PG, 1 hr. 55 min. Directed by: Terence Young. Release Date: April 8, 1964. DVD Release Date: March 28, 2006.
There are folks out there who love From Russia With Love, putting it somewhere at the top of their rankings of this long-running series of films. It has all the right elements: shoot-outs, vehicular chases, beautiful women throwing themselves at Bond for all the wrong reasons, intrigue, villain monologues that allow Bond the chance to escape, and exotic locales in the form of Istanbul, Zagreb, and Venice. In some ways, Russia puts itself as Bond on PCP, because every element seems to follow Fleming's master formula so closely. There's a reason that the man's stories and later movies made him so successful, and this particular installment of the Bond series seems not only to depend on that success, but to give the fans all that they could want, and more. It's a bit like being beaten to death with the things that make you enjoy the premise.
As you might expect, From Russia With Love is severely rooted in Cold War politics, putting Western and Soviet interests at each others' throats over a machine that seems to be loosely based on the German "Engyma" decoding machine from World War I. Austin Powers fans will note that there are several elements of this movie that contributed to the spoof trilogy, (although rumor has it there will soon be a fourth AP installment, Thunderballs) including Frau Farbissina and the appearance of a villain with a cat. This has to be one of the shortest Bond movie ever, at just under two hours, and I didn't get that feeling that a lot of time had passed, as I do with a great number of these movies, which seem to run at somewhere between 2 and 2.5 hours.
While this doesn't rank among my favorite Bond films, it is a thoroughly enjoyable movie. There is no shortage of Bond-style action, including multiple mass gunfight scenes, murder and mayhem both happen at regular intervals, and in truth, most of the last half of the film is a chase scene, wherein Bond tries to escape Soviet-controlled territories with a defector. Of course, because this follows formula (and cannon) so closely, the movie is fairly predictable. Many of the elements of the film are reused in other installments of the series, so if you, like me, watched these in some hodgepodge, anti-chronological fashion, you're probably going to think that several parts of the film are vaguely familiar. What is it about people getting the drop on Bond when he's either in the tub/shower or about to get in?
I haven't watched this in a good long while, and I'm thinking I should revisit it more often. While far from perfect, this movie really is the identikit Bond adventure.
