From Russia with Love (James Bond) [Blu-ray]

From Russia with Love, the second Bond film, is a favorite, second only to Goldfinger in my view, if only because it has absolutely no outrageous gimmickry, though I may be biased to Goldfinger because I spent many of my youthful days, on both sides of the filming at the Fontainebleau Hotel's pool and beach, thus the movie reflects those happy days, when getting on a plane was as easy as firing a Walther PPK. Painting girls wasn't that easy. From Russia has good villains though, which is very important and often not properly cast, as in Connery's space movie, Outland, where the lack of a good villain sort of ruined the flick. From Russia also has a gypsy cat fight and perhaps the best fight to the death in cinema. The Lowry Digital Imaging restoration and upgrade to Blu-ray shows off Bond's impeccably tailored suits nicely, and the Dolby 5.1 transformation from the original mono track is also very well done. Worth the upgrade cost, the re-watching is definitely enhanced.

An already prime example of the attraction for Bond movies, From Russia with Love may be the finest of the Sean Connery era. The BluRay treatment brings new life to this classic Bond film and imbues it with a dynamism not so obviously felt in previous DVD releases. A great movie and a great medium.

Having grown up on the original Bond series I am very familiar with this film. I've seen it on the big screen, little screen and at the drive-in theatre. The detail and color of this Blu-ray edition revealed aspects of the photography I've never seen before. If your most recent copy of FRWL is on VHS, the price is worth the upgrade.

Product is in new condition, never opened. Was exactly what I needed, down to the DVD cover. Moderately fast shipping, no problems. Recommended.

It isn't only silly gadgets, childish gimmickry and (more recently) CGI inanity that have deprived modern films of any semblance of realism, it is also what more recent films have done to the ancient, primordial art of hand-to-hand combat. If you examine Bond's fight in the train car, you will observe that the scene captures how people actually fight in real life. No high flying kicks, no silly poses, no Kung-fu ballet and gymnastics. No, this Bond fight wasn't any of those things. It was as real as I've seen on film. It's a shame that I had to go back nearly 50 years to see a "real" fight captured on film. And that fight scene has stayed with me and made an impression I won't soon forget mainly for its realism and superiority over what would follow in the decades to come.

I suppose much of the blame for the corruption of hand-to-hand combat scenes can be laid at the feet of Bruce Lee. And it pains me to say this, as I was an obsessive Bruce Lee fanatic growing up. But once Lee and his imitators started with the ballet, gymnastics and dancing, realistic looking fights were no longer choreographed in films. In the spy genre, I suppose the last Bourne film certainly went a long way toward capturing the rhythm and feel of real martial combat. But compared to FRWL, it too was stylized and too elegant to look real.

This is a great movie. Everything is well done. Even the effects remain effective and actually look better and more real than the CGI junk being done today.