As only the second James Bond movie, and a quick sequel cranked out for release just one year after the first, From Russia with Love finds the series still in a formative stage, not entirely settled into the formula that would define it for the next several decades. In fact, From Russia in particular stands out from the majority of its follow-ups as practically the only true espionage movie in the franchise, during which the Bond character does real spying, rather than mostly running around as an action hero.
At the same time, From Russia with Love shows signs of improvement and evolution for the series. It’s a bigger, more confident film than Dr. No. It also introduces many elements that would quickly become staples, including a pre-credits teaser scene, a theme song (though only an instrumental version is heard at the opening, and the full song with lyrics is held back until the end), and the first appearances for MI6 gadget-master Q and mysterious villain Blofeld. Even if not quite all the hallmarks of his adventures are accounted for yet in this outing, Agent 007 was solidly on his way to becoming an icon.
| Title: | From Russia with Love |
| Year of Release: | 1963 |
| Director: | Terence Young |
| Watched On: | 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray |
| Also Available On: | Blu-ray Various VOD rental and purchase platforms |
In most cases, the James Bond movies make little to no effort at faithfully adapting the Ian Fleming novels from which they’re allegedly based. Many of them use Fleming’s title and little else. From Russia with Love is an outlier in this respect as well. If not quite a direct scene-for-scene translation, the film follows the main story arc of Fleming’s 1957 book (actually his fifth for the 007 character) pretty closely.
In the hopes of obtaining a highly-valuable Lektor cryptography decoding device, British Secret Service special agent James Bond travels to Istanbul and partners with the intelligence head of station there, a man named Kerim Bey (Pedro Armendariz), to investigate beautiful Russian consulate worker Tatiana Romanova (Daniela Bianchi), who claims to have fallen in love with photographs of Bond and wishes to defect West to be with him. Her story seems ridiculous, but the Lektor is too tempting to ignore, even if it’s very likely the bait in a trap.
Indeed, an elaborate scheme is afoot, but (in a change from Fleming’s version), not by the Russians. In the movie, former Russian agents Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenye) and Kronsteen (Vladek Sheybal) have secretly joined international terrorist organization SPECTRE, and are using Romanova as a pawn to play the British and Russians against one another so that SPECTRE can claim the decoder for itself. If this additional plot twist may sound needlessly convoluted, it actually greatly helps to clarify Krosteen’s plan, which didn’t especially make much sense in the book.
In other respects, much of Fleming’s novel makes its way to the screen in a surprisingly recognizable fashion. Many key scenes, including the secret tunnel beneath the Russian embassy, Bond’s fight with assassin Red Grant (Robert Shaw) aboard the Orient Express, and Roba Klebb’s famous switchblade shoe, are taken straight from the page.
Although Fleming purists will surely balk, my personal opinion is that the movie improves upon its source by tightening some of the author’s sloppy plotting – and even more so by the charismatic star turn from Sean Connery, delivering a fully engaged and compelling performance. In these early entries before the actor started to tire of the role, Connery plays Bond as notably more clever and charming (and less abjectly racist) than Fleming wrote the character. The Fleming books can be very tough reads today, but the movies remain totally enjoyable.
I love all the James Bond movies, even the bad ones. Sean Connery has a special mystique as the definitive portrayal of James Bond. From Russia with Love may not be the best of his efforts (the story’s stakes aren’t especially high, and the pacing drags a bit too much in the middle), but it’s a small step up from Dr. No and I’m happy to revisit it whenever an excuse to do so arises.
The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
From Russia with Love makes its debut on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray as part of the Sean Connery 6-Film Collection from MGM, available in either an expensive Limited Edition SteelBook box set or a basic keepcase. Because I already have enough James Bond Blu-ray SteelBooks on my shelf, I bought the less expensive offering, despite its frankly puzzling cover art. I will likely move all the discs from it into my Blu-ray cases.
All the Bond films in this collection have been newly remastered with video transfers that differ from the older Blu-rays (first released back in 2008) in several respects. Much like the previously-reviewed Dr. No, the 4K edition of From Russia with Love has been slightly reframed to an aspect ratio of about 1.75:1 rather than the Blu-ray’s 1.66:1, to negligible effect. More noticeably, the 4K transfer is both softer and grainier than the 1080p Blu-ray, which had been heavily worked-over with invasive digital processing to sharpen and clean it up. While I rated that Blu-ray highly at the time, and honestly still think it holds up pretty well overall, I’ll admit that it left some room for improvement.
Much like Dr. No, in general I think this 4K remaster looks a little more filmic and natural than the Blu-ray. However, the softness can be frustrating, in that the image often looks slightly out of focus. Even more so than the prior movie, From Russia with Love features a great number of optical composites and other analog process shots that reduce picture quality and leave the photography with a dupey appearance. The Blu-ray master by Lowry Digital went to a great deal of effort to tweak and enhance those scenes, to sometimes controversial results. The 4K transfer mostly leaves the dupes looking like dupes. Some viewers will appreciate that more than others.
With that said, I’m not entirely convinced that the 4K transfer is truly a “pure” representation of the original photography, either. I suspect that it’s also had a great deal of digital manipulation, just of a different sort than the Blu-ray did. As I said with Dr. No, the picture often has a weird oily texture that doesn’t quite look right to me.
All the same, the 4K disc is very watchable. It has nice color, and the HDR grade is subtly applied. On my screen, it’s just a touch darker than the Blu-ray. That’s not much of a problem, except that I was left wishing for a little more brightness on the dancing girls during the opening credits, which have more tactile clarity on the Blu-ray.
The soundtrack comes in a choice of either the original theatrical mono or a new Dolby Atmos remix. Neither is ideal, but I came out preferring the mono, here offered in lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (an improvement over the heavily-compressed Dolby Digital version on the Blu-ray).
From Russia with Love is a low-budget movie from 1963, and its audio recording and mixing have always suffered some inherent limitations. The mono track is a little bright and strident, and has quite a bit of background hiss. Dynamics are practically nonexistent (gunfire and explosions are extremely weak), and the frequent ADR dubbing of dialogue is very obvious in many scenes. On the other hand, the mono is mostly unfiltered, and generally sounds to have more detail and life than the alternative.
From what I can tell, the Atmos track is built off the older 5.1 remix found on DVD and Blu-ray, which I didn’t care much for either. It’s significantly rolled-off at the high-end, while bass at the low-end has been artificially boosted and sounds muddy. I skipped ahead to the big helicopter attack scene at the climax, which has been given some modestly effective (if gimmicky) directional effects to the surround and overhead channels, but otherwise sounds even duller than the already flat mono. All things considered, this simply isn’t a movie that needs surround sound, much less Atmos.
Bonus features are all recycled from older home video editions. We start with an audio commentary track compiled from interviews with director Terence Young and other members of the cast and crew. After that are a handful of old featurettes and interviews, as well as some trailers, TV spots, and radio ads. Some of these contain interesting material, but longtime fans of the franchise have surely seen or heard them all by now.
Related
- From Russia with Love
- Other James Bond Movies
- James Bond Parody
- Robert Shaw
Note: All screenshots on this page were taken from the standard Blu-ray edition of the film and are used for illustration purposes only.
The Video File Blog 
Are you embarking on a full-blown Bond rewatch? Does this mean I have to wait for 24 more reviews until you finally give us your thoughts on No Time to Die?!😀
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I’m not committing to that big an endeavor, but I am working my way through the Connery 4K set.
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