The First Bond Film, And One of My Favorites
Sean Connery played James Bond in this first theatrical film. The British Agent is tasked with going to Jamaica to investigate the sudden disappearance of an American MI6 contact. Felix Leiter, played by Jack Lord of Hawaii Five-0 fame, helps Bond get to the mysterious island controlled by the ever secretive Dr. No. Along the way Bond meets a couple of other interesting characters including the superstitious boatman named Quarrel and the beautiful Honey Ryder. Bond ends up discovering more than he expected upon being captured on Dr. No’s island: his technologies are harming the US Space Program.
I’ve always liked this Bond film, largely because it was the only one I had when I was younger, and I’ve seen it probably twenty times over the years. You could argue that it’s a slower Bond film compared to others, even the second Bond film, From Russia With Love, but few Bond movies have such an interesting cast. I loved Quarrel’s insistence on their being a fire-breathing dragon on Dr. No’s island, when ultimately it was just a flame throwing tank with a paint job. Ursula Andress’ role as Honey Ryder is never dull, and Jack Lord turns in a great performance as the suave and trustworthy CIA agent working with Bond. Joseph Wiseman does a great job as the cool, calculated evil scientist, Dr. No.
I wasn’t sure how well this 1963 classic would do on Blu-ray, but the technicians at Lowry Digital Images did a superb job. The visuals impressed me the most right off the bat in how vibrant the colors were due to the high contrast and rich color depth. The entire transfer is sharp and spot on, in terms of both the video and the audio, and I’m thoroughly impressed with what they were able to do with this old source material. Fortunately they had the original film negatives to work off of to produce this superb transfer.
Additional Content
This Blu-ray release lots of content, but for the most part these are very short features chopped into many menu items. All features are in SD, except for those that simply take you to certain parts of the feature film.
-License To Restore – This twelve minute feature was very interesting and makes for a great one time view. Technicians and business folks from MGM and Lowry Digital Images talk about the restoration process from the original film negative to digital. Some really interesting pictures of their massive 100+ Apple G5 server farm are shown, as well as the clean room used to ever so carefully process the film.
-Image Database – This feature has several dozen vintage photographs of the cast and crew during the time of the film’s development and release.
-Guns of James Bond – This vintage feature from the 60s is about five minutes in length and begins with Sean Connery introducing a Scottish firearms enthusiast and expert. This Scotsman discusses the differences between a Beretta, Walther, and Ruger .44Mag caliber revolver.
-Premiere Bond – Opening Nights – This thirteen minute feature was rather interesting. It shows lots of stills from the opening night of the first twenty or so Bond movies, ending with Die Another Die. The history, celebrities, and specifics of each opening night are quickly mentioned.
-Others – There are a handful of other miscellaneous features including an audio commentary track and a ‘focused’ scene selector (you can choose to skip to scenes with certain locales, for example).
All in all, the extras don’t amaze, but the amount of vintage footage and stills is very nice.