The main problem of From Russia with love...

I think From Russia with love has one main problem, it's the last part of the movie, all after Red Grant's death. There are too much action scenes which break the oppressive and menacing atmosphere the movie built. One action scene only would have been far enough I think, they could have done the final without the helicopter scene for instance. Plus, how SPECTRE agents do they know it's James Bond and not Red Grant in the truck ? The final would have been better if they had avoided doing the helicopter fight, don't you think ? Moreover, here's the problem of Tov Kronsteen's plan. Red Grant seems to have carte blanche once the Lektor recovered.

To be honest, I believe the word 'problem' isn't synonymous with From Russia With Love.

I think any film may have a problem, even though I surely misemployed the word here. Find problems to From Russia with love means being hard to please. :)

After rewatching it Friday night, the only problem I have is that when Red Grant opens the attache case with the explosive tear gas cartridge, the camera is on Bond and not on Grant. I enjoyed all the extended action sequences post-train in FRWL. Then again I also like the outer space battles in MR, the undewater scenes in TB and the sinking house scene in CR so take it for whatever it's worth.

I think Sturmbannführer von Hergesheimer has a point.

FRWL is a fine film in many ways, but it has too many endings, a failing more common in films made post-2000.

The film becomes a forebearer to the later horrors of Hamilton the moment Grant has a personality transplant and sacrifices his ruthless efficiency to arse around over some coins. IMO. Rest of the film up to that point is pretty much perfect.

I agree with Herg-o. They overdid the climax(es). The fight with Grant could've sealed the deal nicely, no need for choppers and boats.

I really like the chopper bit actually, for a couple reasons - you'd expect SPECTRE to at least be on top of things enough to send someone in immediately if Grant failed. And the second - Bond shooting the guy holding the grenade to destroy the helicopter is quite clever (imo, anyway).

The boat chase, however, is ridiculous. FRWL's all about making the ridiculous believable, but it's too much there. Not to mention the terrible music. Would've been fine to have Bond and Tanya hijack the boat and then cut to the Klebb wrap-up.

Shame the helicopter and boat sequences couldn't been replaced with footage of Tatiana's tits bouncing around in the back of that pickup truck.

Mr. Brown wrote:

Shame the helicopter and boat sequences couldn't been replaced with footage of Tatiana's tits bouncing around in the back of that pickup truck.

I like the way this man thinks. Someone get him behind a camera on a Bond film, ASAP.

I too always tend to get a little bored after Grant has had his. At any rate one of the scenes is too much. Have either the helicopter OR the boat chase, not both.

Kennon wrote:

I too always tend to get a little bored after Grant has had his. At any rate one of the scenes is too much. Have either the helicopter OR the boat chase, not both.

Yep.

In, truth nearly every Bond film is a bit overlong. Most of them could afford to lose a sequence or two.

Fleming jumped straight from the train to the ending essentially in the novel.
Maibaum adding in these elements actually give us a bit more of a realistic glimpse of Bond getting away with the Lektor. Like his other changes to the story for the film it both makes a bit more sense and provides us with something to be excited about as an audience.
If you were S.P.E.C.T.R.E. after going to all of this elaborate effort, why let Bond simply walk away?
And although the helicopter sequence copies North by Northwest, there's no process photography and you actually see a stuntman and Connery leaping about in front of that low flying chopper.

The tear gas going of while we're still looking at Bond has always puzzled me. We're on Bond's reaction shot to heighten his suspense on Grant opening the case. But then it does open and we stay on Bond for an instant more. It works because we have the sound already coming in and the suspense is stretched out to the maximum because we stay on Bond for so long. Chalk it up to Peter Hunt having a bit of fun with us I guess.

Ayn Rand on FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE from her book The Romantic Manifesto.

Quote :

If you think that the producers of mass-media entertainment are motivated primarily by commercial greed, check your premises and observe that the producers of the James Bond movies seem to be intent on undercutting their own success.

Contrary to somebody's strenuously spread assertions, there was nothing "tongue-in-cheek" about the first of these movies, Dr. No. It was a brilliant example of Romantic screen art—in production, direction, writing, photography and, most particularly, in the performance of Sean Connery. His first introduction on the screen was a gem of dramatic technique, elegance, wit and understatement: when, in response to a question about his name, we saw his first closeup and he answered quietly: "Bond. James Bond"—the audience, on the night I saw it, burst into applause.

There wasn't much applause on the night when I saw his second movie, From Russia with Love. Here, Bond was introduced pecking with schoolboy kisses at the face of a vapid-looking girl in a bathing suit. The story was muddled and, at times, unintelligible. The skillfully constructed, dramatic suspense of Fleming's climax was replaced by conventional stuff, such as old-fashioned chases, involving nothing but crude physical danger.

Largo's Shark wrote:

The skillfully constructed, dramatic suspense of Fleming's climax was replaced by conventional stuff, such as old-fashioned chases, involving nothing but crude physical danger.

Rand makes a fair point here.

Reckon she'd have made a good Rosa Klebb too.

Lazenby. wrote:

The film becomes a forebearer to the later horrors of Hamilton the moment Grant has a personality transplant and sacrifices his ruthless efficiency to arse around over some coins. IMO. Rest of the film up to that point is pretty much perfect.

THANK YOU!

Someone finally said it after almost 50 years!

I've been saying this for as long as I remember watching FRWL and I've said it every time after each repeated viewing.

Grant could had given Bond a cigarette, kill him and then gotten the coins himself afterward.

For a highly efficient and professional killer, he sure showed some poor judgement over a few coins.

BS!

Grant was a merciless, greedy, psychotic bastard and by his wonderful Fleming characterization he would indeed have been greedy. The underplaying and subtleties of Shaw's performance reiterate this.

As I said in the other FRWL thread:
Young's direction is perfect and elegant throughout...until Grant's death. This is a problem in the novel and for the script the jump back to later events is instead transformed into a series of mini-chases that are themselves not entirely inspired. What is however is the realism of these attempts.
This is S.P.E.C.T.R.E.'s last ditch "kill Bond" plan since Kronsteen's plotting has failed. So of course it will be simple and unending. 007 must reach Venice to find safe ground...or so he thinks.
Despite being shorter and without the luxury of being fully designed, the helicopter stalking has a good deal of the intensity lost in the crop duster scene in North by Northwest because the shots are fully real and were done without the assistance of plates, rear projection and obvious studio work. (Yes, I know, the rear projection of the helicopter burning is rather obvious.)

It is also simply to make the movie more interesting for an audience who wants a big ending as warranted by an action adventure film. Simply whisking away from the train, passing time in a few cuts and ending in the hotel room with Klebb would have been extremely unsatisfying.

Harmsway wrote:

In truth nearly every Bond film is a bit overlong. Most of them could afford to lose a sequence or two.

Quantum of Solace, f'rinstance?

I kind of see what you mean, as in the third act, becomes a series of chase scenes, but the chase scenes don't really add any new plot developments. After Bond kills Grant, it doesn't really need to any new plot turns as him and the Tatiana, just have to get away, and then they encounter the villains again by helicopter, defeat them and then get away again.

Then they encounter the villain by boat, defeat them and get away again. So it feels like it's just action scenes for the sake of action maybe, since it keeps recycling itself?

...Like this was a movie that needed to be padded out.

"Since we've already added SPECTRE and dispensed with most of the first third of the book, and since Fleming took us straight from Trieste to Paris, mebbe we should throw in a few chases...?"

We wouldn't see a scripting strategy like that again until pre-production on DAF and LALD.

What do you mean, are you saying DAF is all about chases as well? I can see LALD being like that since it has a lot, but DAF?

I mean that, in both cases, most of the source book was dispensed with.

Don't get me wrong, I love the chases - but it's easy to write 'chase scene' and let someone else block it out. At that point the credit goes to 2nd unit director and the stunt coordinators.

Oh I don't mean that the book has to be followed exactly since most Bond novels are not. I just feel that the chases were done for the sake of chases and didn't really add anything.

But all Bond movies do this at some point it seems. In For Your Eyes Only they have action scenes that don't actually advance the plot, such as for example, when Bond and Melina are underwater with the ATAC, the villains make two attempts to take it from them, which leads to two underwater action sequences.

Then after Bond and Melina, defeat the villains in both action sequences, they make it back to their boat, only to find the remaining villains waiting for them to take the ATAC.

They could have just waited for Bond and Melina the whole time there, instead of two underwater action scenes.

In fact that would make more sense, cause why would Bond and Melina go back to the boat, knowing that the villains have likely overtaken it, since the villains already made two attempts on them underwater.

But the filmmakers wanted to have two extra underwater action sequences.

Good point, and I say the same thing about the ski/bobsled chase. If the whole point was to convince Bond that Columbo was behind everything (eg: Locke's dove pin), why was Kriegler so determined to catch/kill him, and so annoyed when he failed?

The same goes for almost all the action scenes in TWINE: unlike those in TND, f'instance, they do nothing to advance the plot. The narrative crashes to a halt for the boat chase, the ski chase, the caviar factory fight, then literally picks up again when it's over:

Bond (to Zukovski, after shooting down the last King helicopter) : "Now, where were we?"

It would have been the same story without those scenes, just not as exciting.

Why does the boat chases come crashing to a halt for TWINE though?

That was one of the problems I had with FYEO though is that why do they keep wanting to kill Bond, if they keep misleading him into going after Columbo. Is it because they believe Bond might escape all their murder attempts on him so they want a plan B then?