Dr. No (1962)
1962 finally marked the debut of James Bond on the big screen with Dr. No. Following a mysterious disappearance of another British Officer Bond (Sean Connery) travels to Jamacia and quickly finds that something bigger is going on involving a mysterious island owned and protected by a man named Dr. No (Joseph Wiseman). Outside of the more recent entries into the James Bond franchise I have not had much exposure to the franchise so I was really excited to get the chance to see these earlier entries in the series that established the tropes and style that would literally change film inspiring a whole new genre of spy film and countless parodies. Sadly though as I watched Dr. No I could tell it wasn't going to be peak James Bond, where it does establish some of that style the film feels unclear with its intentions as it walks the line between camp and serious.
But first I will say that this is overall an entertaining film, so much of the core of the James Bond franchise is over the top fun moments and it does have plenty of those. Like I said it never goes full camp or feels like it is really trying to be funny but moments like a huge dragon tank chasing James Bond naturally come off as funny. At the end of the day, the movie was far from painful to watch or sit through and I was overall having a good time. The mystery is also pretty decent once you get into it, there are quite a few clever twists and turns throughout that caught me off guard and the initial feeling of overwhelmingness when Bond arrives in Jamacia and everyone seems to be after him is pretty effective. At multiple times in the movie, it does feel like Bond is out of the frying pan and is now in the fire which does add some decent suspense and drama. I just wish this movie used this better, as I said despite elements of camp and humor it feels like it is trying to be serious and deep which it never fully achieves. It has good moments as both a drama and comedy but never really uses or pushes either side making the movie overall forgettable and weaker from both ends.
There also clearly were constraints with the actual filmmaking. Despite some decent sets and set pieces such as the huge dragon tank, the movie has quite a bit of weak cinematography which really exposes itself during chase scenes. For whatever reason, it doesn't seem like they were able to turn a camera once it was set up meaning that once a car passes a camera they have to cut and move the camera down the road. Once you do this multiple times in one scene it does start to feel old and weaker, due to this I never really got engaged in these chase scenes which are supposed to be the moments of adrenaline of the film. Now to be fair I am judging this in the lense of 2019 where there has been so much advancement in technology so the effectiveness of these scenes probably was much greater in 1962, unfortunately in 2019 they just can't hold up. The actual pacing of the movie is also just off, especially in the beginning this movie moves at such a slow pace that honestly had me bored, once we get to Jamacia it does get a bit better but even then with the sheer amount of people and directions that Bond meets and explores it feels like the script could have been much cleaner. It's not until probably two thirds into the movie once we get onto the actual island that it finally really starts to pick up and grabbed my attention.
Overall Dr. No is far from terrible, the biggest issue with it feels like it is just how it failed to age. This was at the start of this genre of film, I have seen so much of it done at such a high level by this point that a messy film like this that doesn't really know what it even if just can't hold up to modern standards. I hope as I continue to go through this series it can become cleaner and have a better grasp on what it wants to be whether that is camp and comedy or suspense and drama, but sadly they just didn't have that clarity on this outing.
Overall Dr. No is far from terrible, the biggest issue with it feels like it is just how it failed to age. This was at the start of this genre of film, I have seen so much of it done at such a high level by this point that a messy film like this that doesn't really know what it even if just can't hold up to modern standards. I hope as I continue to go through this series it can become cleaner and have a better grasp on what it wants to be whether that is camp and comedy or suspense and drama, but sadly they just didn't have that clarity on this outing.