Director: Terence Young
Year of Release: 1963
Should you watch it? Yes.
Why?
From Russia With Love does a great job of following up on Dr. No and establishing some dynamics that the James Bond movies could count on to remain successful, fresh, and engaging over multiple decades. There are certain elements about James Bond stories you will be able to count on but there is also always going to be just the right amount of changes film to film to prevent the series from ever being completely repetitive. In the long run, the choices to make this film distinct from the first entry will pay off, but the filmmakers did not always execute the changes as well. The biggest issue was probably making SPECTRE such an unknown quantity with the main onscreen villain being a henchman who did not talk until his final sequence.
How is the Bond?
By film #2, Sean Connery is now so effortlessly confident as James Bond. The newest wrinkle added here is that he had a big 1v1 contest added where he had to believably take down Robert Shaw whose lethality is built up all film long. Connery does a great job of displaying the scrappiness of Bond. He’s not gonna overpower many people but he will find a way to survive. This film showed the advantage of giving Bond a partner in crime that he can bounce off of. Kerim Bey was an extremely fun sidekick for Bond and not racist bullshit like they did with Quarrel in Dr. No.
How is the Bond Woman?
After Honey Ryder did not do much besides appear once in a bathing suit, Tatiana Romanova had a very low bar to get over to be considered an improvement as a character. While the Bond woman is historically established to be a damsel in distress, there is no real inherent benefit to that dynamic in this series. Again though, Tatiana was at least more interesting than Honey.
How is the Bond Villain?
Instead of a main big bad to focus on, SPECTRE in general could best be described the villain of the film with multiple players at play including Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Rosa Klebb, and Robert Shaw’s assassin character that gets by far the most screen time. Shaw’s character is mostly silent but at the last second introduces a Bond trope that they will come to time and time again. Shaw in some ways considers Bond a rival that wants to top the famous James Bond. Or at the very least, Shaw wants to prove himself against Bond. Beyond that, SPECTRE as a concept is introduced fine. An evil group of ruling elites playing the US and Soviet Union against each other is definitely most interesting than the usual US vs. Russia feud if nothing else.
Does the film irresponsibly present the West as the hero of the world and thus promote imperialism and colonialism as inherently positive?
Yes.
The Reel World 