hey, it's a movie! i'm not one to watch movies all that often, i just get super fidgety and lose focus, due to neurodivergent reasons. (due to that, i don't really know how to talk about movies all that well, so you'll have to excuse me if this review is a little shoddy) but i've always had a passing interest in James Bond, if only for the fact that i knew a lot of people liked Goldeneye on N64. and so, when my roommate recently showed me the From Russia With Love PS2 game, i decided to bite the bullet and force myself to sit down and watch the movie, so i could understand what's going on in the game. so, how did i like it? well, for being only the second movie in the series, i think it holds up pretty well.

now i don't know that much about 007, but one of the few things i knew going into this is that Bond has been played by a ton of people over the years. i grew up seeing bits and pieces of Daniel Craig's Bond on TV, so that's who i always associate with the character. but in FRWL, Bond is played by Sean Connery, and i think his carefully crafted sentences and suave demeanor are perfect for the spy. i mean, i guess that makes sense, he was the first guy to play him. but still, like... you get what i mean.

the plot is as follows. the Russians have a LEKTOR decoder, and they send a proposal to England to let them have it, as a deal. Bond's boss, M, wants him to get it, despite the fact that Bond has already figured out that the setup is clearly a trap. any chance they have to get a machine as powerful as the LEKTOR is a chance they're willing to take. Bond is sent to Istanbul, and the movie follows his adventures as he tries to locate the machine and its owner, as well as fighting off the Russians that are trying to get the LEKTOR out of his reach at all costs. that might not be the exact plot, but it's what i remember from when i watched it. like i said, i tend to zone out during movies, so i may have missed some details.

of course, Bond is the star of the show here, but we've got a couple of supporting characters as well. Romanova serves as the love interest here, and she's like... alright, i suppose. i dunno, she doesn't really have much of a personality outside of being just... the love interest. Kerim Bey was alright as well, and definitely had more flair to his character. Moneypenny has some pretty cute banter and is overall a fun character to see on screen, but she doesn't have that much screentime unfortunately. in terms of villains, there's Klebb, who i personally think is my favorite. she's cold, mean, and is gonna do anything in her power to stop Bond, and you really pick up on that near the end of the movie. i really liked Kronsteen's introduction where he's playing chess, it portrays him as a cold, calculated schemer and i like that archetype. but... the dude barely gets any screentime. he shows up in his introduction, the scene where Klebb is introduced, and the he just fuckin' dies and is replaced with Morzeny, who ALSO immediately dies. but this is all to say, none of them compare to Grant. one of my favorite things i noticed while watching is that Grant never says a word for the first chunk of the movie, and the first time you hear him talk, he's putting on a facade as he's disguised as Nash. it paints him as completely stonefaced, only focusing on the mission at hand, not bothering with any snappy oneliners or small talk. he's a genuine threat, and that doesn't stop once he's revealed his true colors. that scene where he and Bond fight on the train is super intense, and i really appreciate the lack of music here. instead of telling you how to feel, the movie makes natural tension by putting nothing between the viewer and the action. i think that's super cool, and is something a lot of modern media still gets wrong.

i think From Russia With Love is a pretty cool movie. it certainly isn't perfect, sometimes for night scenes they do this thing where they just darken shots they took during the day, and it doesn't look good... at all. but hey, that's the 60s for you. (and there's a couple other things in this movie that could also prompt that statement...) but it's fun, it keeps the action up the whole time, the performances are pretty entertaining, and again, this was only the second Bond movie ever. pretty good stuff! i actually watched the first Bond movie, Dr. No, directly after this one, so maybe i'll do a review of that one too.