Bond is closest to Ian Fleming sourcein 'From Russia With Love

From Russia With Love (1963)
Starring: Sean Connery, Daniela Bianchi, Lotte Lenya, and Robert Shaw
Director: Terrence Young
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

When British secret agent James Bond (Connery) is dispatched to Turkey to retreieve a Russian defector (Bianchi) and a decoder machine she is willing to surrender to British Intelligence. However, he soon finds himself in a trap contrieved by international criminal cartel SPECTRE and its shadowy leader, Blofeld.


"From Russia With Love" is perhaps the most straight-forward and most realistic spy movie in the entire James Bond series. The film spends its time in spy-vs-spy territory, the gadgetry is kept to a minimum, and even Bond keeps a relatively low profile throughout. There are some nice set-pieces and some amusing one-liners, but they all take place within a framework far more realstic than any other of the classic Bond films.

(I'm loathe to mention this, but "From Russia With Love" is similar in tone and feel to the Timothy Dalton-starring "License to Kill". Both films are free of the comic-book action that is the hallmark of most Bond films... but "From Russia" has a leg up on "License" in that the former movie is actually entertaining.)

Sean Connery does 'High Noon' in space

Outland (1981)
Starring: Sean Connery, Peter Boyle, Frances Sternhagen, James B. Sikking, and Kika Markham
Director: Peter Hyams
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

When Federal Marshall O'Neill (Connery) arrives at the remote mining colony on Io, it becomes apparent in short order to everyone that there's a "new sheriff in town." However, when vicious drug-smugglers hire assassins to take out O'Neill, he finds himself fighting for his life, alone.


"Outland" is a traditional western that's been transplanted into space... it's "High Noon" on a moon around Jupiter. As such, it's an action-filled morality play that I think just about everyone who loves movies should find something to like about.

It's got a great cast, expert pacing, great sets, and a fantastic score. It's one of those rare films where everthing's perfect. It's also a film that doesn't show up on TV nearly enough.

Could the detective be the killer?

Murder on the Orient Express (1974)
Starring: Albert Finney, Martin Balsam, Lauren Bacall, Richard Widmark, Anthony Perkins, Sean Connery, Ingrid Bergman, John Gielgud, Wendy Hiller, Jean Pierre Cassel, Michael York, Jacqueline Bisset, and Vanessa Redgrave
Director: Sidney Lumet
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

While traveling westward on the Orient Express, celebrated detective Hercule Poirot (Finney) must solve the murder of an unpleasant passenger as the train is halted by a mudslide. The case is complicated by the fact that virtually none of his fellow passengers are telling the truth or are who they appear to be, and that Poirot is apparently the only person without an iron-clad alibi.


"Murder on the Orient Express" is an excellent adaptation of one of Agatha Christie's best mystery tales. It manages to streamline a very complex and tangled scenario while keeping Christie's original narraive mostly intact. It also features an excellent cast giving great performances, with Albert Finney as the Great Detective, Lauren Bacall as an annoying American widow, and John Gielgud as an acid-tongued gentleman's gentleman being particularly noteworthy.

The weakness of the film is that it's slow in getting underway and that when it's finally got a good head of steam going, the mystery is solved and the movie ends. It causes the viewer to swing from a "get on with it!" sensibility to a "wait... that's all?" mindset. I think that if the movie had been more carefully edited, losing perhaps as little as five or ten minutes of running time during its first act, the film would have carried alot more tension.

That's not to say that what's here isn't good... it's very good and it's definately worth seeing for fans of period films and "cozy" mysteries. (On a personal note, the solution to the mystery in this film really creeped me out as a child, and I partially watched it again to see if it had remained as impactful. I didn't have quite the reaction I remember, but it is well delivered.)

Diamonds are forever, even if Bond isn't

Another review from when James Bond movies were entertaining.

Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
Starring: Sean Connery, Jill St. John, Jimmy Dean, Charles Gray, Bruce Glover, and Putter Smith
Director: Guy Hamilton

British secret agent James Bond (Connery) impersonates an international diamond smuggler to figure out why a reclusive American business magnate (Dean) is acquiring large amount of diamonds. He soon discovers that his old nemesis Ernst Blofeld (Gray) is lurking in the background.


"Diamonds Are Forever" is another of my favorite Bond movie. It's perhaps the quirkiest of the series, with a level of flip humor that rises almost to the level of some of the later Roger Moore films,and of the series' goofiest chase scenes that sees Bond escaping a research lab in a moon buggy while being pursued by security guards in sedans and on pocket-bikes; yet, the film has a dark center, where a creepy pair of assassins stalking Bond at every turn (the flamboyantly gay couple of Mr. Kidd and Mr. Wint, played with great flair by Glover and Smith) and evil mastermind Blofeld can easily commandeer the resources of a financial empire and the United States government in order to threaten the world.

The film also features one of the most likable Bond Girls ever. The almost-never fully clad Tiffany Case (St. John) brings her considerable assets to film with a twinkle of comic relief--and nothing is more amusing and fun to look at than the outfit she shows up in at one point after being told to put on some more clothes.

Much has been written about the film being homophobic, because it features a pair of pyschopathic, flamingly gay--and so polite that they are every etiquette coach's dream--characters. I think this says more about a pathological hysteria present in the ultra-PC crowd than anything that's actually on screen in "Diamonds Are Forever." Having gay villains in a film is homophobic? Does Blofeld admiring Tiffany Case's ass mean the movie-makers fear straight people, too? No, it doesn't. What it means is that some critics are idiots who probably need therapy.

Another strong element of the film its score. It doesn't have the lasting presence that the "Goldfinger" and "From Russia With Love" music had on the series--themes from which keep popping up for the next decade or more, including this one--but John Barry turns in another excellent effort. The theme song is one of the best so far in the entire series, and Barry incorporates the very hummable tune into several different sequences, and sometimes in very creative ways.

A very enjoyable entry in the Bond series that I think gets unfairly dumped on.

'Goldfinger' is Bond at his greatest

Goldfinger (1964)
Starring: Sean Connery, Gert Frobe, and Honor Blackman
Director: Guy Hamilton
Rating: Ten of Ten Stars

British secret agent James Bond (Connery) is sent to investigate suspicious dealings of megalomanical billionaire Auric Goldfinger (Frobe). Bond uncovers that Goldfinger is involved in criminal activity on a far grander scale than anyone had suspected in their wildest nightmares.


"Goldfinger" is the James Bond movie that set the standard for all the (good) James Bond movies that followed. It was the first to introduce wild gadgetry and a tongue-in-cheek tone, which took the series and character away from its Ian Fleming roots, but gave the series the elements that have sustained it for over 40 years.

This is also the best James Bond movie so far, and it features one my all-time favorite movie exchanges...

Bond (strapped to a table, while a laserbeam is slowly moving into position to slice him in half): Do you expect me to talk?

Goldfinger (with a laugh, as he walks away): No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die.

It's perhaps the only time in the entire series where the inflappable Mr. Bond was in genuine fear for his life, and Goldfinger still stands as the classiest, coldest Bond villian of them all. He also had the best sidekicks, from pilot Pussy Galore to Oddjob (he of the lethal bowler hat). From the opening titles through the final (and surprising) deadly encounter between Bond and the bad guys, every thing in this film works perfectly. The cast is fabulous, the pacing is flawless, and the John Barry/Monte Norman soundtrack still stands as one of the very best Bond scores.

They keep the gritty, depressing James Bond reboot that has been inflicted upon the movie going public. I'll stick with the classics.

Connery is Bond one last time... and he rules!

Never Say Never Again (1983)
Starring: Sean Connery, Max von Sydow, Barbara Carerra, Klaus Maria Brandauer, Kim Bassinger, Bernie Casey and Alec McCowen
Director: Irvin Kershner
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

An aging James Bond (Connery) returns to field-agent work when SPECTRE's leader Blofeld (Von Sydow) resurfaces and steals two nuclear warheads.


"Never Say Never Again" is one of those rare times when the movie-going public actually came out ahead as a result of a legal battle between producers. This movie came about because of a settlement relating to the film rights to Ian Fleming's James Bond character, and, while it's a remake of "Thunderball" and not part of the official James Bond movie canon, it's actually a pretty good Bond film. At least if you enjoy classic Bond... if you're a fan of the Daniel Craig movies, you might not like it that much.

Connery's final performance as James Bond (a decade after he swore he'd never play the character again) isn't quite up to "Goldfinger" or "Diamonds Are Forever", but it's still quite good. The mix of humor and coldbloodness that marked Connery's Bond, however, is here in full force and it helps the film immensely.

What also helps the film is Max Von Sydow's Blofeld. It's too bad he didn't play the character in a "real" Bond movie, because he is the best Blofeld save Charles Gray.

And there's the gorgeous Barbara Carerra, who plays one of the very best and sexiest femme fatales to appear in any Bond movie. She was an actress I wanted to see more of in this film, in every sense of that phrase.

For a different take on James Bond, you're better off checking out "Never Say Never Again" than those Daniel Craig films, particularly if you're an old coot who enjoyed "Goldfinger", "From Russia With Love" and "Diamonds are Forever".






(The illo in this post was "borrowed" from the Illustrated 007 blog; it was the poster for the Thai release of "Never Say Never Again," and I LOVE those collage-style poster/cover images! Click here to check out more great James Bond-related artwork.;