From Russia with Love (1963)

There's a saying in England: Where there's smoke, there's fire! From Russia With Love is directed by Terence Young and adapted to screenplay by Richard Maibaum & Johanna Harwood from the Ian Fleming novel of the same name. It stars Sean Connery, Daniela Bianchi, Lotte Lenya, Robert Shaw & Pedro Armendáriz. Music is by John Barry and cinematography by Ted Moore. James Bond's second cinematic outing has 007 sent on a mission to Istanbul to try and acquire a Russ...

_**SPECTRE agents, Istanbul, Gypsies, beautiful women and the Orient Express**_ Agent 007 (Sean Connery) is sent on a dubious mission at Istanbul to possibly acquire a Lektor cryptography device from the Soviets via their consulate. Bond meets a naïve Russian beauty (Daniela Bianchi) that SPECTRE agent Klebb (Lotte Lenya) recruits to carry out their assassination plan with the help of a brawny Irish Assassin (Robert Shaw). "From Russian with Love" (1963) is a solid sequel in th...

I love this one... surprise, surprise, surprise. Everyone loves this one. I think if there were a true point of contest amongst die hard Bond fans it is From Russia With Love v Goldfinger for the best Bond film. Clearly I'm in the From Russia With Love camp, because it works as a serious spy thriller, it works as a Bond movie, it works as a dramatic thriller and it works as an action movie. It has enough character to be an extremely well made Bond film, and, for a second outing, no...

This is an early Bond movie, and more of a spy movie than the later hay day of 007. It's a pretty good spy movie. We do begin to see a lot of what makes 007 with the hot women, the two hottest being minor characters in a catfight scene. We see some nice locales, nice scenery, and we have some interesting gadgets on both sides. We also have the diabolical Specter leader whom I always call "Blowhard", who seems to kill more of his own employees than his opponents do. There is muc...

We used to have a maths teacher at school who was small in stature. When the class got a little unruly, she used to stamp her foot on the floor like a petulant child. We called her Miss "Klebb"! I don't think that she ever had a poisonous spike that protruded from her shoe, but I wouldn't have been surprised. In that role, Lotte Lenya is up there in the league of deadly protagonists faced by 007 in this franchise. Robert Shaw - always underrated, I feel - is superb as "G...