SIXTY YEARS LATER: FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (1963, dir by Terence Young, UK, 115mns) A look at possibly the best James Bond movie ever made

Although released in the UK in late 1963, From Russia With Love, the second movie in the James Bond movie spy series, debuted in the United States in May 1964. . .exactly sixty years ago.

In many ways it’s THIS movie that set the prototype for the modern action-adventure movie. Its influence can be felt in everything from the Indiana Jones series to the Mission Impossible series to countless popcorn entertainments of international intrigue, action set pieces, spy cloak and dagger.

Filmmakers from Steven Spielberg to Quentin Tarantino to James Cameron so wanted to direct a James Bond movie that, when rejected, ultimately found ways to make their own James Bond movies. Spielberg with Indiana Jones. Cameron with his Arnold Schwarzenegger starring True Lies (1994), Tarantino with a bit of satiric winking with his Michael Fassbender storyline in Inglorious Basterds (2009).

And later series like George Miller’s Mad Max series, while completely different in many ways, also share DNA with the James Bond series, in that they are action-adventure movies with practical car, stunt set pieces that center on law and order individuals trying to save the world (Mad Max was after all a police officer when the apocalypse came).

Even Christopher Nolan’s 2010 Inception drew inspiration from James Bond with the fashions, plotlines, and climactic sequence modeled after the snowy Blofeld layer in the Alps from 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

The James Bond formula and template both ignited and reflected a pop culture moment that lasted decades. And as recently as 2006’s Daniel Craig and Eva Green starring Casino Royale found a way to re-vitalize the spy series for new generations, forty plus years since the series had started.

The James Bond series has always, at its best, been about great escapist moviemaking. Globe trotting exotic locales, sexually appealing lead actors, scenery chewing bad guys, wild action chase sequences. Great fashion. Suspense. High stakes. Saving the world. A ticking clock. A clever henchperson with a lethal skill. . .

Although in so many ways the world has evolved (and in some ways devolved) since Bond's cinematic debut, the James Bond formula really can apply to anyone, of any gender, or background. It taps into our desire to be whip smart, agile, sexually appealing.

Yet in so many series, there are high points and peaks that can’t be denied. From Russia With Love , in this writer’s opinion, is where all the ingredients in the James Bond recipe, found their perfect balance. And it still sets a template for what the action-adventure can be at its best.

Starring the incomparable Sean Connery, From Russia With Love finds British secret service spy James Bond sent on a globe-trotting adventure to bring back a special decoding device (the Macguffin) that could help the west in its Cold War against the USSR. A beautiful Russian consulate worker, Tatiana Romonova (Daniela Bianchi, every inch as appealing as Connery) is offering to defect and bring the machine with her. However the hook of the movie is that the British know the whole set-up must be a trap. But they have to pursue it to see what lies beneath the trap. What lies beneath is a shadowy global chaos organization of spies, SPECTRE, who serve no country and just want to disrupt world order.

The James Bond movies helped establish a number of action-adventure tropes that are now staples of the genre. In From Russia With Love, we get our first real pre-credits sequence: a shocker where we see James Bond strangled by Donald Grant (the always great Robert Shaw) a sociopathic Spectre assassin. Only to learn that Bond is some poor sucker wearing a Bond mask to help train the assassins (hints and intimations of the Mission Impossible mask skull and daggery).

Shaw’s Donald Grant is surprisingly the best example of an evil James Bond doppleganger in the series. The series would try to do this kind of thing again (and again and again) but it never matched this early entry’s mirror reflections spy approach.

Though we don’t yet have the hit pop song and title sequence that would be established in the next movie Goldfinger, almost all the other elements in the Bond formula are set. In surprisingly clever Hitchcockian ways, we learn all the beats of the story before Bond and Tatiana do through early sequences where Blofeld and Spectre agents describe their plot and plan to trick BOTH the west and the Soviets.

Once we have all this info, the filmmakers can basically start their engines and treat us to a series of sequences, chases, intrigues, romances at a breathless pace.

The first half of the movie takes place in Istanbul, Turkey with great scenes of intrigue, sexual lovemaking, and massive actions setpieces at a Romany camp before taking everything to 11 with a second half extended chase sequence as Tatiana and Bond try to flee with the decoder machine back to the west.

From Russia With Love has what may be the best last forty minutes of any action-adventure movie of the modern era along with Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark (its spiritual successor). Bond and Tatiana are tricked into thinking assassin Grant is a British contact who is going to help them get back to safety. We get a tense train game of cat and mouse, a helicopter chase, a boat chase, and a final twist in an Italian hotel room. Back to back to back to back action sequences.

In many ways, if From Russia With Love is the parent of the modern action-adventure movie, Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (1935) is the grandparent. And I’m sure there’s even a silent era great-grandparent, and literary great-great grandparents that fill out this lineage.

A helicopter chase sequence in the Scottish moors inThe 39 Steps feels like the inspiration for a similar helicopter chase sequence in craggy mountains in From Russia With Love.

Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps, in which an innocent man, Richard Hanat has to go on an action-adventure odyssey to clear his name of murder and stop a spy ring from escaping England with state secrets, really did set the template for how a great action adventure movie works. There is NO boring scene in The 39 Steps. And the entire movie is just that. . .action, moving, sequence to sequence to sequence.

Hitchcock said that while he loved making such movies, they were incredibly hard work to get right. Because you basically had to cut out all the interstitial scenes that normally slow down a movie with necessary exposition YET you had to develop character, sustain suspense, audience engagement, AND constantly up the stakes.

One of the hardest balancing acts is making such escapist fare just believable enough that we go with it, yet escapist enough that it feels like we’re eating dessert for two hours.

In our current American movie moment, one of the more lamentable turns, has been a shying away from sexual chemistry and sexual interaction (whatever the gender identity) in mainstream popular moviemaking. It must be acknowledged that Bond of course was a straight male fantasy that veered too often into misogyny and stereotype.

But in retrospect, the expression of sexual desire, interest, and consumation seems more healthy than the current fear of sexuality in mainstream cinema. Somehow, someway there’s got to be a golden mean, a golden middle path.

One of the great challenges and delights of movie culture is watching how talented moviemakers discover ways to refresh a genre or story and make it relevant, captivating, and engaging for the current generation.

The action-adventure is as evergreen as Homer’s The Odyssey thousands of years ago or Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped or Treasure Island a hundred and forty years ago.

From Russia With Love is a movie high watermark for the cinematic action-adventure. This writer waits with delight and anticipation for the next moviemaker whoever she or he will be that brings it into the 21st century.

Craig Hammill is the founder.programmer of Secret Movie Club.