James Bond (007) is Britain’s top agent and is on an exciting mission, to solve the mysterious murder of a fellow agent. The task sends him to Jamacia, where he joins forces with Quarrel and a loyal CIA agent, Felix Leiter. While dodging tarantulas, “fire breathing dragons” and a trio of assassins, known as the three blind mice. Bond meets up with the beautiful Honey Ryder and goes face to face with the evil Dr. No.

While it contains all the classic elements of Bond films ( A beautiful woman, egomaniacle baddy …etc),  this movie is very anti-climactic. This can be attributed to several things. First, the soundtrack is incredibly sparse. It does have the classic Bond theme which is very important but apart from several variations on that theme the soundtrack is very forgetable. This sparsness also bleeds over into the foly and sound design. Outside of a few basic special effects like explosions and gun fire, when a character isn’rt speaking, all you hear is silence. Second there is no real tension built up and when what little tension there is comes to a head it gets resolved quicky and without any real problem.

All in all it was a good intro to the Bond series. My wife attributed the sparseness and the anti-climacticity to the era. I told her that Hitchcock was doing incredible suspense and climaxes as many as 5-6 years before Dr. No, so era is no excuse.

Side note: I’ve noticed a plot divice in Bond movies that I will keep track of through the retrospective. I’ve noticed that Bond is usually knocked over the head and unconscious in order, plot-wise, to get him to the enemy’s secret base.