From Russia With Love

 

... wait a minute, they never where in Russia?

The second Bond-movie titled Agent 007 Sees Red in Sweden. SPECTRA is after revenge on the death of Dr No and their master strategist Kronsteen makes a plan in order to get their hands on a Lektor (some kind of cryptograph) and make the the British do the work and in the end kill 007.  They use newly defected soviet SMERCH member Rosa Klebb to fool Russian Tatiana to help Bond get the hand on the Lektor and their top operative Grant, Bonds equal. We are introduced to Q... although he appeared in the first movie giving 007 his Walter PPK, but it isn't the actor we all know as Q so it hardly counts, that hand him the first of all Bond-gadgets, the attache case containing a rifle, gold, knife, bullets and a tear gas cartridge.

Arriving at Istanbul... and it looks like a reenactment of the scene in Dr No when 007 gets to Jamaica, but instead of the CIA tailing Bond it's Grant and some Bulgarian spies. 007 meets with the head operative Karim Bey and Grant starts pushing the Soviets against the British by killing the Bulgarians and saving Bond at the gypsy camp... where I think Bond went to gather information with Karim Bey since he appears to be the target of the Soviet attacks. They blow up the Soviet embassy to get the Lektor and Tatiana, escape on the Orient Express, but the plan goes awry as Bey is killed by Grant and the back-up spy is intercepted by Grant before he can make contact with 007, posing as him. Grant drugs Tatiana during dinner and tries to kill Bond, but greedy as the villain's tends to be, 007 fools him with the gold in the cases so that Grant opens the armed case and gets distracted by the gas so Bond can kill him.

007 and Tatiana leaves the train, gets Grants ride, defeats an helicopter and gets on a boat, destroys some other boats, gets too Venice and there is confronted by Klebb with the famous spiked shoes. Tatiana kills her, the British get the Lektor and all ends well. 

First showing of Blofeld, the head of SPECTRA, apparently played by the actor who played Professor Dent in the first movie. Watched very seldom as a kid as well, but it's clearly better than Dr No. Interestingly the actor who played the soviet commander in the Moore-movies appeared in this movie as a SPECTRE agent and one of the Gypsie girls actor that fought each other came back for Thunderball as the assistant Paula. It's pretty much here I also notice that we have progressed a bit when it comes to... let's say gender equality. It's gets worse in the next film. And the portrayal of different ethnicities. How do you categorise a Mexican playing a turk? Or an Italian playing a Russian? 

Plot makes sense and the smarmy Kronsteen is a delight in getting the foot... but I have to agree that Klebb chose Grant and that was the only failure of the plan since Grants greed allowed 007 get the upper hand at the most crucial point in the plan. Cause really, shouldn't he have taken the cases back to SPECTRA anyway since they clearly belonged to the agents and had some special mechanisms I think SPECTRA would like to look at.