2. From Russia With Love (1963)

SEAN CONNERY

In the pre-credits, the film opens in a late night time scene in a mansion garden where James Bond is alternately stalking and being stalked through an ornate garden by a tall, blond assassin. Bond is captured and strangled violently to death by the man named Red Grant. Suddenly, huge floodlights switch on and 'Bond' turns out to be a man wearing a Bond mask - it's all been a training exercise staged by SPECTRE.

Kronsteen, SPECTRE's chess grandmaster and master planner has devised a plot to steal a Lektor decoding device from the Russians, and embarrass the British Secret Service in revenge for the killing of their operative Dr. No. Ex SMERSH operative Rosa Klebb is placed in charge of the mission by the sinister Blofeld and has already chosen a female operative, a Russian cypher clerk at the Istanbul embassy and has been able to keep the fact of her own defection to SPECTRE a secret. Klebb departs to SPECTRE Island, the organisation's secret training base, to assess the murderous Red Grant, "a homicidal paranoiac".


Rosa KlebbIn London, M tells Bond that Romanova, a cypher clerk at the Istanbul embassy, has contacted Station T in Turkey, asking to defect with a Lektor device, which both MI6 and the CIA have been after for years. It also appears that Romanova is claiming to be in love with Bond. Although he realizes that it's a trap, M decides that Bond should take on the mission anyway.

After a brief flirtation with Moneypenny (during which M demands the return of a photograph of Romanova he had let Bond look at earlier, signing it, with love, from Russia), Bond flies to Istanbul where he is followed both by an unkempt man in glasses and by Red Grant, on the way from the airport to meet Karim Bey, who is later almost murdered when a limpet mine attached to the wall of his house explodes.


Bond meets Kerim BeyThe next day, after spying the assassin Krilencu from a giant underground system beneath the Russian consulate using a periscope, they head for a rural gypsy settlement in the Turkish countryside, where Bey has contacts. However the gypsy camp is violently interrupted by the arrival of Krilencu's aggressive henchmen, who set about laying waste to the settlement amid much gunfire and struggling with knives. Grant is lurking nearby, and shoots any man who looks like he might be about to kill Bond and they eventually fight off the Bulgars. Bey, wounded in the attack, gets his revenge by killing Krilencu the next day with a sniper in a hotel, behind a giant facade advertising the Bob Hope / Anita Ekberg movie Call Me Bwana.

When Bond returns to his hotel suite, he finds Romanova in bed waiting for him. Bond and Romanova make love, unaware that they are being filmed by Grant and Klebb.


Bond visits the Hagia Sophia in IstanbulThe next day, Romanova heads off for a pre-arranged rendezvous at a nearby Hagia Sophia mosque. Bond spies the scruffy, bespectacled man who had followed him from the Istanbul airport, but he is soon, unseen by Bond, killed by Grant. When Bond finds the body, he also finds the plans for the Russian Consulate he has been seeking, leaving Bey highly suspicious of the simplicity of events.

Bond arranges to meet Romanova on a ferry and records her telling him about the Lektor, which is later approved by MI6 back in London. He applies for a visa from the Russian Consulate, allowing his access to the building. At a pre-arranged moment, Bey sets off an explosive charge in the chamber beneath the building releasing tear gas. In the resulting chaos, Bond is able to find Romanova and make off with the decoder on the Orient Express, pursued by Soviet security man Benz who recognises Romanova. Red Grant is already on the train. Bey and Benz are later both found dead, in a compartment in which Bey had originally over powered him.

The train continues on its journey across southern-central Europe, arriving at Beograd where Bond, meeting one of Bey's sons, arranges for an agent from Station Y to meet him at Zagreb. However there Grant intercepts the British agent and then poses as agent Nash, boarding the train with Bond as it sets off again (note "Nash" is the Russian word for "ours", a term used by the KGB to refer to its operatives). In his cabin, Bond tells 'Nash' about the Lektor and about how difficult it will be to get it across the border. Bond becomes suspicious of 'Nash' when he witnesses him spiking Romanova's drink.


Red GrantWhile she's unconscious in one part of the cabin, Grant knocks Bond out in the other half of the small cabin quarters and taunts Bond when he revives who realises that SPECTRE has been playing the Russians and the British off against each other, keeping him alive until he could get the Lektor device for them. He tells Bond that his death will be staged as a crime of passion and that they'll plant the film of Bond and Romanova making love on Romanova and a letter apparently from her threatening to release the film. However in one last attempt to save his life, Bond offers to buy his last cigarette for 50 gold sovereigns. Grant is duped into opening the booby-trapped attaché case, and eventually is killed after a violent struggle.


Bond with the flare gun as the barrels are ignitedAt Grant's pre-arranged escape point Bond leaves the train with a doped Romanova, overpowering a SPECTRE operative in the flower truck and driving off into the Balkan countryside. They are unthwarted by a helicopter, and soon board a power boat heading for Venice, but are later intercepted by small fleet of power boats armed with rifle grenades. When stray bullets puncture several barrels of fuel stored on his boat, Bond throws them overboard, pretending to surrender as he fires flares into the water which, now full of oil, explodes, engulfing the pursuing boats in flames.

Bond and Romanova finally arrive in Venice and check into a hotel, where Rosa Klebb, disguised as a maid, tries to whisk the Lektor away from under Bond's nose while he is making a phone call. However, Romanova disarms Klebb, who then tries to kick Bond with her poison tipped toe-blade but is shot by Romanova. Bond quickly says "She had her kicks.". With their mission accomplished, Bond and Romanova take time for a romantic gondola trip, and Bond throws the film of him and Romanova making love into the canal, as the credits roll and the "From Russia With Love" theme song plays.

1. Dr. No (1962)

SEAN CONNERY

The film begins in Jamaica, where British agent Commander John Strangways and his secretary are murdered (by the Three Blind Mice). James Bond is sent by M, armed with a newly acquired Walther PPK (to replace his Beretta M1934 which had jammed on a previous mission) to Jamaica to investigate their disappearances and determine whether it is related to recent disruptions of American rocket launchings at Cape Canaveral.

At the airport in Kingston, Bond walks past a suspicious female photographer who tries to take a picture of him, Bond is greeted by Mr. Jones a uniformed driver, saying he's been sent to drive him to Government House. The man, however, is actually an enemy agent who commits suicide after he is discovered, rather than risk the wrath of his boss. Later through Pleydell-Smith, the local governor, and General Potter, who regularly played cards with Strangways. Bond learns that Strangways had recently taken up fishing and that he had hired a man in the harbour named Quarrel to guide him around. Bond visits Quarrel who initially is uncooperative because he is unsure of Bond's true allegiance. After Bond beats Quarrel and Puss-Feller, a local barman aiding Quarrel, Bond meets Felix Leiter of the CIA who vouches for Bond being from the British Secret Service.


Joseph Wiseman as Julius NoWhen investigating Strangways' home, Bond finds a receipt from a local metallurgist named Professor Dent who helped Strangways by identifying rock samples from a nearby island known as Crab Key. Dent claims the rocks are average ordinary pyrites, however, Bond quickly learns that the rocks are actually radioactive. As it turns out, Dent is an agent of Dr. Julius No, the resident of Crab Key, and Dent has been ordered to kill Bond. After an unsuccessful attempt with a tarantula, Dent uses the local governor's secretary, Miss Taro to lure him to her home. When Dent arrives to murder Bond, however, Bond is prepared for him and executes Dent after a brief interrogation in which Bond learns that Strangways had been murdered.

Bond and Quarrel set sail to Crab Key where they meet Honey Ryder, an innocent scavenger of seashells. Soon after they are discovered and are forced to flee into the depths of the island where Quarrel is burned alive by Dr. No's "dragon tank" and Bond and Honey are captured. Once inside the lair, Bond and Honey are imprisoned in a luxury "guest" suite where they await dinner with Dr. No. During the meal it is revealed that Dr. No lost his hands in an unspecified manner and he has two prostheses. Additionally, Dr. No informs Bond that he was the former treasurer of the Tong and is now a member of SPECTRE (Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion) and that he is there on Crab Key disrupting American rocket launches at the nearby Cape Canaveral because his 'brilliance' was rejected by both the East and the West.

When the meeting concludes, Bond is briefly brutalized by No's henchmen and is taken prisoner until he can be further interrogated by Dr. No. Before the Doctor can see him, however, Bond escapes from his prison cell and overloads the nuclear reactor that would have been used to sabotage an American rocket launch. After a hand-to-hand fight on a descending platform in the heart of a nuclear reactor Bond manages to knock Dr. No down and escapes the lift before it plunges into the reactor's cooling vat. Dr. No, on the other hand, is unable to grip the framework of the lift due to his crude metal hands and sinks to his death in the boiling, radioactive water. Bond then escapes with Honey in a raft, and is later picked up by his employers. They throw him a rope, but Bond unties it as they are towing him away and passionately kisses Honey.