Across the decades-long history of the James Bond franchise, everyone’s favorite gentleman spy has gotten himself in and out of plenty of scrapes. In Goldfinger’s Fort Knox sequence, when 007 is physically outmatched by Oddjob, he resorts to throwing bars of gold at him. In License to Kill, Timothy Dalton’s Bond fights Dario, one of drug kingpin Franz Sanchez’s most ruthless enforcers, on a conveyor belt and ends up feeding him legs-first into an industrial-sized cocaine grinder. The gritty Bourne-inspired realism of Casino Royale resulted in a bunch of hard-hitting fight sequences.
But, arguably, no Bond movie’s fight scene has been able to top the Orient Express brawl with Red Grant from 1963’s From Russia with Love. Although it was just the second Bond movie out of more than 20, From Russia with Love has easily the franchise’s most brutal fight sequence. More than 50 years later, Bond’s fight with Red Grant still has the ability to shock audiences.
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It’s rare that audiences feel a real sense of danger during a Bond fight scene, because there’s no way that 007 is going to be killed by a henchman in the middle of the movie. He’s always going to win the fight, or at least be saved by some well-timed coincidence, because he needs to get to the next scene and advance the plot toward his confrontation with the real villain.
However, in From Russia with Love, Bond is so ruthlessly brutalized by Grant that his life genuinely seems to be in danger, despite being protected by plot armor. Played by Robert Shaw, best known as grizzled shark hunter Quint from Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, Grant is an assassin working for S.P.E.C.T.R.E. who manages to catch Bond off-guard by holding him at gunpoint aboard the Orient Express. A well-placed Q Branch gadget allows 007 to disarm Grant and engage him in hand-to-hand combat. Little does Bond know, his problems are just beginning.
The term “fight” is used loosely when describing this scene, because it’s a pretty one-sided conflict. It’s more of a straight-up butt-kicking than a fight. Bond initially has the upper hand, but Grant quickly shows off his strength as he effortlessly tosses his opponent around the room. While they’re wrestling over the gun, it goes off and shoots out the light in the cabin, so the fight mostly plays out in eerie darkness.
The look of terror in Connery’s eyes – paired with the monstrous rage in Shaw’s – sells just how much Bond is struggling to win the fight, and the authentic fear that he might not be able to escape death this time. Of course, he is going to survive the fight. But the scuffle is so shockingly violent that the audience forgets about the plot armor as they’re captivated by the disturbing sight of a man desperately fighting for his life against a much more powerful enemy.
This isn’t a Hollywood fight scene with neat choreography and carefully considered stakes. It’s a rough, uncompromising portrayal of two people trying to kill each other. The whole scene only runs for around three minutes, but it’s so tough to watch that it feels a lot longer. Unlike most of Bond’s victories, which are usually a given, strangling Grant to death feels hard-earned at the end of this sequence. He’s so shaken from the fight that he needs a few moments to gather himself before signing off with a cool one-liner.
The most recent Bond movie, Spectre, included a fight between Daniel Craig’s Bond and Dave Bautista’s hulking henchman Mr. Hinx onboard a train that felt like a reference to From Russia with Love. While Bautista brought his all to the physicality of the scene, Craig didn’t sell that Bond was really fearing for his life like Connery did in the Orient Express sequence and Sam Mendes didn’t push the violence envelope as far as his predecessor Terence Young.
It’s possible that the Bond franchise will never top the brutality of the fight scene in From Russia with Love. The third Bond movie, Goldfinger, is the one that established the formula of a megalomaniacal villain being brought down by a series of ludicrous gadgets in a series of exotic international locations. Since then, the series has been marked by its sheer sense of escapism. But the first two movies, Dr. No and From Russia with Love, were more grounded spy thrillers.
In the decades since From Russia with Love hit theaters, the 007 producers have had Bond hanging off of speeding trains and high-altitude aircraft, and even sent him into space. But this kind of action-packed one-upmanship can become far-fetched and unrelatable. The Orient Express fight sequence is just two guys punching each other on a train, but thanks to Young’s command of tension and Connery and Shaw’s fierce performances, it’s as captivating as any other Bond action sequence.
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