Director: Terence Young
Genre: Action, Adventure, Thriller
Rating: B+
I enjoyed the second instalment in the James Bond franchise more than the first one. It's still a bit simple, but there's an improvement on the bad guys in general. It's definitely still misogynist, but the fact that the women in this film are at least semi-villainous as well as sex interests makes the way that they're treated somehow acceptable. Somehow, Bond (Connery) is less of a dick in this movie, fully embracing the awesomeness that is 007.
Following the death of Dr. No SPECTRE decides that it wants to extract revenge on Bond. Chief Planning Officer Kronsteen (Vladek Sheybal) devices a plan to steal a Lektor cryptographic device from the Soviets, sell it back to them, and get Bond killed. Ex-SMERSH operative and current SPECTRE operative Number 3 Rosa Klebb (Lenya) is put in charge of the operation and recruits Red Grant (Shaw) to assassinate Bond and Tatiana Romanova (Bianchi) to lure Bond into the trap.
I think a big part of the reason why I liked From Russia with Love more than Dr. No was because the plot was more readily defined. Right at the start we were told what was going on and why - we saw Number 1 (voiced by Eric Pohlmann), who from my understanding becomes the great villain of the series. SPECTRE became something that was real instead of something that seemed like little more than the idea of some lunatic villain. It all became more defined and real.
My favourite part of this movie, however, had to be the fact that I wasn't able to predict where it would go. Sure, I knew that Bond was going to survive - it's hard to not know that when you realize that there's another 21 movies left in the series - but I didn't know the how. I enjoyed the journey that brought me to the how. I'm not really sure what more to say; it's been a long week so far, and I think my brain might be a little fried.
I enjoyed the second instalment in the James Bond franchise more than the first one. It's still a bit simple, but there's an improvement on the bad guys in general. It's definitely still misogynist, but the fact that the women in this film are at least semi-villainous as well as sex interests makes the way that they're treated somehow acceptable. Somehow, Bond (Connery) is less of a dick in this movie, fully embracing the awesomeness that is 007.
Following the death of Dr. No SPECTRE decides that it wants to extract revenge on Bond. Chief Planning Officer Kronsteen (Vladek Sheybal) devices a plan to steal a Lektor cryptographic device from the Soviets, sell it back to them, and get Bond killed. Ex-SMERSH operative and current SPECTRE operative Number 3 Rosa Klebb (Lenya) is put in charge of the operation and recruits Red Grant (Shaw) to assassinate Bond and Tatiana Romanova (Bianchi) to lure Bond into the trap.
I think a big part of the reason why I liked From Russia with Love more than Dr. No was because the plot was more readily defined. Right at the start we were told what was going on and why - we saw Number 1 (voiced by Eric Pohlmann), who from my understanding becomes the great villain of the series. SPECTRE became something that was real instead of something that seemed like little more than the idea of some lunatic villain. It all became more defined and real.
My favourite part of this movie, however, had to be the fact that I wasn't able to predict where it would go. Sure, I knew that Bond was going to survive - it's hard to not know that when you realize that there's another 21 movies left in the series - but I didn't know the how. I enjoyed the journey that brought me to the how. I'm not really sure what more to say; it's been a long week so far, and I think my brain might be a little fried.
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