This review of Dr. No (1962) is part of a wider rewatch of the James Bond series to mark its 60th anniversary. 007 has always been my favourite movie franchise, and I wanted to see where each film ranks within the series. Please check out the main blog post for my rankings of this and the other twenty-four official films and links to the movie reviews for the rest of the franchise.
Long Review and Film Summary
Starring the late Sir Sean Connery as Bond, this is a film which I haven’t seen in full until now. Its budget was $1.1 million in 1962 ($10.9 million in 2022). Considering the budget, it holds up rather well by today’s standards. The rear projection car chase scenes and the rudimentary suites in the radiation area do age it somewhat. However, the story, acting, and locations are all on point. It also includes those things which make a Bond film, a Classic Bond film, including the gun barrel sequence, Money Penny scene, silhouettes in the opening, airport pick-up scene, the end boat scene, and the mention of Spectre will run through the franchise. The pacing of the film is a bit slow for my taste; we don’t get to Dr. No himself until three-quarters of the way into the film, but you can feel his presence in what’s going on much earlier. It also overuses the Bond theme a lot, which takes away from the action somewhat, and the Q-ish scene with Major Boothroydis (played by Peter Burton) is a bit boring since he only hands Bond a gun and nothing more. The film does include one of my favourite characters, Felix Leiter (played by Jack Lord), which was nice to see. All-in-all, Dr No is a robust Bond film and one which I’d be happy to watch anytime, not my favourite, but it’s up there for sure.