The James Bond film franchise rolls on with the release of its 19th installment, “The World Is Not Enough,” with Pierce Brosnan starring as 007. Here is the Tribune’s review of the first Bond movie, 1962’s “Dr. No,” published under the Mae Tinee pseudonym.
Unlike some people — apparently a great many of them, judging from the sale of his books — I have always considered Ian Fleming as a kind of upper-class Mickey Spillane.
The first film version of one of his spy stories offers many of the same highly commercial ingredients. The suave, slightly smug and incredibly indestructible hero in a story loaded with sex, sadism and bloody corpses. This one has the usual number of highly susceptible females wearing as little as possible and plenty of ingenuous methods of murder. The enemy, in person, adds a touch of Fu Man Chu — with what would seem to be a small but modernly equipped Chinese army to back him up.
The film like the novels has more polish than the Spillane offerings. Sean Connery carries off his strenuous role with poise, the Jamaican backgrounds are colorful, and the whole thing moves to a calypso beat.
After almost 2 hours, during which the dapper Mr. Bond survives guns, knives, a menacing tarantula, a couple of predatory dames, and the best efforts of the malevolent Dr. No, he rides off into the sunset for a bit of hanky-panky with Honey, the “nature girl” who shares some of his adventures. Surprised?
