Source: Warner Brothers: Blu-ray, 2008.
Year: 1962
Director: Terence Young
Action Stars:
Genre: Espionage
Country: United Kingdom
Story Duration: 01:46:26
Act Duration:
1st Act: 00:23:54
2nd Act: 00:32:06
3rd Act: 00:19:13
4th Act: 00:31:10
Plot Turns:
1st: Bond learns about Quarrel
2nd: Bond shoots Dent
3rd: Bond and Honey captured
ASD Ratio: 45%
AAD Ratios:
1st Act: 34%
2nd Act: 36%
3rd Act: 58%
4th Act: 54%
Action Structure: 1324
Action Scenarios:
Capture
Escape
Escape (Daring Leap)
Fall
Fight
Heist
Pursuit
Rescue
Speed
Total Action Moments: 24
Notable Action Sequence: Cell Escape and Facility Explosion
Duration: 00:13:34
Act: 4th
Action Scenarios:
Escape
Escape (Daring Leap Variant)
Fall
Fight
Heist
Rescue
Speed
Description: As the first installment on the James Bond franchise, Dr. No (1962) set the narrative template for the films that followed. One convention that the film lays down is a final act set piece in which Bond foils the plans of the antagonist through a set of actions that normally involves the explosion of their facility.
The sequence is structured around Bond’s primary and secondary goals. His primary goal is to prevent Dr. No from disrupting another Mercury space launch through a nuclear-powered radio beam. However, to do so, Bond must first escape from a cell in which he is imprisoned, his immediate goal. After gaining consciousness in his cell, Bond quickly surveys his surroundings for a means of escape. He spots a vent and attempts to pull off the grill in front of it, only to discover that it’s electrified, sending him flying to the ground. The moment presents itself as the first obstacle to his escape, setting the pattern for the first half of the sequence, namely a set of obstacles that Bond overcomes that demonstrates his resourcefulness. Undeterred, Bond uses his slippers as gloves to bash the grill away that allows him to crawl into the vent. Eventually, Bond reaches a junction where the vent descends downward, forcing him to climb carefully down the shaft. But his descent is precarious and eventually falls to the bottom [Figure 1]. Hurt but not seriously injured, Bond continues on his path and comes to a spot where the vent is particularly hot, motivating him to tear strips from his shirt to protect his hands from the heat. Soon, Bond hears a deluge of water approaching and braces himself to prevent being swept away along with the water [Figure 2]. Crawling through the steaming vent, Bond reaches its end and kicks away the grill to jump down into the decontamination room. One of Dr. No’s workers approaches, who Bond strangles and takes his radioactive protective wear to disguise himself as he enters the facility’s control centre.
At this point, the sequence changes as Bond’s goals shift to his primary objective to stop Dr. No from disrupting the Mercury rocket launch. Television monitors in the control centre show the rocket about to launch, underscoring the deadline that Bond works within. Bond initiates the destruction of the facility by pulling up the reactor from a large water pool, causing it to catastrophically overheat [Figure 3]. Workers flee from the control centre while Dr. No heads to Bond and attacks him with his metal hands. But his metal hands prove to be his undoing, as Dr. No is unable to maintain his grip on the reactor lift bars and slips to his death in the boiling water below.
Having achieved his primary objective, Bond turns to his other secondary goal, namely rescuing Honey Ryder. Bond rushes into a hallway in which workers continue to flee from the facility, and eventually finds someone who is able to guide him to Ryder’s location. There, Bond finds Ryder chained to a ramp and in danger of being drowned in a vast filling pool. Bond unshackles Ryder, liberating her from her captive state, and in so doing becomes her rescuer [Figure 4]. They rush outside to escape from the facility before it explodes, enacting another shift in objectives under a deadline structure. Bond jumps down into a boat and takes out further workers, permitting him and Honey to abscond in the craft before the facility before blows up. Through such actions, Bond is revealed to be supremely agential in the first installment of the franchise. He is an escapee and a rescuer, and an action protagonist who achieves his goals despite the obstacles placed in his narrative path.