Now my friend Expensive Luxury Cat wants to join in and do some reviewing of his own, so I'm going to help him review his favourite series of expensive luxury films - the James Bond films. We shall start by going all the way back to the very beginning and take a look at 1962's Dr. No.
It's a lion! This is a promising start. There's also a bit where a manny shoots at the camera, but it is unclear what that has got to do with anything.
I have a theory that Doctor Who may have been named Doctor Who to try and cash in on the success of Dr. No from only the year before. There was apparently a big craze for spy stories in the 1960s, so maybe Verity Lambert said "Dr. No? More like Dr. Who?" while clicking her fingers and doing a strange jerking movement with her head.
Anyway, the theme music turns into a song about three blind mouses who are supposedly looking for a cat. They're not really mouses though, they're assassins, and they shoot a couple of mannys to steal a file on Doctor No. Interestingly, this shows that the character is called "Doctor No" not "Dr. No," which is only the name of the film.
We are introduced to Bond, James Bond. This scene is meant to be iconic, but I think it has dated badly because Bond is smoking a cigarette while delivering his lines, which means he has to mumble them so that the cigarette doesn't fall out of his gob and ruin his cool.
Bond works for MI7 (as confirmed by his boss, M) and is sent to investigate the three blind mouses - maybe he is the cat!? (Metaphorically speaking, that is, he is not really a cat.) After he has arrived and dealt with the first manny who tried to capture him, Bond does some proper investigating, and even does some spy stuff with his suitcase and cupboards and things. I somehow don't think we'll be seeing a lot more of this kind of procedure in the series in the future.
When he first meets Quarrel and Felix, Bond has a fight with them until they make up and become best friends. Felix is a great character and has a name which sounds like felis, so maybe he is the cat? Either that or he is cat noms, which seems unlikely.
The scene where Professor Dent speaks with the disembodied voice of Doctor No is very suspenseful, and effective at building up the mystery and power of Doctor No... at least until he gives Dent a pider. This is clearly meant to be scary but the pider is really fluffy and cute. If they wanted to scare Bond then maybe they should have set a hoover on him? (No, that would have been too scary for a family film.) Anyway, the pider can't get to Bond because there's glass in the way, so has to settle for going on his stuntmanny for a bit instead.
Bond finds enough clues to point to the island of Crab Key being Doctor No's base. Quarrel says he doesn't want to go back there because there's a dragon.
A dragon!?
It seems we have piqued Dragon's interest.
Then there's a bit where Bond shoots Professor Dent even though Dent has no bullets left in his gun. Bond even says
"That's a Smith & Wesson, and you've had your six."Was Bond ever more needlessly ruthless than here? He's not really a sympathetic character at all in this film, but Connery's charisma is enough to carry you along with him.
With Dent and the other henchmannys taken care of, Bond and Quarrel go off to Crab Key where they meet Honey Ryder. When Quarrel sees Honey for the first time he is surprised, but she's not a dragon, she's a manny. But she does say she has seen the dragon:
"He had two glaring eyes, a short tail and pointed wings. He was breathing fire. You don't believe me, do you?"Bond doesn't believe in dragons.
"Listen, both of you, there are no such things as dragons. What you saw was something that looked like one."
Dragon took against Bond when he said that, but he was even more annoyed when he saw that it was not a real dragon. Typical mannys, he says, think they can make a dragon. A real dragon would be much better than that. If it had been a real dragon then it would have been in charge and it would have been So-Called-Doctor-No who would have been out doing patrols. Huff.
The fake dragon does breathe fire (which Dragon claims he can do, although I've never seen him), and kills Quarrel. It captures Bond and Honey and takes them to Doctor No's secret lair. Bond keeps his cool throughout their decontamination and unexpectedly benevolent treatment - more like guests than prisoners, the first of many experiences that Bond will soon get used to - until he gets made to sleep by drugged noms.
They are woken up to have dinner and a chat with Doctor No, where we first hear of the organisation SECTRE:
"Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion."
This is only a short scene, alas, but the dialogue between Bond and Doctor No is the high-point of the film. Some expensive luxury quotes chosen by Expensive Luxury Cat:
"East, West, just points of the compass, each as stupid as the other."
"World domination, that same old dream. Our asylums are full of people who think they're Napoleon... or God."
"I misjudged you. You are just a stupid policeman."
Bond is then put in a (decidedly non-luxury) prison cell, from whence he escapes through the ventilation system, helping to establish that great cliché of spy films and TV series. Having done so he proceeds to blow up Doctor No's base and kill Doctor No in a fight (Doctor No by this point wearing the costume that would later be mocked in Austin Powers: International Manny of Mystery), then he rescues Honey and they escape with only help from their stuntmannys.
Dr. No has an enormous legacy, but because so many of its plot points have passed into clichés of the genre, and because it has been surpassed by so many of its sequels and imitators, it feels somehow lacking now.
It was only the start of something greater.
Expensive Luxury Cat's rating: Expensive but not Luxury
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