Sorry that this first review is a little bit late, I have been very busy this last week and so haven't been posting much.
A Review of Dr No by Brooky
Well where to begin with my joint favourite James Bond film along with 'From Russia With Love'. First of all one of my main niggles still remains with the titles, although they start off well with the James Bond theme and the moving dots, for some reason it seagues (is that the right word?) into some bongo type music with lots of silhouttes of dancing people in the background, and then again into 'Three Blind Mice' with three blind old men!! The murders of Strangways and his secretary would have worked perfectly fine as a pre-credits sequence. One funny little observation that I have always had about the film which nobody else seems to have noticed is very early on in the film when the hearse arrives and the black Jamacian driver says "Hurry men, hurry!" or something along those lines in the poshest English accent I have ever heard.
One of the things I love most about the film is the early scenes in London (the gambling club, MI6, Bond's apartment) because we get to see a little glimpse into Bond's life when he is away from missions which, as far as my knowledge goes, has rarely been seen in any of the other films in the series and is very interesting to watch. also there are them old traditions and paralells with 'From Russia With Love' which are only in the very early Bond films such as seeing Bond flying on a passenger jet to his next assignment, checking his room for bugs etc. Hopefully we will see scenes akin to these again in the near future. Unfortunately another little niggle for me is the overuse of the 'Bond Theme' which seems to intrude into the film every five minutes, even when it is not necessary or appropriate. I know that they were trying to instill it into us that this is the 'Bond theme' but I do think that they overdid it a little bit, it only really needs to be used about three or four times per film.
I still love the often criticised tarantula scene where Professor Dent places a tarantula in Bond's bed, despite the glass pane seperating Sean Connery from the tarantula being very obvious in high definition as well as the fact that apparently that breed of tarantula isn't actually all that dangerous in real life, it still provokes tension in me which I believe is mainly to do with the wonderful mix of the direction of Terence Young, the editing of Peter Hunt, and the music of Monty Norman.
The characters are all very three-dimensional and are interesting to watch whether they are either Bonds allies or villains with Honey Ryder getting much more of a realistic and intersting character backstory than most of the other Bond girls (even though ultimately she does not add much to the overall story). The locations really do look absolutlely beautiful and also very natural as it does not look as if it is trying nearly as hard to "show off" as most of the later James Bond films. Also, the plot is relatively easy to follow and straightforward although unfortunately it does get a little bit silly in the third act once we meet the "Dragon" when Bond and Honey Ryder are captured by Dr No's guards along with the whole plot about spaceship toppling.
I actually find that Bond himself could be quite unlikeable in this outing in certain scenes being much more harsh than he needed to be and seemingly actually enjoying killing people. My main examples are when he shoots Professor Dent in the back whilst he is laying on the floor, presumably already dead, and also when he kills on of Dr No's guards on the island when not threatened whilst Honey and Quarell hide near the reeds.
Many may say that Sean Connery did not "become" James Bond properly up until his third Bond film, 'Goldfinger', although I must wholeheartedly disagree, to me, Sean Connery was James Bond from his first moments in Dr No and remained so ever since with his performance as Bond remaining relatively consistent over the years. Many fans will also say that the film itself is very dated but for me it does not lose any points because of that, if anything it gains them because it haa a certain charm that you would never find in a film today and anyway, every film will look dated one day, to my generation the Sean Connery and Roger Moore films look dated, the next generation will think that the films of Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig will look dated, and so on and so forth. Also, another point I noticed was Monty Norman's score, apart from a couple of good tracks, the score in general is beyond awful with that plinky-plonky electrical music which I am sure was cutting edge for its time but in todays world? No. Unfotunately, I do still have one final niggle with this film in that the film often plays more like a detective film rather than a spy film with Bond even being referred to as both a detective and a policeman during the film.
Finally, overall the film held up as well as ever before and I had to do some extreme nitpicking before I could find anything to really criticise the film for, although a little bit slow in parts, the film is essentially good entertainment and a good start to the James Bond film franchise.
Final Verdict: 9.1/10
Current Ranking
01) Dr No
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