Five stars all the way “From Russia with Love” 4K UHD – Sean Connery 6-Film Collection
- Bill Kelley III
- 13 hours ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 5 hours ago
4K ULTRA HD REVIEW / HDR SCREENSHOTS
2025 Restoration vs. 2010 Lowry Digital
Top: 4K/HDR - Filmmakers Mode (2025, MGM/Amazon) master.
Bottom: 4K/SDR (Digital) - Apple TV (2010, Lowry Digital) master.
Agent 007 and Tatiana Romanova try to escape via a high-powered boat to Venice, Italy.
(Click an image to scroll the larger versions)
“FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE”
4K Ultra HD; 1963; PG for violence and brief sexuality; Digital copy via Apple TV (4K), Fandango Home (4K)
Best extra: “Inside ‘From Russia, With Love’” narrated by actor Patrick Macnee, star of the British TV series “The Avengers”
BOND – JAMES BOND – is back, in a gorgeous six-film Sean Connery 4K Ultra HD Collection.
During the last few years, the original 35mm elements were rescanned in 4K. Connery, the iconic Scottish actor and former body builder (3rd place in the Mr. Universe contest) was the first to play the cool and sexy British agent 007 – with a license to kill. He set the bar for all others who took the role after him.
The first 4K scans were 15-plus years ago by the former Lowry Digital, which at the time was Hollywood’s best restoration house. Those masters were impressive at 1080p on Blu-ray and digital streaming, but showed signs of film grain reduction and other issues when they premiered on iTunes (Apple TV) in 2018 in 4K without HDR grading
WE FIRST examine the second installment in the Bond franchise, “From Russia with Love,” which has always been a fan favorite. It tops my Sean Connery Bond list with one of the series’ greatest fight sequences: Connery vs. Robert Shaw of “Jaws” on the Orient Express.
(1) The iconic James Bond introduction with the 'Gun Barrel’ shot. (2&3) A SPECTRE training session to kill British agent 007, and Irish assassin Donald 'Red’ Grant (Robert Shaw) takes the assignment. (4) The colorful title sequence was filmed at the Pinewood Studios in London. (5) Polish actor Vladek Sheybal plays SPECTRE chief planner, Czechoslovak Kronsteen, a chess grandmaster. (6) Austrian Lotte Lenya plays Soviet Intelligence officer Rosa Klebb. (7) Actor Anthony Dawson, who played Professor Dent in “Dr. No,” got the role of SPECTRE No.1 Ernst Stavro Blofeld (we only see his hands as he strokes his white Persian cat).
Producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli were already filming the first Bond film, “Dr. No” in Jamaica, when Life Magazine published President John F. Kennedy’s Top 10 Books list, which included Ian Fleming’s “From Russia with Love.” The publicity inspired Saltzman and Broccoli to bump it up to be the next Bond film.
There was one problem: the producers didn’t care for Fleming’s plot using the Soviet counterintelligence agency, SMERSH, a name actually created by Joseph Stalin. Saltzman and Broccoli decided to sidestep the Cold War friction since the Soviets had just gone toe to toe with the U.S. during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Fleming’s SPECTRE, found in other Bond novels, became the perfect villainous organization.
Actor Anthony Dawson, who played Professor Dent in “Dr. No,” got the role of SPECTRE No.1 Ernst Stavro Blofeld (we only see his hands as he strokes his white Persian cat). Austrian actor Eric Pohlmann delivers Blofeld’s voice. SPECTRE has plans to snatch the new Soviet Lektor decoding machine by enticing James Bond and a Russian cryptographer, Tatiana Romanova, played by Daniela Bianchi (Miss Italy 1962), to get the decoder from the Soviet Consulate in Istanbul. “The British always treat a trap as a challenge,” a SPECTRE operative sneers. “The British and the Russians are unaware they are now working for us.”
SPECTRE assassins include Donald “Red” Grant, played by Shaw, a convicted murderer, recruited in Tangier in 1962, and agent Rosa Klebb, played by Lotte Lenya, a Soviet Intelligence officer with killer shoes. An Austrian, Lenya popularized the music of her husband, Kurt Weill, including “Mack the Knife,” winning a Tony for her role in Weill’s “Threepenny Opera.” She was also the first to play Fräulein Schneider in the original Broadway cast of “Cabaret.”
EXTRAS
The 4K disc and digital copy houses all of the carryover bonus features including a half-dozen featurettes: Ian Fleming – The CBC interview; conversation with authors Fleming and Raymond Chandler; Fleming highlights his journalism career before World War II, fluent in three languages (German, French & Russian), which was handy when he joined the British Naval Intelligence during the war; Harry Saltzman – Showman; the exotic locations of “From Russia with Love” filmed around the historic sections of Istanbul, Turkey, including the Hagia Sophia Church (now a mosque) built in 500 AD, and the legendary luxury train the Orient Express, and a 33-minute Making of “Inside ‘From Russia, With Love.’”
There’s also an outstanding commentary featuring archive interviews with director Terence Young, editor Peter Hunt, Sean Connery, and others. We learn that the leading lady, Bianchi, was injured in an auto accident and pulled from the wreckage by Connery and Mexican actor Pedro Armendariz, who plays Kerim Bey, a Turkish agent. He became deathly ill during the final days of filming. Could it get any worse? Yes – Young nearly died during the filming of the final scene when his helicopter crashed into 15 feet of water.
James Bond is in Istanbul
VIDEO
We assume the source for this new MGM/Amazon/Warner Bros. 4K restoration of the six Connery films was the original camera negative and second-generation elements as needed. The overall results for “From Russia with Love” are stunning and cinematic, and quite different from the Lowry 4K masters.
First off, the aspect ratio has changed from 1.66:1 to a slightly wider 1.75:1 ratio. And, the film grain is much more pronounced and organic, especially within the midtones and highlights. The video bitrate is robust from the low 60 Megabits per second to over 100 Mbps, with everything (video/audio & extras) encoded onto a 100 GB disc.
The biggest upgrade is the color grading with HDR10 and Dolby Vision. The color palette is more saturated with deeper blues, especially during the final action sequence as Bond and Romanova try to escape via a high-powered boat in the Adriatic Sea region. Overall imagery is slightly darker, as the peak HDR10 brightness hits 1020 nits and averages a modest 197 nits.
AUDIO
A new expansive Dolby Atmos soundtrack has been made available, bringing John Barry’s score (“Dances with Wolves,” “Out of Africa,” etc.) and effects to surround and height speakers. Dialogue is stronger and fuller with the original Theatrical track. I enjoyed it both ways, but since this is a dialogue-driven film, I keep going back to the original.
It’s been a long time coming for the Sean Connery Collection to get a complete new 4K restoration. And just with “From Russia with Love,” the wait was well worth it.
Look for more Bond 4K reviews in the coming days.
― Bill Kelley III, High-Def Watch producer