Ranking Every James Bond Film - From Worst To Best

2. From Russia With Love

Only the second James Bond film, From Russia With Love is more Hitchcock than anything else in the series, building its tension and action around a train journey through Europe. Not fully imbued with the classic Bond tropes and motifs yet, From Russia With Love is much more of a straight espionage caper, with little in the way of gadgets or gimmickry, and much in the way of slow-build narrative and actual spy work (though it did set the trend for the pre-credits action sequence). The brutal train fight between Bond and memorable villain Red Grant (Robert Shaw) is the standout, and elsewhere there's Rosa Klebb as a SPECTRE employee with a knife in her shoe, and Daniella Bianchi as main Bond Girl Tatiana, one of the most striking and endearing of all James Bond's love-interests. A studied, paced affair, From Russia With Love is Bond at its mercurial best, sticking tightly to Fleming's story to deliver a Cold War classic which was at the time unburdened by some of the more cringeworthy aspects of the Bond franchise.