Awesome / From Russia with Love

The Film

"We have a saying in England - Where there's smoke, there's fire."

• Red Grant's cool professionalism all throughout is a beauty to behold. He stalks Bond through the whole movie, even saving his life once, with Bond none the wiser. Then, he has the balls to kill Bond's contact and replace him to fool Bond. And Bond is totally fooled until Grant reveals himself as a SPECTRE hitman.
  • His introduction to Rosa Klebb, where he no sells getting hit in the gut with brass knuckles.
• Kerim sniping Krilenchu. With one arm in a sling.
  "That pays many debts".
• Bond manages to kill the totally brutal Red Grant with his own wristwatch-garotte. He then retrieves his money and incriminating film from Grant's pockets, growling "You won't be needing this...'old man.'" Yeah.
  • That whole fight scene qualifies. Although it doesn't look particularly groundbreaking now, at the time movie fight scenes tended to be short and stagey. This was one of the most realistically vicious, painful-looking fight scenes yet done in cinema. The editing was similarly influential, and it's the grandaddy of every quick-cut movie fight in a confined space for the next fifty years, including The Bourne Series and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Made even more impressive by the fact that Sean Connery and Robert Shaw did most of it themselves.
• Bond's attaché case, considered by many to be his absolute best gadget. While setting the trend of Q's gadgets being disguised as everyday objects, it is also extremely useful and could be utilized on any mission.
• Bond taking out a helicopter using a sniper rifle. He shoots the co-pilot causing him to drop his grenade and thus blow it up.
  "I'd say one of their aircraft is missing".
• Bond effortlessly defeating a fleet of SPECTRE boats by dumping fuel canisters into the sea and shooting them with a flaregun.
  "We have a saying in England - where there's smoke there's fire".
• The first instance of the Blofeld Ploy. The fact that even Col. Klebb is afraid of this man tells us everything.
• Tania shooting Klebb.
• Kronsteen gets one in his first appearance. He's playing chess in Venice and receives a message from SPECTRE telling him he's required at once. So he immediately wins the game with a simple but excellent move that forces his opponent to surrender. "A brilliant coup" indeed.
• Kerim showing Bond a periscope in the sewers that gives a view of the office where the Soviet Embassy staff have their important meetings.
• Real Life examples:
  • Lotte Lenya's performance as Rosa Klebb for making a 5-foot middle-aged woman seem like a genuinely intimidating threat to James Bond.
  • Pedro Armendariz was dying of cancer during filming and in so much pain that he committed suicide shortly afterwards, even being unable to stand in some scenes, but you can't tell at all as he gives a performance bursting with enthusiasm and vitality, ending up as one of Bond's most memorable allies.

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