elvircorhodzic
FROM Russia WITH LOVE is an action thriller, which is a good combination between a fictional thriller and the Cold War fantasy. It is based on Ian Fleming's similarly-named 1957 novel.Seeking to exact revenge on James Bond for killing its agent Dr. No and destroying the organization's assets in the Caribbean, SPECTRE begins training agents to kill Bond. Their hope is a former prisoner, who is a born killer. Meanwhile, the organization's Chief Planner, a Czech chess grandmaster, devises a plan to play British and Soviet intelligence against each other to procure a Lektor cryptographic device from the Soviets. SPECTRE's Chief Executive, a former Colonel of SMERSH, gets the task to carry out their plan into action. She recruits the beautiful Tatiana Romanova, a cipher clerk at the Soviet consulate in Istanbul, as part of the plan. Tatiana has to lure into the trap the British secret agent 007...This story is very funny, even a pseudo-realistic tone does not make a lot of damage. A crazy adventure of a secret agent, full of sinister characters, passionate plots and political illogicality is pretty amazing. In contrast to the first film (Dr. No), the enemy is precisely defined, while the main cause of danger is a secret mechanism. That magic, created by Istanbul (the city on two continents), Orient Express, secret services, an evening with gypsies, a romance between the West and the East and the constant danger is an excellent bait for the audience.Sean Connery as James Bond is a rough gentleman and irresistible lover. His character has not undergone any major change in comparison to the first film.His support is Daniela Bianchi (Tatiana Romanova) as beautiful and curious young woman. She affects the change in the Bond character in some scenes. However, I think, that her character is a bit neglected. Lotte Lenya (Rosa Klebb) has offered a solid performance as a double agent. Pedro Armendáriz (Ali Kerim Bey) has brought a large dose of humor and tradition in this film. Robert Shaw (Donald "Red" Grant) is quite convincing as a ruthless killer.This story is not intriguing. This is perhaps the biggest flaw of this film. The Russians know how to love. Definitely.
Danny S.
The second adventure of James Bond and also its' best in the whole series!Terence Young returns to direct the sequel of Dr. No, with the soundtrack of John Barry. Without any mistake, it's the best James Bond movie ever made.SPECTRE vows for a revenge after James Bond (Sean Connery) killed their agent Dr. No. Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya) will convince a young woman Tatiana Romanova (Daniela Bianchi) to deliver the machine Lektor to Bond, leading her into believing Klebb is working for SMERSH. With their plan to deliver machine, SPECTRE will arrange an assassin Donald "Red" Grant (Robert Shaw) to assassinate Bond.With doubling up a budget to 2 million dollars, James Bond goes to Istanbul, Orient Express all the way to Venice throughout the dangers that await him. From Russia With Love feels like a penultimate spy thriller. James Bond knows that SPECTRE is chasing him down and that no matter whom he beats, they just won't leave him alone.This movie also features the first pre-title sequence. Who'd imagine that James gets killed by Red Grant in it... or is it? FRWL is also the movie that actually had risen Sean Connery into a movie star! It was FRWL! We get to see the old cast as M and Moneypenny, but then we're introduced to Major Boothroyd or Q, played by Desmond Llewelyn, who'd go to appear in every James Bond movie (with the exception of Live and Let Die) till The World Is Not Enough. What was supposed to be a replacement for Peter Burton, it became a role that defined Llewelyn's career. Of other cast I'm about to mention...Daniela Bianchi as Tatiana Romanova is in my opinion an overlooked James Bond girl. She's in the game of a cat and mouse, unsure what to do with a strict orders, but I just love her! Lotte Lenya as Rosa Klebb is such a menacing villain that you cannot expect what was she going to do next. Robert Shaw nailed the role as the SPECTRE assassin Red Grant. He's the first of many memorable henchmen to appear in the series and a first anti-Bond in the series. We're introduced to the leader of SPECTRE, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, but his face remains unseen, just to keep things even more mysterious. He was portrayed by Anthony Dawson, who portrayed Professor Dent in Dr. No. To make his voice more menacing, Blofeld's dubbed by Eric Pohlmann, a German actor. Pedro Armendáriz makes a great work as Kerim Bey, James Bond's ally in Istanbul who helps him on his mission. For the end, we have Walter Gotell, who portrays Morzeny and works on SPECTRE island. Gotell would be recast 14 years later in The Spy Who Loved Me as General Gogol all the way until The Living Daylights.This movie is the best James Bond movie. Sean Connery is here at his best, which proves the scene when he becomes emotionally broken upon seeing dead Kerim Bey. Sean Connery also admitted it was his favorite James Bond film. The future actors such as Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig listed this movie as their favorite.5 out of 5 stars!
ElMaruecan82
My first memories of the James Bond movies go back to the age of twelve, which means more than two decades ago. I had seen all the early 'Connery' but one: "From Russia With Love" and ever since this period, the film remained a big mystery. I didn't know what to expect from it, but this lack of expectations was integral to the enjoyment. And it was indeed, quite a discovery and one hell of a spy thriller, James Bond or no James Bond. Indeed, the paradox of Terence Young's second work is that its un-Bond like quality makes it one of the best."Dr. No" started them all, it needed to hook the audience to so many levels of entertainment it could ensure immediate follow-ups: it was an espionage movie, a thriller, an adventure and action picture, a sexy film by the era's standards and more than that, it relied on the manly screen-charisma of Sean Connery, tough, rough, but also charming and witty when required. And two years later, the audience had the consummate James Bond film with all the archetypes settled: the Aston Martin, the grand-scale egomaniac mastermind, the chases and the girls. Every single scene was a classic, and one can almost say if you saw "Goldfinger" you've seen them all, except for "From Russia With Love".Given my personal reception of "Dr. No" and "Goldfinger", I didn't know exactly what the in-betweener would offer in order to enjoy it and appreciate it with the same passion, and that's exactly what I got, something unexpected. The film is a gritty, low-key, and such a realistic (by Bond's standards) thriller, that it could have been a non-James Bond film and still be enjoyable. Even the plot is intelligent and intricate without being too contrived, and it can be foreshadowed by two key scenes: a chess game and a fight between two fishes, weakening one another while the one that doesn't fight will stay the strongest. This is the plot in a nutshell, pushing Bond to make some predictable moves and then get rid of him once he retrieves a Soviet encryption device. The SPECTRE organization pulls the strings.The piece of the chess game is a Russian beauty named Tatiana, played by Daniela Bianchi, and the "third fish" is an agent named Red Grant. And once Bond gets in the game, it's a real cat-and-mouse thriller that surprises through its restrained tone and confined settings. There are a few boat and helicopter chases but they're so late in the film they were probably not meant to be the highlights. This is a film where the interactions actually count more than the action, and therefore create a necessity, which is to make the characters realistic even within that complicated plot. And on that level, if "From Russia With Love" isn't the best James Bond, which is debatable, it is the best acted. And it starts with Sir Sean Connery.I was really impressed by the intensity of the situations and the performance of Connery that conveyed the most pain of his job, more than the exhilaration, for once. Maybe it is easy to play such a cool and charismatic hero, but here, Connery deserves a solid mention, because when you look at some scenes, you don't really envy him, which means a lot, speaking about Bond. He even manages to find an expression in the opening scene, that looks so un-Bond like, he looks scared, but not Bond scared, cowardly scared, and there was a 'reason' for that. But the real Bond is a charming and sociable man who even grows a friendship with a Turkish host played by Pedro Armendariz, an actor I had just discovered and whom I was sad to learn his passing early after the film.I was terribly saddened by his character's death as well, but it was the trigger to Grant's entrance in the the arena and it was meant to make his conflict with Bond, more personal, Bond can't escape the train literally, and the mano-a-mano confrontation with Grant was the film's most intense moment. No music, no effects, just the real struggle of a man trying to battle a stronger opponent. And the second fight with the other villain, played by Lotte Lenya wasn't less fascinating. It says a lot when the villains are not just disposable henchmen and when you almost feel sorry for them when they die. Lenya was perfect but so was, the blonde and handsome Robert Shaw as a guy who means business, who is competent and valuable and not just a grotesque, ugly villain, a realistic counterpart to a realistic Bond. In fact, he was so great I wish he could be a recurring villain. There was no archetype in this 'Bond', he stayed with the same girl throughout the film and Tatiana was more than the sexy foil, she's played as a fully developed person with a real sensitivity. We know she has nothing against Bond but she had no choice from the start. There's a real relationship going between these two as "From Russia With Love" is about three-dimensional characters, and they count more than the plot, there's no much escapism but that helps to emphasize the entrapment everyone's caught in. And if it doesn't have that fun and sparkle of the usual James Bond movies, it still manages to be an outstanding achievement, being 'that' James Bond film that doesn't feel like the others. It has its over-the-top creative moments such as a man ambushed from the mouth of wall-size Anita Ekberg and a Gypsy cat-fight but it's in the tension and the quiet moments that the film gets interesting. My only complaint is the loud use of the James Bond's theme during that scene where Bond inspects his hotel room, , it was useless and distracting. Apart from that moment, I enjoyed every minute of the film, sometimes, every second.
