening. We see the muscle that's been hired to kill Bond, we see the evil people that hired him, and they have a discussion about how their plans are going. This sets things up for the audience so that we know what's at stake. With that knowledge, we now want our protagonist to succeed, and we spend the rest of the film seeing him get clues and figuring things out instead of getting unnecessarily confused trying to do the same thing along side him. It really is the difference between a good detective story and a good spy film.
So... out of left field the score. Don't get me wrong, the James Bond theme is probably one of the best movie themes ever, but there is a very distinct lack of music in this entire film. I am missing the suspenseful tones around Dr. No's place, and there isn't any exciting tunes during the chases or fights. OK, I'm probably exaggerating but you get what I mean. It's just glaring at me. There's music on some bits, but all of the exciting and interesting stuff doesn't have any music. I don't know who to point my finger at, but I'm just going to point at the director Terrence Young. He made some very bold stylistic choices in terms of how the film looked, but the sound of the film bored me to tears.
At least Ursula Andress is an interesting character, that's the thing that was keeping me from turning the TV off.
So after those last 10 paragraphs, I'm anticipating that you think I really hated this film, and that's kind of true. This is just the only thing I have to say about it. This definitely isn't the best film it could be, and I'm probably biased after seeing how far the series has progressed, but it did admittedly get a lot right.
The casting is very good. Connery was born to play Bond, and while everybody has their favorite, I think we can all agree that Connery was the objective best. He doesn't necessarily fill the room with charisma, but there's just this sense of testosterone that he's... eh, I'll talk about this when I do Goldfinger.
All of the visuals are utterly fantastic. I especially like that one room with the arch of light, that looked freaking awesome! But for me the movie is spoiled by its inability to keep me from standing up.
I give this a 5/10. This isn't the genre defining film, that title is held for Goldfinger, but it isn't terrible.
Like most films from the time period, Dr. NO is extremely hard to get through because of the extremely slow pacing. People were much more patient back in the day and I personally had a really hard time watching this, in fact I didn't even get through it and I'm writing half of this review based off of memory. It takes basically half the movie for Ursula Andress to show up, and after that they just talk. This is a very dialogue heavy movie, and a good example of why film adaptations of books need to be changed.
For those of you who may not know, this is one of the Bond films that was adapted from a novel by Ian Fleming. James Bond was a popular book series before it was a popular film franchise and this is one of the most direct film adaptations (or so I've been told).
I actually haven't read any of the James Bond novels. I haven't seen all of the movies either, but my point is this is very obviously an adaptation of a book, and also a good guide on how to NOT adapt a book to film. I've already talked about this a bit in my A Once Crowded Sky review, but taking something and putting it into a different medium is very difficult because different types of mediums tell different types of stories. Books are a very wordy story telling system because they are 100% written text. A film is a very visual medium and trying to turn one into the other either makes an excessively padded book or a dialogue heavy movie. I wouldn't want to sit through either.
This works against this film so much because it seems like it should be a big action film, but most of the movie is people sitting around talking about things and any action sequence is remarkably unimpressive. Again, for the time, I'm certain it was amazingly spectacular, but from a modern context, if I go to a Bond film, I want to see a big chase scene open the movie, not a bunch of black guys blowing away radio operators.
And really, this is my only gripe with this film. The acting is good, everything is well shot more or less, the sets are impressive for the time, and it's a pretty strong first foot forwards. However, this is lost on the action. Sure the film has some amount of suspense in the second half but the first half is boring enough that on my most recent viewing I didn't make it to Ursula Andress' introduction. Heck, I didn't make it to the Chinese girl!
After writing that last paragraph I sat down and watched it again, and I have come to the conclusion that there is just a lack of things happening. My gripe isn't that the action is unimpressive, my gripe is there isn't any action. The story of the film doesn't get interesting until half way through and if you get to that point the coolest thing that you get to see happen is a big explosion.
I had such a hard time keeping track of this story! I wouldn't mind so much if the villain's plot was laid out, but it isn't! I have absolutely no idea what Dr. No is going to do, and why it will be bad. It had something to do with a missile, and some uranium or something, but I wouldn't know Dr. No's plan if I didn't have a really big book that I can look it up in. I just don't know what's happening. Dr. NO reminds me of murder mysteries. Somebody commits a crime and the story is dedicated to figuring out who dunnit. The problem is that we already know who dunnit, and any clues that we get are just re-affirming that there's something sinister going on without any real hints at what's happening, and then when we do finally find out just what the frack is happening, it's something so unbelievably complicated that you probably wouldn't have been able to deduce any of it on your own even if the film had given you hints.
Compare this to From Russia with Love. The first 10 minutes or so are dedicated to making sure you know what's happening. We see the muscle that's been hired to kill Bond, we see the evil people that hired him, and they have a discussion about how their plans are going. This sets things up for the audience so that we know what's at stake. With that knowledge, we now want our protagonist to succeed, and we spend the rest of the film seeing him get clues and figuring things out instead of getting unnecessarily confused trying to do the same thing along side him. It really is the difference between a good detective story and a good spy film.
So... out of left field the score. Don't get me wrong, the James Bond theme is probably one of the best movie themes ever, but there is a very distinct lack of music in this entire film. I am missing the suspenseful tones around Dr. No's place, and there isn't any exciting tunes during the chases or fights. OK, I'm probably exaggerating but you get what I mean. It's just glaring at me. There's music on some bits, but all of the exciting and interesting stuff doesn't have any music. I don't know who to point my finger at, but I'm just going to point at the director Terrence Young. He made some very bold stylistic choices in terms of how the film looked, but the sound of the film bored me to tears.
At least Ursula Andress is an interesting character, that's the thing that was keeping me from turning the TV off.
So after those last 10 paragraphs, I'm anticipating that you think I really hated this film, and that's kind of true. This is just the only thing I have to say about it. This definitely isn't the best film it could be, and I'm probably biased after seeing how far the series has progressed, but it did admittedly get a lot right.
The casting is very good. Connery was born to play Bond, and while everybody has their favorite, I think we can all agree that Connery was the objective best. He doesn't necessarily fill the room with charisma, but there's just this sense of testosterone that he's... eh, I'll talk about this when I do Goldfinger.
All of the visuals are utterly fantastic. I especially like that one room with the arch of light, that looked freaking awesome! But for me the movie is spoiled by its inability to keep me from standing up.
I give this a 5/10. This isn't the genre defining film, that title is held for Goldfinger, but it isn't terrible.