So my journey to watch fifty years and twenty
plus movies worth of James Bond films continues, with this
film considered by many to be the best of the Sean Connery
Bond films, and thus the best of all the Bond films, 'From
Russia With Love'. I'm not sure about that though,
because while 'From Russia With Love' was certainly some high
value entertainment, I personally still liked 'Dr. No' a
little more.
Our film opens with Bond (Connery) being stalked amid a maze
of bushes by the brutal assassin Red Grant (Robert
Shaw). Grant pulls out his handy garrote and ends Bond's
life. Shortest movie ever. BUT NOT SO FAST!
It's just some clown wearing a Bond mask. Not sure why
Spectre sacrificed this poor guy, or made him wear a Bond
mask, like Red Grant is too stupid to just stalk and murder a
guy who didn't look like Bond, but we are going to roll with
it.
Regardless of all of that, Spectre has a plan. The cat
stroking Number One has commissioned two of his underlings to
concoct a crazy complex scheme to get revenge on Bond and what
he did to Dr. No back in the first movie. It's a bit out
there, but the plan is to get Bond to steal some translation
machine, train the sexy Russian clerk Tatiana Romanova
(Daniela Bianchi) to be his liaison, steal the machine away
from Bond, then torture Bond for his crimes against
Spectre. It's the torture part that usually does these
criminal entities in. Oh, and then kill Tatiana too
since she has no idea she's really working for Spectre,
believing she's giving up that cookie for Mother Russia.
And since it's obviously trap, make it look a trap.
Genius!
So Q (Desmond Llewelyn) gears Bond up, Moneypenny (Lois
Maxwell) plays her typical game of sexual innuendo, M (Bernard
Lee) sees no humor in any of this and James is off to Turkey
to purposely fall for this scam which is so obviously a trap.
The plan setup by those evil cretins at
Spectre pretty much works to perfection. Bond steals the
device, gets seduced by the pretty lady, Spectre in turn gets
the device back and all is looking well. Ah… but there
are two problems with Spectre's perfect plan. One is
that James Bond is awesome. Two is that sending some
woman to have sex with James Bond, then thinking that after
this sexing that this woman is going to remain loyal to your
cause… is just plain crazy. Clearly this organization
didn't do their research on the sexual prowess of one James
Bond. And now we have a super spy and a hot chick on the
run in some exotic locales, with not so much as the future of
the world at stake, like in the last movie, just… well… a
typewriter. Which in the wrong hands I guess would still
be bad for freedom… but… well… it's a typewriter. More
or less. Action and awesome shall ensue.
While I might've enjoyed 'Dr. No' a little more 'From Russia
With Love', make no mistake about it, Bond's second outing is
still grand entertainment. This is the movie where we
get the introduction of the iconic characters of Blofeld and
Q, and the criminal organization of Spectre begins to take a
clearer form. In Dr. No, Bond at times seemed
flustered, maybe even unsure of himself, but in this film
James became the cool as ice customer that we've come to
expect from James Bond, and Sean Connery has never been better
than he was in this film.
'From Russia With Love' also heightened the intrigue, playing
in on the fears of the cold war that was going on at the time,
and while the ultimate payoff of a pimped out typewriter
might've paled in comparison to Dr. No's nukes, this device
was nonetheless more grounded into reality, which did make for
bit more of a logical story arc.
Still, why am I amongst the few who seemed to enjoy Dr. No
more? For starters, there was Ursula Andress over
Daniela Bianchi. It's not a matter of looks, but
presentation of character. Personally, I couldn't see
any reason why the character of Tatiana fell for James Bond,
because other than the one sexual encounter, which Tatiana was
ordered to do in the first place, there wasn't a lot of
development there to justify her betraying her country for
Bond. I know Bond is a superstud and all, but that just
wasn't enough for me. I also felt Dr. No moved faster
and was presented with a greater sense of urgency than 'From
Russia With Love'. This movie was certainly bigger and
more expansive, and probably more topically relevant for 1964,
but translated into 201x and beyond, Dr. No's wacky nuke plans
plays better than Cold War shenanigans.
There was the typical Bond misogyny to deal with of course,
such as a gypsy fight which was pretty nutty, and James did
slap a semi drugged out Tatiana pretty hard. And then
watching Spectre Agent Klebb (Lotte Lenya) trying to kick Bond
with her poisoned wing tip slip-on was pretty funny in a lame
kind of way.
All that being said, fifty plus years later, Bond still
manages to entertain greatly. Great action, a great
fight scene between Bond and Red Grant in the close quarters
of a train car, and the introduction of a couple of classic
characters which will carry us for years to come. You
still can't go terribly wrong with James Bond and 'From Russia
With Love'.
