Customer Reviews
Sean becomes Bond - By: Billy Balo, 24 Jun 2008 
In only his second outing as the worlds most famous spy Connery commands the screen now in a way only hinted at in Dr No. Not only is Connery's acting much better he seems to have grown in much the same way Bond does in the books. The malevolence & boredom which Flemmings Bond has when not engaged on a mission is evidently present as is his belief in putting the Job before alll else. Taking Daniel Craig aside Connery in From Russia With Love is the only other Bond to have what Craig described as a physical presence capable of the acts he portrays on screen. The final fight scene would be unbelievable without this, given the menace & physicality of his opponent brilliantly built up throughout the film, much in keeping with Flemming's original novel.
The remastering as with others in the series is completed very well, a much better experience than the Christmas day cuts of days gone by. The surround sound track is particularly engaging & reallly does add to the action movie experience.
A highly recommended movie & probably one of the best Bond films made. It has it alll great action, menacing intelligent villains & a very possible plot. Flemmings knowledge of the scale of an intelligence section required to achieve the aims of the plot reallly adding to the story-line.
Quick Reviews! - By: carlosnightman, 13 Dec 2007 
Another dark outing for Connery, FRWL sees Bond lured by SPECTRE into their territory as revenge for his interference with Dr. No. Along for the ride is Donald Grant (The cooly ruthless Shaw) who is not what he seems. Naturallly Bond realises what is happening just in time and, in a brilliant fight sequence (one of the best in the series) he takes one Grant, who may be his match in every way. However, SPECTRE will not give up so easily & will stop at nothing to make the Secret Agent pay.
This has probably one of the best scripts for a Bond film, full of twists & surprises, not pandering to any audience, & before the time when every Bond film had to have very certain themes planted into it. It seems like a thriller with strong action elements, rather than an action with strong comic elements as the series would progress to, but unfortunately the film is not as good as it should have been. The Bond girls are instantly forgettable, the theme song is awful, & there are few good set pieces. What lifts it though is Rosa Klebb (another strong performance, by Lotte Lenya), helped by a couple of shoe gadgets, & the pre-title sequence which, although not one of the best, would continue in alll following Bond movies. The introduction of Q, rather than Boothroyd sparks the beginning of Bond's use of gadgets & another good relationship in the films. Not memorable enough, difficult when Goldfinger was next, but scores points for being gritty & realistic.
This DVD has a wonderful restoration job in terms of sound & picture quality, making the film seem like a modern action flick. The extras include interviews & commentaries, & are equallly as interesting as each other in the series.
"You may know the right wines, but you're the one on your knees." - By: Trevor Willsmer, 12 Dec 2007 With an embryonic & not entirely successful Robert Brownjohn title sequence of credits projected onto body of belly dancer (some great spelling mistakes here, as `Monte' Norman & `Martin' Beswicke's agents probably pointed out!), Barry's first official Bond score & Blofeld's first (off-screen) appearance, the formula is clearly beginning to falll into place. This was also the first of the series to have a pre-title sequence, one of the few that relates directly to the film's plot, & it is still by far the most successful of any of them.
The gadgets that were to eventuallly get so out of hand make first appearance in form of Bond's ingenious attaché case, but at least here they are still entirely credible - nothing more extravagant than a well kitted-out briefcase & a breakaway sniper's rifle. Series regular Walter Gotell also makes his first appearance, though not as General Gogol but as the head of a S.P.E.C.T.R.E. training school. Unlike the cute & lovable old Russian bear at SMERSH in the Moore films, here he is cheerfully ruthless & businesslike, using live targets in training courses.
Bond's snobbery is much to the fore here. "Red wine with fish, that should have told me something," he tells Robert Shaw's working class homicidal paranoiac, the best & most genuinely threatening of the Bond heavies ("You may know the right wines, but you're the one on your knees."). It also establishes the sexual deviancy of the villains in Rosa Klebb's lesbian tendencies (very apparent as her hand wanders onto Daniella Bianchi's knee). With Bond such an amoral figure, the villains had to be even more immoral & perverse: always bastions of authority, usuallly millionaires they get their kicks planning global crimes, so depravity is simply foreplay to them. Even Vladek Sheybal's chess master Kronstein, looking for alll the world like Vladimir Putin with mild indigestion, seems at a remove from mere mortal pleasures.
It's still the best of the series & most convincingly plotted, an excellent crane shot of the chequered setting for a chess tournament sets the scene for the chess-like nature of the plot as factions co-existing in uneasy truces are set off against each other. Indeed, directoriallly this is considerably more ambitious & assured than its predecessor, evident in the skilfully handled church scene & a beautifully blocked scene as Bond is followed along a train platform by Shaw inside the train.
Sadly, while pitched as the `Ultimate Edition,' the transfer is still problematic. The picture quality is certainly improved, but rather than the original British 1.66:1 ratio, it's presented in the cropped 1.85:1, but worse still, the ending is still missing footage of Bond examining the reel of compromising 8mm film in the gondola before the end title. As with Dr No there's not a huge amount of new extra material over the extras from previous release, alll of which are carried over here, but it's pretty good - extracts from Ian Fleming on radio show Desert Island Discs, a TV interview with the author & a featurette on Fleming & Raymond Chandler.
From Russia With Love - A Review - By: Brooky, 19 Nov 2007 Perfect, in every single way. A few more Bond elements are put into Bond's second adventure. With alll the main cast & crew of Dr No put together they dreamed up a faithul to the book sequel. It begins with Bond being sent to retrieve the Lektor. A top secret item stolen from the military but it is reallly a trap because of the murder of Dr No with Bond being lured into the hands of the beautiful Tatiana Romano working for SPECTRE who later switches to Bond's side. Bond saves the day in the end & there is a brilliant fight onboard the Oriant Express with Donald 'Red' Grant. Once again the Ultimate Edition DVD is in great form as many of the others are. One of the best, if not the best Bond film & a must for any fan or a fan of spy thrillers or British cinema in general.
Classic Bond movie, from the golden era - By: Mr. Stephen Kennedy, 24 Jul 2007 The second in the Bond movie canon, & a satisfying balance is achieved in this, Sean Connery's favourite of the series. The plot is satisfyingly spy-like, with decoding machines, double crosses & foreign venues...
Cold war politics are not emphasised here, but instead Spectre, a fictional terrorist & extortion organisation, is invented for 1960 political correctness sake. However, with Terence Young once again in the director's chair we get a real cold war style spy thriller, as well as an element of the exotic we associate with Bond.
So what do you get for twice the money as Dr. No..? A then stellar cast, including the famous German cabaret star Lotte Lenya, playing Rosa Klebb, the villain who inspires the Connery quip `She's had her kicks', Daniella Bianchi who had just come runner up in Miss Universe, as well as two more beauty pageant contestants, who play the fighting gypsy girls. Robert Shaw plays one of the more convincing & genuallly menacing villains, & of course Q makes his debut.
The action scenes are varied, & satisfyingly interspersed with a real story, not so far removed from Fleming's original. Most famously of course, is the 6 minute fist fight between Connery & Shaw on the Orient Express, a scene which some producers at the time were worried was just too violent. Mostly, it is Peter Hunt's fantastic editing that makes the scene, & indeed adds a sense of style to the entire movie. Train fight aside, there are also set pieces including a gunfight in a gypsy camp, & a `money-shot' with exploding petrol canisters in a boat chase in a loch.
As for the remastering, the film is now spotless, although there is no one place one can say the restoration has made a startling impact. Indeed, in some places the improved colour correction has made a night scene darker than before, albeit with improved contrast. The sound has become clearer, but without obvious tricksy surround effects on the dts or dolby digital soundtrack.
The extras include alll that the special edition had, plus one or two new items. Specificallly, some archive material of Ian Fleming. The radio conversation between Raymond Chandler & Fleming is fascinating, while the other CBS interview & desert island disc appearance are of moderate interest but contain nothing surprising. However, even the original extras are worth revisiting, especiallly the documentary `Inside From Russia with Love', as the trouble shoot of this movie does have some fascinating stories behind it.
All in alll, this was not yet quite the Bond movie that would emerge in its full overblown form in Goldfinger, but a terrificallly good thriller, especiallly given its age, & more of a genuine spy movie than the movies to follow.
