This second movie in the James Bond series is better than the first, DR. NO, but still not quite as good as GOLDFINGER, the third. FROM RUSSIA is notable, though, in that it's the only Sean Connery Bond film where Bond gets it on with four different women, including two gypsy women at the same time. Now that's a man with a license for more than just killing.

This time, the race is on to see who will get ahold of a new decryption technology--the good guys (British intelligence) or the bad guys (SPECTRE). SPECTRE gets the jump on 007 by sending him one of their own, a beautiful Russian woman who claims to have defected from the KGB. She doesn't even know she's working for SPECTRE (that's how clever those guys are) and she's convinced she'll be doing Mother Russia a great service by giving Bond false information. She ends up giving Bond a lot more--and falling in love with him as a result.

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE moves more slowly than most of the later Bond movies, but is still definitely entertaining, and meets the quota of chases, explosions, shootouts, belly dancers, cat fights and other degrading depictions of women. How James Bond manages to sleep with all those women and still not catch every sexually transmitted disease under the sun is beyond me. Maybe it helps to stay away from female characters named Colonel Klapp.