Rating: 
Summary: SPECTRE strikes back!
Review: After Dr. No was killed by James Bond in the first movie, the evil SPECTRE organization is out for revenge. In this installment we are introduced to the group's leader, Ernst Blofeld, who personally asks that Bond be terminated. We are also introduced to Desmond Llewellyn, who portrayed "Q" until his untimely death after "The World Is Not Enough" in 1999.
This movie is one of the best in the series. It has a down-to-Earth plot that turns into a Cold War thriller that resembles the 007 stories that Ian Fleming narrates in his books. Even though the gadgets begin in this movie, Bond's multi-purpose briefcase is believable, unlike most of the gadgets from the Moore era, and only adds to the classic feel that this film carries. Lastly, Robert Shaw fights Bond in one of cinema's most memorable fight scenes, and is a fearful and dangerous villain: cunning, lethal and cold.
I strongly suggest that you watch this movie, and if you are a Bond film collector, this is a must have.
Rating:
Summary: The best movie of all time.
Review: Let's face it. Everybody has their favorite movie. Mine is From Russia with Love. This is as close to realism as the Bond series got. Bond travels to Instanbul to get a Lektor decoding machine. In the process, he gets seduced by Tania (Daniel Binachi), fights Donald Grant (Robert Shaw) to the death, gets chased by boat, and avoids getting stabbed by Colonel Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya). The fight between Bond and Grant is my favorite in the series. This also introduces Blofeld and SPECTRE. This is my favorite movie of all time. Go rent it and watch it and you'll see why.
Rating: 
Summary: "Old man" and Identical brief cases save the day!
Review: 4.5 stars This was an amazing followup to Dr No. James gets 'killed' in the beginning, goes to get a decoder, gets 2 gypsy's and ends up on the great train ride. In the end, greed and identical brief cases save the day. This was also a very good Fleming novel. I rank it 7 of 23.
Rating:
Summary: Best Connery Bond, Best Bond Ever
Review: After a rather static performance in Dr. No, Sean Connery starts to hit his stride in the second Bond of the series, From Russia With Love. It is in this 1963 classic that Connery sets the bar for how to play James Bond with flying colors.This plot is more complicated, more purist in the sense that the storyline sticks to the original espionage-savvy theme of Ian Fleming's spy novel itself and the dialogue is much more sophisticated than say, the Brosnan Bonds. However the motive in this storyline isn't some deranged megalomaniac's wildly concocted scheme of global domination in one way or another. It's simply a plot not only to kill Bond, but to humiliate him. Knowing that our hero can't refuse a voluptuous babe, Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya) a Russian agent who is in all actually a defector and a SPECTRE agent (Number 3, to be exact), recruits Tatiana Romanova, played by Italian supermodel Daniela Bianchi to seduce Bond. But she isn't just ordered to seduce Bond with her good looks and body; Tatiana or Tanya is ordered to seduce Bond into capturing the Lektor, a decoding device that the British have wanted for quite some time from the Russian consulate in Istanbul. For love and country, Bond is off to Istanbul, however aware that this arrangement may very well be a trap. Enlisting the services of a local Turkish double agent to keep an eye out, Kerim Bey (Pedro Armendariz), Bond swipes Tanya and the Lektor on the way back to England via the Orient Express. But SPECTRE is one step ahead. SPECTRE hires "Red" Grant (Robert Shaw), a stoic assassin with a garotte in his wristwatch and ice water in his veins, to spy on Bond and eventually kill him and Tanya when the time is right to secure the Lektor. To add icing to the cake, SPECTRE plans to release to the public Bond and Tanya's "scandal" and to falsify their deaths in scandalous fashion. From Russia with Love is an intelligent, savvy spy movie that sets the direction of the Bond series. From Bond's first gadgets (i.e. an atache case when opened incorrectly detonates a talcum gas canister/semi-automatic rifle) to memorable villains (i.e. Red Grant, Rosa Klebb) to breathtaking and charming locales (i.e. Istanbul, Venice) to a well-developed Daniela Bianchi in more ways than one, and last but not least, a more dynamic Bond performance from Sean Connery, From Russia with Love is one of the best-crafted Bond movies of all time.
Rating:
Summary: Easily one of the greatest in the James Bond series
Review: Most James Bond fans have their personal favorites among all the films in this forty-year series: FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE is mine. In many ways, this was actually the first film with the full James Bond formula in tact. DR. NO was enjoyable, but Sean Connery's Bond was very different in that film than in the subsequent films. In DR. NO, Bond was a serious, unironic, humorless secret agent, very much like the character in the Ian Fleming novels. In FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, Bond departed from the character in the novels, and became witty, ironic, and very much tongue-in-cheek. In short, he became the Bond we all know and love. This is also the first film in which Desmond Llewelyn appeared as Q, who went on to play in all the remaining films (excepting Sean Connery's comeback with a different studio). Q provides Bond with his trick attaché case, the first of the many gimmicks we associate with Bond. The story is a great improvement as well. On top of this, the villains in FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE represented a huge leap forward from DR. NO. In the list of the great Bond villains, both Robert Shaw's Donald 'Red' Grant and cabaret legend Lotte Lenya's Rosa Klebb rank near the top. Shaw comes across less as a human being than a highly programmed cyborg, and Lenya's sadistic turn as a poisoned-knife-in-shoe harpy has been often imitated. The setting for the film, Istanbul, is one of the best in the entire series. It perfect set the international tone for all subsequent Bond films. The city is used as a perfect backdrop for much of the film. Among all the other distinctions of this film, it also belongs on the short list of the great train films, with much of the film taking place on the train that travels along the route of the former Orient Express. The only film that I think rivals this one in the James Bond series is the immediate sequel, GOLDFINGER, which is my second favorite Bond film. By the way, this is one of the few films in which Bond does NOT say, "Bond, James Bond."
Rating:
Summary: The second Bond satisfies
Review: FRWL has, if anything, a more-interesting and complex storyline than its predecessor, while retaining DR. NO's plot-driven deliberate pacing. The "Bond movie" is beginning to coalesce here. M, Moneypenny and Q have their roles to play, chases and explosions abound, and the gadgetry, while more realistic than ridiculous, makes its appearance. The tragic Pedro Armendariz plays one of the best "helpful locals" in the Bond series, the colourful Kerim Bey, ably holding our attention despite the presence of Sean Connery, who has developed his James Bond into a smoother, more charming and more relaxed agent; extra-competent, but still human. Unfortunately, a great deal of time is spent on a scene which treats the Romany like nothing so much as an alien race from Star Trek, the same location for a later scene which begins the tradition of irrationally-behaving minor female characters in Bond movies. Daniela Bianchi, however, plays the sympathetic and well-crafted character of Corporal Tatiana Romanova as if she were as integral to the film as the character actually is. The movie, in spite of its larger budget, does have a couple of post-production problems. The dubbing is, in places, almost amateurish, and the camera, unfortunately, lingers on Armendariz while he applies his wound in one shot. FRWL is one of the best of the classic Bond movies, with an engaging story, interesting characters and locations, a solid orchestral soundtrack, and one of the best movie fistfights ever. It will take James Bond only one more movie, GOLDFINGER, before the real suspension-of-disbelief superheroics begin, but for those who appreciate the less-overblown Sean Connery era, FRWL will likely be a favourite. AUSTIN POWERS fans will have an additional appreciation for this movie, as it introduces the S.P.E.C.T.R.E. characters who are so thoroughly spoofed in that series. The DVD's title menu is, thankfully, much less irritating than DR. NO's. The "Inside of..." documentary is, like the one on the earlier release, interesting and remarkably reserved for a chronicle of film history. It focuses a great deal of attention on the complications involved with the production of FRWL, which were considerable, and that makes for a more exciting "making of" documentary than one might expect. This "Special Edition" DVD makes, overall, for a great Bond package.
Rating:
Summary: Now Meet The Incredible James Bond 007!
Review: From Russia With Love is perhaps the best James Bond movie ever.
Sean Connery said of all his seven films, that From Russia with Love was his best. Now you ask, how could it be better than Goldfinger? From Russia With love has a better plot, and much more suspense. The movie starts off with an introduction to Donovan "Red" Grant-the newest assasion that works for SPECTRE. SPECTRE, in revenge for their killing of Dr. No, has arranged a trap for British secret service agent James Bond 007. They are planning to offer a prized Lektor decoding machine to the British in return that 007 will go to Istanbul and safely help Tatiana Romanova defect with it. Naturally, Bond and Tatiana both don't know they are working for SPECTRE. They then plan to kill 007, and humiliate him by lying to the public that 007 was in a secret relationship with this Russian girl. The people in charge of this disastorous plan are Rosa Klebb, Kronsteen, Morzeny and Red Grant. Bond indeed does find out that a Lektor machine is up for grabs in Istanbut and goes there to get it. He meets up with an ally in the form of Kerim Bey. They enjoy a very sensous gypsy fight, only spoiled by an attack on the life of Kerim Bey. Bond meets Tataina, and they take the Lektor on a train back to Britain with Kerim Bey. Little do they all know that Grant is also on the same train. Grant kills Kerim Bey and drugs Tania. He confronts bond in a train compartment and tells the disastorous plan. He tells Bond that Tatiana had no idea she was working for SPECTRE, she thought she was doing it for Russia. He tells Bond that they taped him and Tatiana making love, and have made a letter where Tataina says she'll turn the film over to the police unless he marries her. All of that is put in order to humiliate Bond. A vicious fight breaks out between the two men, with the help of Bond's briefcase, and Bond wins. He escapes with Tatiana, dodge a deadly helicoptor chase and a speedboat chase lead by Morzeny. Blofeld learns of the plans fail, kills Kronsteen for his terrible efforts, and sends Klebb to kill Bond and retrieve the Lektor. She meets up with Bond in a hotelroom, where she tries to hot Bond with her poisonous knife, but Tatiana shoots her. Bond lives, and leaves with Tatiana. From Russia With Love is clearly one of the series best, and filled with action, suspense and an adventerous mission from 007!
Rating:
Summary: The Trend Continues...
Review: Although could you call it a trend with only two datum points to analyse? Anyway. "From Russia With Love" is closer to the original book than most later Bond films (with the exception of "On Her Majesty's Secret Service", as always with any generic statement about trends in Bond Films), but, at the same time, shows more of the sorts of things that would continue to shape further films.: While there are gadgets in the film (Robert Shaw's thuggee watch, Bond's despatch case and shoes, even the clunky black shoes with which Rosa Kleb attempts to make a pointed rejoinder...) they are, for the most part, pretty much as described in the text of the book We see the beginning of the later films' elaborately-choreographed action sequences in the helicopter and boat chase sequences. We see the trend away from real-world menaces and toward fantasy ones in the substitution of SPECTRE for the original novel's SMERSH (a real Soviet anti-espionage organisation), though the plan in the film is the same as in the book, and SPECTRE in fact recruits at least some players by masquerading as SMERSH. We also see the beginning of occasional appearances by people one might not expect to find in an escapist spy film in the person of the late Lotte Lenya (widow of composer Kurt Weill, and a star of the original "Threepenny Opera") as Rosa Kleb, the lady with the pointy shoes. We also see the beginnings of the use of things that are simply impossible (or so nearly so as to make no difference) in Bond's use of a disassemblable sniper rifle... An excellent successor to "Dr No", and an eminently-watchable bridge to the form that the series would have when it hit its stride -- a form that the next film, "Goldfinger" would even-more-closely approach. ((Former "Mad" magazine stalwarts Harvey Kurtzman and William Elder neatly parodied this film in their "Little Annie Fannie" strip in "Playboy"...))
Rating:
Summary: Bond At His Best
Review: Those used to the high-concept Bond films of recent years can use this 1963 release (its US premiere was 1964) to find out what Ian Fleming really envisioned for his super-spy. The second of the James Bond movies features solid scriptwriting, excellent supporting actors and Sean Connery in his best performance as 007. Younger or more recent Bond fans will obviously find the pace slow, but that's actually a godsend. We get to know the players as both British intelligence and SPECTRE put their plans in place -- the Brits to steal the Lektor decoding machine (with help from the Soviet cipher clerk played by Daniela Bianchi), and SPECTRE to do in Bond soon after he gets his hands on the Lektor. Lotte Lenya is brilliant as the blunt, menacing SPECTRE recruit Rosa Klebb. And Robert Shaw as her henchman, Donald "Red" Grant is nearly 007's equal in terms of both determination and physical strength, as seen by the classic fistfight on board the Orient Express. Daniela Bianchi is effective if somewhat vacuous as Tatiana (Tania) Romanova, the Russian decoding-room employee who finds herself smitten with Bond. More convincing are Pedro Armendariz as the fun-loving Kerim Bey, head of MI6's outpost in Istanbul; and Bernard Lee, who is authoritative as Bond's boss "M" (without the usual astringency). Then there's 007 himself. Unlike the somewhat thuggish Bond provided by Connery in "Dr. No," the British agent shows the cool and confidence of someone in his element. Connery is firm without overacting, and witty without being cute. "Goldfinger" may be the more gripping action film and be more loved, but "From Russia With Love" is the overall best in the Bond series and one of the best in the spy genre.
Rating:
Summary: James Bond fans: DON'T MISS!
Review: This second 007 movie, made in 1963 was action-packed with a great cast, and I guess you could also call it a comedy. It all starts when Bond is called to find a woman in Russia who is a SPECTRE agent, but switches over to Bond's side, and is spied and hunted by other vicious SPECTRE agents. Also, if you are interested in what Bond gadgets there will be in this movie, wait 'till you see them. Communicators, transmitters, shoe thorns, and the briefcase that Bond is given. So, I highly recommend this video for any Sean Connery/James Bond fan. Don't miss!
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