From Russia with Love

Despite its occasional shortcomings, From Russia with Love is still a terrific Bond entry. There's true chemistry between Connery's 007 and Armendariz's Kerim Bey, and it is all the more remarkable when considering that the Mexican actor was in great pain and living his final days while the shooting took place. His character's eventual fate is among the few in the Bonds to have a real emotional impact. Read full review

A thrilling espionage adventure chock full of iconic characters, set pieces and one-liners. Read full review

From Russia With Love has two of the sexiest images I’ve ever seen: the opening credits with the names projected on belly dancers’ writhing, whirling bodies, and the scene where a bare-chested, towel-clad Bond enters his bedroom and finds Tatiana Romanova in his bed. Images like that aren’t cute. They’re primordial. Read full review

For my money, still the best Bond, with a screwball plotline that keeps the locales changing and the surprises coming—even when reason dictates that the picture should be over. Lotte Lenya and Robert Shaw make a creepy pair, and Daniela Bianchi embodies the essence of centerfold sex, circa 1964. Read full review

It may seem grainy and fusty compared to the all-action tongue-in-cheek spectaculars that came later, but it's the Bond closest to my heart. Read full review

From Russia with Love, the second of the Bonds, remains one of the best. It finds Sean Connery's 007 going up against a diabolical Lotte Lenya and a psychopathic bleached blond, Robert Shaw. All the usual ingredients have been blended in just the right proportions under Terence Young's direction. [10 Apr 1988, p.2]

There's no point in trying to tell you all the mad, naughty things that take place — the meetings with mysterious people, the encounters with beautiful girls, the bomb explosions, the chases, the violent encounter of Bond with a helicopter, a motor boat race. Nor is there any point in trying to locate the various characters in the plot, all of whom are deliciously fantastic and delightfully well played. Read full review

An intentional heehaw at whodunits, an uproarious parody that may become a classic of caricature...Sophisticated? Well, not really. But fast, smart, shrewdly directed and capably performed. And though the film will scarcely eradicate the sex and violence that encumber contemporary movies, it may at least persuade producers that sick subjects may be profitably proffered with a healthy laugh. Read full review

This film began the fine tradition of deviating from Ian Fleming's novels, which gave us the suave, sophisticated Bond over Fleming's monosyllabic misogynist. Read full review

No. 2 in the James Bond series, and the one with the most memorable villains (Robert Shaw, Lotte Lenya), the most exciting fights and chases, and Sean Connery in his prime. At this point in the series (1963), the gadgetry hadn't taken over, the budgets were still relatively modest, and the director, Terence Young, had to rely on his actors and his own filmmaking ingenuity to create excitement.[10 May 1991, p.65]

From Russia with Love is among the most tightly-plotted of all the Bond films, and, as a result, is one of the shortest. It moves briskly, blending intrigue, romance, and action into an immensely satisfying whole. Read full review

Exciting, handsomely staged, and campy.

A cracking cold war story. Read full review

Written with enough self-consciously campy humor to defuse the paranoid ideologies running rampant here, FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE is also acted with tongues held firmly in cheek. Read full review

From Russia with Love is a preposterous, skillful slab of hardhitting, sexy hokum. After a slowish start, it is directed by Terence Young at zingy pace. Read full review

Despite being recognised as one of the better 007 films (and one laudably devoid of what would later become the formulaic Bond ending), number two in the series actually proves marginally less memorable than many of the others. Read full review

In some ways, this second Bond film was already too self aware to remember to be itself. Read full review

Much of it borders on the inept and the embarrassing, and that goes for the title song sung by Matt Monro, the "singing bus-driver". Read full review