Film

From Russia With Love (1963)

Director: Terence Young

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Bond number two and probably the best of the lot, with a remarkably gritty, wittily exciting plot in which the international crime organisation SPECTRE implements a diabolically complex scheme, hatched by a chess grand master, designed to cause terminal deterioration in Cold War relations. Memorable for the brilliant pre-credits stalk, Lenya's lesbo sadist, Shaw's psycho assassin, the cat-and-mouse game on the Orient Express, and - by no means least - the enchanting Daniela Bianchi, so vividly alive by comparison with the plastic dollies later Bonds toyed with. To see the film again now is to see all too vividly the abject depths of mechanical mindlessness into which the series has been sinking.

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