Dr. No

So I'm gonna watch all the James Bond movies. The reason for this is pretty simple - I've usually only seen the earlier films as part of marathons on TV where everything runs together, and so my mind is full of incomplete and fuzzy ideas of what the series is. Really, the only Bond actors whose films I can actually distinguish from each other are Pierce Brosnan and and Daniel Craig. Anyway, here we start at the beginning with Sean Connery's first turn as the famous character. Dr. No does a pretty solid job of establishing the franchise as we see a lot of the key elements in place. There's no opening scene before the credits, and said credits don't feature girls dancing around or a famous singer crooning a theme with the title in the lyrics. But Bond says some clever things, romances a few girls, faces off against a slightly over the top villain, spouts a couple catchphrases for the first time, and a few things blow up.

Really though, the movie is fairly tame. Not too violent, not too long, only one major exotic location. There's not even a scene where Q gives Bond a wacky high-tech gadget, just one where he's lectured on his choice of firearm. From what I can tell this was intentional, to start a movie series on a grounded, reasonable footing before letting things get bigger and more explosive. Dr. No himself is a pretty good villain though, complete with metallic hands and a menacing dinner conversation. He's one of the only early antagonists or main Bond girls to actually use his own voice, and it's fun to watch him interact with Bond for the first time, really setting a tone for what was to come. Ursula Andress is pretty damn hot in her bikini, but although she went on to some other movies doesn't do her own voice and just sort of stands around looking pretty in the second half of the film, more femme than fatale. In the end, it's a solid movie, not great, but better than a few other Bond flicks I've seen.

James Bond stats
Theme song: James Bond theme
Foreign location: Jamaica
Bond, James Bond: 8:00
Martini shaken, not stirred: 24:40, 1:28:10
Ladies seduced: 3
Chases: 2
Kills: 3 humans, 1 tarantula
Non-lethal takedowns: 9

The Dirty Dozen

I know Inglourious Basterds got to me because I keep watching old movies that are somehow related. Dozen is a popular sixties movie with a similar premise on the surface, an officer training a group of ragtag soldiers for a special purpose during World War II. In this case, Lee Marvin is given twelve soldiers condemned to hard labor, prison, or execution and what amounts to a suicide mission to kill as many Nazi officials as possible holed up in a chateau on the eve of D-Day. Most of the movie is just Marvin training the soldiers into a cohesive unit while they occasionally rebel against perceived injustices, but eventually they get to the surprisingly violent climax.

Just like the Basterds, most but not all of the Dozen get significant character development. Charles Bronson is a former officer and the old hand of the group, almost a secondary leader. It's funny how he has the hard reputation and when they do the lineup by height, he's the fourth shortest. Donald Sutherland has an early role as Pinkley, who's a bit dimwitted, but ends up being one of the more likable characters. Other ones that stick out are the big guy, the black guy, the rebellious guy, the short guy with the moustache, and the crazy one. Ernest Borgnine is also the general in charge of the operation, and he's pretty much the same dude he still is today. It takes a while, but eventually the Dirty Dozen (so named because of their refusal to bathe or shave with cold water) gel into a cohesive whole, proven when they win a training exercise through unconventional means.

Then they drop into France, and the tone shifts rather dramatically. The carefully orchestrated mission has a couple slip-ups but still stays on course until someone screws it up big time (guess who!), when things turn into a bloodbath. It's a pretty large scaled and impressive action sequence for the time, although there were a couple situations where it was less than obvious that certain characters died and I just had to assume they did later when they didn't show up. Their Plan B to take out as many Nazis as possible is surprisingly brutal for the time, and honestly made me a little uncomfortable with the whole thing. But I guess the whole point of movies like these is to show how hellish war can be. The conclusion isn't exactly satisfying, but it's what you might expect from a cynical movie like this. I was pretty impressed overall.

For a Few Dollars More

The second film in the trilogy is a nice intermediary in terms of length, epicness, and major supporting cast. Gian Maria Volontè returns as a villain once more, Lee Van Cleef is an ally of the nameless man before he'd be a foe in the sequel, and Clint Eastwood is yet again the hardened man with no name. Interestingly, the protagonist here is supposedly not the same person as the one in the previous movie, or at least that's what Sergio Leone claimed and convinced the courts after he had a falling out with that movie's producer and he sued for whatever rights were involved with the character. It doesn't really need to be though, as the character is more of a western archetype than a fully developed person. As usual, the people around him have more involved backgrounds and character development, while he's just there being a bad ass.

The story's about how Eastwood and Cleef, as maybe an older and wiser version of the same character, run into each other as they both pursue the bounty on Volontè and his gang's heads and decide to split the ransom and work together. The friendship isn't exactly a fast one, and they spend almost as much time at odds with each other as they do with the real bad guys. Eastwood spends some time infiltrating the gang and yet again getting caught and having his ass kicked, but eventually they get their shot when the villain, high on drugs and still hung up on events earlier in his life, makes a lot of strange, bad decisions. His eventual downfall is as much his fault as anyone else's. I hope it's not a spoiler that he dies, but if it is... well come on, dude. As is standard with Leone's films, the introductions of the characters and clever final showdown are the best parts, although the middle here might actually be the most enjoyable of the three movies. It doesn't reach the awesome heights of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly's best moments, but it's a solid movie all the way through.

La Femme Nikita

Nikita is the film that put Luc Besson on the map, and while these days he hasn't done a lot of directing, in the 90's he made a few of that era's best action movies. My favorite is Léon, known originally in the US as The Professional, and I thought Nikita was almost as good. It's not too dissimilar of a story, either. It begins as a drugged-out murderer named Nikita is arrested and tried for her crimes, but she's saved from her sentence by the French government picking her for a program where they turn criminals into killers for the state. She's resistant to the training at first, but eventually she gives in and a few years later she's finally allowed to return to society.

But not before she assassinates a couple VIPs in a restaurant, of course. It's the movie's first big action scene, and sets the tone for what will become Besson's signature feel, violence that's stylized enough to be exciting but also down to earth and brutal enough to be unsettling. When her escape doesn't go quite as planned, Nikita's attempt to get out alive is truly desperate and perilous. Once she's done though, she gets to go, and as soon as she finds a place to live she falls in love with practically the first guy she sees. It's interesting how she allows herself to become attached to someone despite knowing that any time she could get a call with instructions for a hit. Her motivations up to the very end are somewhat mysterious, and she's a unique and enigmatic protagonist to be sure. Near the end Jean Reno appears in a couple scenes as a character that clearly inspired the Besson movie he would later star in, and his brief appearance is the worth watching the whole movie just by itself. It ends pretty abruptly and maybe in an unsatisfying way, but Besson's whole thing back then seems to have been subverting expectations for action movies. Definitely worth checking out today.