From Russia With Love is the second movie in the James Bond series, released in 1963. In this adventure, Bond is sent to Istanbul to retrieve the Soviet Lektor decoding machine after a beautiful Russian cipher clerk claims she wants to defect and will help him get it if he takes her to England. I have seen the movie quite a few times before when I was a teenager and I have read and reviewed the original novel it is based on on this blog although this was back in 2015 so it has been quite a while.
The movie begins with a pre-credits sequence, a tradition which has stayed in place throughout the subsequent movies in the series. Here we seemingly find Bond mid-mission infiltrating a mansion when he is assassinated by Grant, the henchman in this movie. However we soon learn this is a training exercise for Grant before he kills the real Bond.
After the opening titles and the very sultry and exotic sounding main theme we first meet the main villains, SPECTRE agent Colonel Rosa Klebb, Kronsteen and Blofeld. Rosa is a former KGB agent who has defected to SPECTRE and Kronsteens plan is to use a Soviet Lektor machine as bait to avenge the death of Dr. No in the first movie, knowing MI6 would send Bon to retrieve. As Klebb’s defection was kept secret she is able to enlist a Soviet Cipher Clerk, Tatiana Romanova, to assist in their plan.
Meanwhile, Bond is relaxing with Sylvia Trench when he is called in by M to go to Istanbul to try to retrieve the Lektor. Once there Bond meets head of Station T, Kerim Bey, and discovers the city is locked in a stalemate between his MI6 agents and Bulgarians working for the Russians, with both tailing each other around the city. However Grant arrives in Istanbul and stirs up a battle between the two sides by killing a Bulgarian agent and dropping his body outside the Russian consulate, causing them to retaliate and attack Station T.
After Bond and Kerim resolve the dispute, Bond finally meets Romanova and they hatch a plan to steal the Lektor, what follows is the theft and the escape which includes a deadly battle on the Orient Express as SPECTRE catches up with the trio. Will they get to England? Is Romanova who she says she is?
Overall I’ve always found this movie to be a significant improvement on Dr. No with the formula being much more refined and the action more exciting.
Whilst the plot line ultimately revolves around a McGuffin trope, this movie is much more grounded and as such has aged quite well compared to his other movies which can have 60s megalomaniac villains, secret lairs and other quite campy elements. The story is also told very well in what could easily have been quite confusing and difficult to follow.
I also love the setting of Istanbul which is much more befitting of a Bond movie to me than Jamaica, with an exotic, mysterious gravitas which is displayed really well in the movie and the location is used to great effect with beautiful locations in the city such as the Grand Bazaar and the Basilica Cistern in Sultanahmet Square being used to great effect.
Connery also seems much much assured in the part following the success of the first movie and seems to be relishing playing the part here. He is also supported very well by Daniela Bianchi who manages to portray Romanova with both a vulnerability and a seductiveness that is very well balanced. I also quite like the villains in this movie with Robert Shaw and Lotte Kenya playing Grant and Rosa Klebb in a much more grounded fashion than Joseph Wiseman’s Dr. No.
Another significant improvement for me is John Barry’s score. Barry scored many of the later Bond movies through to 1987’s The Living Daylights and his first attempt is fantastic here. Whilst the movie still occasionally uses the Bond theme in strange places such as when Bond arrives at his hotel again, the score is used much more effectively overall here. It is also the first movie to have a title song in Matt Munro’s From Russia With Love although fortunately it isn’t used in the title sequences like later songs as it is a little too smaltzy and saccharine to be a Bond movie theme in my opinion, although it does start the tradition of a theme song which would of course be solidified and immortalized in the next entry with Shirley Bassey’s Goldfinger.
Also many Bond fans say it wasn’t until the Daniel Craig era that the movies tried to have a consistent timeline but this movie does make a few references to Dr. No and does try to establish a continuity which later movies has moved away from but it is nice that the movie references this as it shows the movie doesn’t exist in a vacuum like later entries and does advance the plot from the first movie, although this was abandoned in Goldfinger.
If I could say a negative it would be the movie does still have some lag and slow moments compared to later entries, again particularly in the first half as Bond apart from the opening credits (where it turns out not to be him) isn’t seen for the first 20 minutes of the movie and there is a lot of dialogue and exposition but the pacing is overall improved on the first movie.
In conclusion, From Russia With Love is a great second entry in the series which helps to polish and refine the formula established in Dr. No with improved pacing, score and a more grounded story in my opinion. Let me know in the comments down below if you have seen this movie and what your thoughts are.
