Fight Clip Club: From Russia With Love

this train don’t carry no Russian spies, this train…

It’s funny, as much as James Bond movies are all about spycraft and therefore violence, the actual fight scenes aren’t really central to any Bond film. There are some epic ones for sure, don’t get me wrong: Bond flinging gold bricks at Oddjob, or gunslinging across train roofs or Mardi Gras parades, or chases in cars or through macabre Body Works displays. I’ve even written about a Bond fight already in Fight Clip Club, but it’s interesting—that’s not what I think of when I think of Bondian violence. It’s more chases and helicopter escapes and skiing with a gun instead of a pole, and parkour-ing through a huge construction site than actual mano-a-mano. Know what I mean?

Having said that, the fights there are in Bond are usually fantastic, and even the older ones mostly hold up as some of the most consistently thrilling and good looking fights in cinema even till today. Let’s look at one from a very early Bond film back in the Connery days, that fight guys like me and even laypeople still go on about as one of the best in the biz.