In only his second feature, James Bond was already poking fun of himself.
From Russia with Love begins under the assumption that the Bond franchise had already conquered the world. Returning star Sean Connery sneaks about a lavish garden at night, gun drawn. When he hears footsteps behind him, his sudden turn is accompanied by the blare of those soon-to-be classic horns. It’s both a jump scare and a great gag, one dependent on your knowledge and appreciation for Bond tropes.
The very notion of Bond—playboy secret agent—gets tweaked early on, as he’s chosen for the mission at hand not so much for his espionage skills, but his sex appeal. He’s essentially pimped out by the British government in the same way that Russian agent
Tatiana Romanova (Daniela Bianchi) is covertly pimped out by SPECTRE. Both agencies want this pair to get together, in hopes that their tryst will flush out a top-secret code machine being housed at the Soviet consulate in Istanbul.
Connery, in an amusing, self-deprecating performance, gives us Bond as himbo. He spends half the film not really knowing what’s going on, but keeps smiling and seducing anyway. (Bianchi’s bimbo offers less of a self-critique; to be fair, she isn’t given much material to work with.)
On the James Bond scale of objectification, From Russia with Love actually scores fairly well. You could even argue it’s egalitarian and sex positive, rather than exploitative. (Lois Maxwell’s Moneypenny has a nice moment where she’s kicked out of a boys’ club meeting where they’re listening to the audio from one of Bond’s bedroom sessions; back at her desk, she turns on the speakerphone so she can hear the rest herself.) Of course, there are also the gyrating torsos in the notorious opening-credits sequence; in terms of shameless goggling, I’m not sure the series has ever topped the moment when the two 0s of “007” are projected onto a woman’s breasts.
Even so, From Russia with Love also commits the fatal error, for a Bond film, of being a bit boring. The mission itself is so much of an afterthought that there’s hardly a lick of suspense. Robert Shaw’s SPECTRE assassin is fairly blah (until you realize this is the Robert Shaw who played Quint in Jaws). The Swiss Army briefcase Bond is given—with its hidden knife—has to be one of the jankiest gadgets in the franchise And where are the vast, villainous lairs? (SPECTRE Island basically looks like a vacation resort.) In some ways, this second Bond film was already too self aware to remember to be itself.
