Dr. No

Late in "Dr. No," as the titular character and James Bond are sitting at a dinner table, the not-so-good doctor tells his guest that he's nothing more than a detective. No had thought Bond was something more than that, something like a spy. Compared to the Pierce Brosnan films on which I was raised, the James Bond of "Dr. No" does in fact, feel like nothing more than a detective.

I do not mean to say the film is bad; it's good. It was just different than I had expected. The movie starts with a murder of a man who turns out to be a British spy working in Jamaica. Bond, already 007, is sent to solve the mystery. Bond runs into a series of obstacles ranging from suicide-committing drivers to lying scientists to a "dragon" that "breathes fire," and, of course, he finds a few women to sleep with along the way.

Two characteristics of "Dr. No" surprised me. First, its pacing, which was slow. Granted, movies made in the sixties were rarely paced at the rate of today's films, but filmmakers like Hitchcock used that pacing to create a level of anticipation and satisfaction that "Dr. No" lacked. Second, the stakes in "Dr. No" were not what I've grown accustomed to in Bond films. At the aforementioned dinner, Bond assesses Dr. No's ambition to be world domination, but the film itself centers on two murders (the spy and his secretary) and interrupted communications for a U.S. space launch.

Despite its limitations compared to later Bond films, "Dr. No" satisfied the audiences of 1962, who flocked to the low-budget debut. They may have had no idea that the money they were spending on tickets would be used to build what has become one of the longest-lasting and highest-grossing film franchises in history. They were probably just hoping for an entertaining couple of hours, which they got. They also got to see the beginning of something new that was not yet excellent but was certainly full of potential.