Plausible may be a little bit of my opinion. The first Bond Flick I saw. I was an 18 year old U.S. Marine on Okinawa and it inspired me to travel on The Orient Express to Istanbul and beyond. Dated now, but at the time, the fight scene with Robert Shaw was was so exciting not knowing that Bond always wins. I sat there riveted. A real believable. romance. When Bond orders room service for breakfast the exotic, Green Figs, Yogurt Plain and coffee very black, I thought someday I will be that cool. Having no idea what Yogurt was.

What I liked1. Like with the other two films so far of his, Connery did a great job2. It was interesting to see a movie about Russia in the sixties3. The chess scene was pretty cool to watch4. It felt like the first Bond movie that showed itself to be a part of something biggerWhat I didn't like1. The first twenty or so minutes are kind of confusing if you are not much of a Bond fanOverall I would say that this is still a very solid effort for Bond and that this movie deserves good reviews and is quite under rated compared to other Connery titles in the series.

A year after Dr. No was released in 1963, a sequel was released called From Russia with Love. The plot centers around SPECTRE. SPECTRE is angry at a certain British M16 agent named James Bond code named 007 for killing SPECTRE Operative No. 4 Dr. Julius No. So, SPECTRE Operative No. 5 Kronsteen (Vladek Sheybal) hatches a plot to kill 007 and humiliate the M16 in the process! SPECTRE Operative No. 3 and Director of Operations for SPECTRE not to mention ex-SMERSH agent Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya) offers to handle the operation and she recruits one of SPECTRE's top assassin's Donald "Red" Grant (Robert Shaw) to help her with her with the operation. Meanwhile, Bond is dispatched to Istanbul, Turkey to help a Soviet defector get to safety he is soon drawn into a sinister plot. Released a year after Dr. No in 1963, From Russia with Love fixed out whatever kinks Dr. No had and even found a way to be better then it's predecessor! Sean Connery delivers another excellent performance as James Bond, but this time he gives the character a more realistic feel. While in Dr. No, it seemed like James Bond could do no wrong, in From Russia with Love, he has a more vulnerable feel to him. This Bond is more vulnerable and the performance Seam Connery does while playing him is excellent. From Russia with Love also boosts an iconic title sequence in which the credits are projected onto the bodies of female dancers. From Russia with Love also is the first James Bond movie to feature a credit sequence sequence at the beginning of the movie. From Russia with Love also has several very electrifying action sequences. They include a crazy gunfight at a gypsy camp, an intense helicopter chase, a short but suspenseful boat chase and three brutal fight scenes including the classic brutal and iconic fight aboard the Orient Express between James Bond and Donald "Red" Grant, a maze hunt that turns out to be a SPECTRE training exercise (this is also the credit scene) and a vicious hotel room fight. There is some more excellent cinematography from Ted Moore with shots of the Hagia Sophia and the gypsy camp being particularly awesome! The villains in this film are also improvements over the Dr. No's Dr. No. There are three main villains in this film and all of them are pretty good: Morzeny who is played by Vladek Sheybal is SPECTRE Operative No. 5 Director of Planning for SPECTRE, this whole plot about killing Bond was his idea. He is also a chess champion as well. Rosa Klebb played by Lotte Lenya is an ex-SMERSH Colonel and is now SPECTRE Operative No. 3 Director of Operations for SPECTRE, she recruits a Soviet cipher clerk who is fiercely loyal to her country named Tatiana Romanova to act as bait in SPECTRE's plot to kill James Bond and humiliate the M16, she is a very creepy woman whose most memorable quality is her poisonous blade that is concealed in her shoe that she uses to try and kill Bond in his hotel room. The last main villain in this movie is Donald "Red" Grant, played by Robert Shaw, he is one of SPECTRE's top assassins and is recruited to kill James Bond, you will see him shine in his final showdown against 007 on the Orient Express. All of these villains help to make this movie better, ESPECIALLY Rosa Klebb and her killer knife in the show trick. Their are some more great performances from Bernard Lee and Lois Maxwelll as M and Miss Moneypenny, the no-nonsense pipe-smoking head of M16 and the wise-cracking, flirtatious and slightly jealous secretary even if they are very brief. Another great performance comes from Pedro Armendariz who plays the cocky and gruff head of Station T Ali Kerim Bay. He has excellent chemistry with Connery and is one of the best Bond allies of all times in my opinion. It is so sad that he commuted suicide days after the film was released. This film also introduced gadget to the Bond franchise, in this film Bond gets a attaché case filled with useful stuff: gun ammo contained in the front of the case, a AR-7 sniper gun attachment with telescopic lens inside of the case, a throwing knife inside the padding of the case, 50 gold Sovereigns also inside of the padding and a cartridge of tear gas that will explode if you open the case improperly. From Russia with Love's musical score led by John Barry is much better then Dr. No's choppy score led by Monty Norman. This movie also has the first official theme song of the James Bond movies. From Russia with Love is the name of the theme song and it is sung by Matt Monro. The song mixes crooning lyrics with orchestra and some tambourine and piano, and while it isn't the best Bond song, it is still a very good start. The Bond Girl in this movie is Tatiana Romanova played by the beyond gorgeous Daniela Bianchi, Tatiana is a cipher clerk working at the Soviet Embassy, she is fiercely loyal to her country and when she is recruited for a SMERSH mission, she falls in love with James Bond. She is a slight improvement over Honey Ryder because she is in most of the movie, shoots a main villain and in my opinion is MORE BEAUTIFUL THEN URSULA ANDRESS! In my opinion, she is the most beautiful and the best Bond Gifl of all. Some great producing from Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli and some great directing from Terence Young are the final perfect touches. This film might have some flaws, (the fact that Kronsteen has a very small part in the movie and the horrible editing job done by Peter Hunt). But really this film is actually an improvement over the predecessor and is one of the best Bonds of all.

My first memories of the James Bond movies go back to the age of twelve, which means more than two decades ago. I had seen all the early 'Connery' but one: "From Russia With Love" and ever since this period, the film remained a big mystery. I didn't know what to expect from it, but this lack of expectations was integral to the enjoyment. And it was indeed, quite a discovery and one hell of a spy thriller, James Bond or no James Bond. Indeed, the paradox of Terence Young's second work is that its un-Bond like quality makes it one of the best."Dr. No" started them all, it needed to hook the audience to so many levels of entertainment it could ensure immediate follow-ups: it was an espionage movie, a thriller, an adventure and action picture, a sexy film by the era's standards and more than that, it relied on the manly screen-charisma of Sean Connery, tough, rough, but also charming and witty when required. And two years later, the audience had the consummate James Bond film with all the archetypes settled: the Aston Martin, the grand-scale egomaniac mastermind, the chases and the girls. Every single scene was a classic, and one can almost say if you saw "Goldfinger" you've seen them all, except for "From Russia With Love".Given my personal reception of "Dr. No" and "Goldfinger", I didn't know exactly what the in-betweener would offer in order to enjoy it and appreciate it with the same passion, and that's exactly what I got, something unexpected. The film is a gritty, low-key, and such a realistic (by Bond's standards) thriller, that it could have been a non-James Bond film and still be enjoyable. Even the plot is intelligent and intricate without being too contrived, and it can be foreshadowed by two key scenes: a chess game and a fight between two fishes, weakening one another while the one that doesn't fight will stay the strongest. This is the plot in a nutshell, pushing Bond to make some predictable moves and then get rid of him once he retrieves a Soviet encryption device. The SPECTRE organization pulls the strings.The piece of the chess game is a Russian beauty named Tatiana, played by Daniela Bianchi, and the "third fish" is an agent named Red Grant. And once Bond gets in the game, it's a real cat-and-mouse thriller that surprises through its restrained tone and confined settings. There are a few boat and helicopter chases but they're so late in the film they were probably not meant to be the highlights. This is a film where the interactions actually count more than the action, and therefore create a necessity, which is to make the characters realistic even within that complicated plot. And on that level, if "From Russia With Love" isn't the best James Bond, which is debatable, it is the best acted. And it starts with Sir Sean Connery.I was really impressed by the intensity of the situations and the performance of Connery that conveyed the most pain of his job, more than the exhilaration, for once. Maybe it is easy to play such a cool and charismatic hero, but here, Connery deserves a solid mention, because when you look at some scenes, you don't really envy him, which means a lot, speaking about Bond. He even manages to find an expression in the opening scene, that looks so un-Bond like, he looks scared, but not Bond scared, cowardly scared, and there was a 'reason' for that. But the real Bond is a charming and sociable man who even grows a friendship with a Turkish host played by Pedro Armendariz, an actor I had just discovered and whom I was sad to learn his passing early after the film.I was terribly saddened by his character's death as well, but it was the trigger to Grant's entrance in the the arena and it was meant to make his conflict with Bond, more personal, Bond can't escape the train literally, and the mano-a-mano confrontation with Grant was the film's most intense moment. No music, no effects, just the real struggle of a man trying to battle a stronger opponent. And the second fight with the other villain, played by Lotte Lenya wasn't less fascinating. It says a lot when the villains are not just disposable henchmen and when you almost feel sorry for them when they die. Lenya was perfect but so was, the blonde and handsome Robert Shaw as a guy who means business, who is competent and valuable and not just a grotesque, ugly villain, a realistic counterpart to a realistic Bond. In fact, he was so great I wish he could be a recurring villain. There was no archetype in this 'Bond', he stayed with the same girl throughout the film and Tatiana was more than the sexy foil, she's played as a fully developed person with a real sensitivity. We know she has nothing against Bond but she had no choice from the start. There's a real relationship going between these two as "From Russia With Love" is about three-dimensional characters, and they count more than the plot, there's no much escapism but that helps to emphasize the entrapment everyone's caught in. And if it doesn't have that fun and sparkle of the usual James Bond movies, it still manages to be an outstanding achievement, being 'that' James Bond film that doesn't feel like the others. It has its over-the-top creative moments such as a man ambushed from the mouth of wall-size Anita Ekberg and a Gypsy cat-fight but it's in the tension and the quiet moments that the film gets interesting. My only complaint is the loud use of the James Bond's theme during that scene where Bond inspects his hotel room, , it was useless and distracting. Apart from that moment, I enjoyed every minute of the film, sometimes, every second.