From Russia with Love (1964)

A Major Disappointment

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This movie is my favorite of the 007 movies I've seen. It's a bit more down to earth with some semi-realistic cold war political intrigue in it. Still has some ridiculous stuff in it too, but I wish other Bond movies were a bit more like this one. For those keeping track, Bond had sexual relations with 4 women in this movie. 2 in a threesome, even, but one was a lady he had sex with in Dr. No. So for the first 2 movies his total number of women is 6.

This film has everything that was great about the first bond film, and more. The plot is wiser, the characters have more to do, the action is much more developed, and the character-to-character dialogue scenes are some of the most intense scenes I have ever seen in a movie. This film does everything to perfection, and what I love so much about these films is how easily each cast member can work with each other. They all feel so comfortable. I have no complaints about this film, besides a few characters that were brought up, but left out until then end of the film, but every movie can be poked at. "From Russia With Love" is a stunning Bond feature!

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.

Having read half a dozen or so of the most recent reviews on here, I can't really add much about the second Bond movie. It's always been my favourite of the series, perhaps because it slants towards the serious side, with Bond liaising with a potential female Russian defector (he thinks) in order to get his mitts on the LEKTOR coding machine. Of course the female in question is gorgeous but the thing is a honey-trap set up by S.P.E.C.T.R.E to discredit the British secret service and get their own hands on it.You just got to love the fighting fish analogy, with the as yet unnamed (and facially unseen) Blofeld explaining his master plan to Peter Lorre look-alike Kronstein. The raid on the gypsy camp (with Jimbo uncomfortably watching a to the death cat-fight) and that brilliant scrap at the end with Robert Shaw's SPECTRE double agent Red Grant is thrilling stuff. The actors are all superb, Connery is at his peak as Bond, and the story is intelligent and engrossing to boot. Not an invisible car in sight!