From Russia with Love

Name: From Russia with Love
Genre: Action, Adventure, Thriller
Released: May 27, 1964
Duration: 115 min
Rating: 83
Cast: Lotte Lenya, Robert Shaw, Sean Connery

1964

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Universal acclaim based on 18 Critic Reviews

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Generally favorable reviews based on 108 Ratings

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8.0	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 108 Ratings

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From Russia With Love

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Movie Details & Credits

United Artists | Release Date: May 27, 1964 | GP

Starring: Lotte Lenya, Robert Shaw, Sean Connery

Summary: James Bond willingly falls into an assassination ploy involving a naive Russian beauty in order to retrieve a Soviet encryption device that was stolen by SPECTRE.

Director: Terence Young

Genre(s): Action, Adventure, Thriller

Rating: GP

Runtime: 115 min

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Critic Reviews

100

RogerEbert.com Gerardo Valero

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

IndieWire Matt Zoller Seitz

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

The Guardian Peter Bradshaw

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

John Hartl

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]

Pauline Kael

Exciting, handsomely staged, and campy.

TV Guide Magazine Staff (Not Credited)

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

The Observer (UK) Philip French

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

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VidyaBum

Oct 27, 2021

Having watched 25 Bonds from Dr.No to Spectre, I place From Russia With Love at 2/25.

The second greatest Bond movie, and Sean Connery's favorite. It's a wonderful movie, full of memorable scenes, that sense of escapism of the early Bonds, the powerful feeling of traveling a world full ofHaving watched 25 Bonds from Dr.No to Spectre, I place From Russia With Love at 2/25.

The second greatest Bond movie, and Sean Connery's favorite.

It's a wonderful movie, full of memorable scenes, that sense of escapism of the early Bonds, the powerful feeling of traveling a world full of dangers and terrors.

It's a movie that departs from the style set up by Dr.No, and that will return with the later movies, of a lone agent that lives between a vodka martini glass and some girl's arms, while shooting and bantering his way between the two. Instead, FRWL is a thriller, in the classic sense.

The movie starts not with Bond, but with SPECTRE agents devising the plan to use him. Bond doesn't feel like the hunter in this movie, but the hunted. From start to almost finish, the movie shows or implies the actions of SPECTRE and Bond is increasingly alone and in danger, the noose tightening around him, scene after scene.

There is such a great feeling of pressure, of danger, which is not detrimental to the escapism or the action, or the banter. It's a wonderful mix that makes this one sit atop the pile of a very, very large series.

A must-see.… Expand