Bond bursts onto the big screen with this solid movie. Sean Connery oozes charisma as the hero and the moment when he introduces himself across the card table with the most famous line in cinema is utterly magical. This is the film that kick-started so many of the themes and conventions of the James Bond movies and the mark it left on cinema is indelible.

Even aside from all that, it still stands up as an entertaining and pacy action film. There isn't a single moment that feels like padding and you find yourself absorbed in the chase as Bond unravels the mystery of a colleague's disappearance.

The main weakness is that the film spends too long establishing the mystery and introducing Bond that, when the titular villain finally appears, he doesn't have much to do except look sinister. You certainly don't get the feeling that he's always in the background pulling strings as you do with Blofeld in the later movies.

In fact, it's when Dr No appears (looking eerily like he borrowed his wardrobe from Kim Jong-Il) that the film starts to become a lot less interesting, which perhaps explains why it rushes to a climax so soon after his appearance. His plot is very much explained in passing and basically, the destination of this movie isn't half as fun as the journey to get there.