Wednesday, March 06, 2013

Logging

Film:  From Russia With Love

Don't believe I had ever seen this one in its entirety.  Most of my early exposure to James Bond was catching them on TBS when I was a youngster and so I would watch bits and pieces of a lot of them.  Eventually, I watched my favorites in full, but don't remember seeing this one.  A rather good Bond, I'd say.  Would work as a stand alone spy movie.  Felt smaller in scale than many of the later ones.  I know they always say From Russia With Love is what made the Bond formula, but I actually think Goldfinger is the most prototypical "Bond" and FRWL is a bit different.  Just that Bond doesn't enter the film until minute 18 (if you don't include the clever opening) and so much of the bad guy plot remains hidden from Bond for so long makes it stand out in my eyes.

People don't think of Bond this way now, but at the time, it must of been considered one of the greatest sequels ever made -- and if Bond had just been a trilogy -- Dr. No, FRWL, and Goldfinger would have been an interesting case study in a trilogy actually getting better from movie-to-movie, which rarely happens nowadays.  Maybe this is why the franchise has lasted for so long.

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