From Russia With Love (1963)

Rating: 85%
Alright so here's the second James Bond movie, From Russia With Love.


Plot: The leader of SPECTRE, No. 1 plans to steal a Lektor cryptographic device from the Soviets, so he assigns No. 3 a.k.a. Rosa Klebb who was an ex-SMERSH operative to the case and she hires
Donald "Red" Grant as an assassin in order to murder James Bond in the process for defeating Dr. No. Meanwhile, Bond is assigned to Istanbul to recover the device from a soviet cipher clerk named Tatiana Romanova unaware that she is also an unwitting pawn for Klebb.

Now this is more like it. Because similar to many certain sequels in the past like Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Aliens, and The Empire Strikes Back, this film just took the concept of the first film and gave us the same things but with things being done so much better. Because now we get so much more into the world of James Bond by going more into SPECTRE, finally getting all sorts of gadgets from Q - on top of finally being introduced to the man himself - the story was bigger, the action was better, had a great last 20 minutes or so to finish the movie, it was just a very well made movie. I will admit that it has some issues like on how this is all over a decrypting device that they don't really go into too much details to what makes it so important other than the fact that everybody wants it and how while still a likable character, Tatiana's importance and characteristics kind of seemed to have gone down hill during most of the remainder of the film after she gave Bond the device. But both issues I personally found to be rather minor compared to everything else.

And that's my review for From Russia With Love. While it does have some issues, it's still a great film that took all the elements of James Bond and successfully brought it all to the next level making it very enjoyable and so far my favorite film from the series (though I definitely expect it be be replaced because come on, I still have only 21 more films to go.)