Bond Life Lesson: Always bring a deck of cards.
As a James Bond film, Dr. No is barely recognizable when compared to modern entries in the series. While oozing mid century modern set decorations there is a relatively low explosion count and the overall plot just isn’t contrived enough, oh wait bikini. Instead this film shows us that the most useful skill our clandestine services require is knowledge of at least two different forms of solitaire.
The story starts off with the British office in Jamaica’s radio transmission suddenly going off the air during a regularly scheduled check-in. MI-6 chief M chooses to send one of his newer double-oh agents #7, aka James Bond, to investigate. M views this as a shit assignment as well as James, but what M is truly counting on is taking advantage of the 12 week radio electronics course Bond just completed at the learning annex (I’m assuming this last bit is in a deleted scene).
Once in Jamaica Bond is greeted by the most inept kidnapper on the island who allows our hero of to make the following phone call:
Bond: Hello, Bond here did you send a car to pick me up?
The Office: Bloody hell no, why would we do that?
Bond: Just checking, the cabbies here must have ESP.
And then proceeds to hop in the car anyway to see where things go. Well for our kidnapper things don’t end well and Bond eventually makes it to the office and soon learns this is no ordinary repair call. The police have been collecting quite a few dead mid level British office staff and the local chief of police is beginning to worry what this is going to do to the tourism trade. So Bond decides to grab a smoke and a drink and investigate.
During Bond’s booze tour of the island he makes friends with the local CIA agent during a Red-Stripe product placement and learns that everyone in the area is perfectly normal except out on Crab Key where nobody wants to go because strange shit happens out there. This is suspicious enough for Bond to formulate a plan, but first decides he needs a booty call and follows some of the most complex directions to any girl’s house. Seriously folks, if it takes more than three major turns, I assure you there is closer pussy.
Sensing a trap Bond sleeps with the girl, has her abducted, and then sits down to play cards in the dark while he waits for some shit to go down. Once said shit goes down it is time to hook back up with the CIA and get this plot moving because we are over an hour in to a film titled Dr. No and have yet to meet anyone with a graduate degree, let alone a nurse practitioner.
Out on Crab Key Bond meets a walking bikini and infiltrates the local Holiday Inn. Here we have our first true teachable moment: don’t drink the in room coffee, they never give you enough creamer and it might be drugged. A few hours later at the manager’s hospitality mixer we finally get a chance to meet the infamous Dr. No, who is rather unremarkable except for the fact he’s got kickass robotic hands. But there are NASA rockets to shoot down so throwing the secret agent in the dungeon alone makes the most sense.
Spoiler: Bond escaped the dungeon. I personally didn’t see that happening, I think I was grabbing a fresh beer at the moment.
In the control room wearing the most convincing disguise ever 007 foils the plans by literally turning it up to eleven and then tripping the bad guy. In the pandemonium that follows he remembers to grab the walking bikini so that he doesn’t have to masturbate alone on a boat as the credits roll.
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