From Russia With Love (1963) In so many special ways, this Bond movie stands apart from the six Eon Productions films made with Sean Connery......
It arrived as the most densely plotted Bond, with a more gritty down-to-earth, real world feel to it.....very similar to standard 1950's cloak-and-dagger espionage movies, complete with secret code greetings and suspicious spies lurking behind corners.
But even amid all its spy-vs-spy stuff, it was the first Bond to regularly stop to include spectacularly orchestrated action set pieces.....the fierce gun battle at the gypsy camp, the ferocious hand-to-hand struggle on the train, the 'North By Northwest'-like duel with a helicopter and the fiery boat chase.
And most tellingly, it was the last Bond film for decades that was reviewed with admiration and respect by the community of film critics. Once "Goldfinger" firmly established the tongue-in-cheek template of larger than life villains with over-the-top plans for world domination, critics treated each new Bond with cheeky, sarcastic commentary, some reviews filled with more quips than the movies themselves.
(It wouldn't be until 2006's "Casino Royale" and the Daniel Craig era that Bond movies were given consideration as a cinematic events to be taken seriously......)
So we now fondly remember the best things about "From Russia With Love" we dearly love.....starting with....
The immortal trio of villains.....Vladek Sheybal's smoothly creepy Kronsteen, the chessmaster who devises Spectre's master plan, Lotte Lenya's Rosa Klebb, the repulsive, rogue KGB operative and worst of all, Robert Shaw's Donald 'Red' Grant, the hulking, blonde psychopathic assassin. 007 never had a more daunting line-up of opponents than this bunch.......
John Barry's score.......truly taking charge of the distinctive musical stylings that define the Bond films for generations......
The sad farewell of Pedro Armindariz.....playing one of the most beloved and sympathetic of Bond's allies, managing to perform the role while suffering the agonizing cancer he contracted from the radioactive dust swirling around the infamous John Wayne-as-Genghis Khan epic, "The Conqueror" (later shooting himself dead while in the hospital)
Bond and 'Red' Grant's train smackdown......still one of the best staged and shot fight scenes ever......
The Bond Beauties......the second and last appearance of Eunice Gayson, as the London babe always stood up by news of Bond's next impending mission.....and as the main attraction, Daniela Bianchi was, in our opinion, a huge improvement over the dead-eyed, inexpressive Ursula Andress.
For all these reasons and more, "From Russia With Love" remains a 5 star (*****) gold standard of a series soon to take the entire world by storm.......
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