Re: Universal Exports - The James Bond Thread

[The Co=Ordinator]

According to THIS ARTICLE, Daniel Craig is in negotiations to play James Bond for a further five movies after "Skyfall." This would make a total of 8 movies if it actually comes to pass, and that would break Roger Moore's record of seven.

I'd be amazed if that happened.

[Zoltar]

According to THIS ARTICLE, Daniel Craig is in negotiations to play James Bond for a further five movies after "Skyfall." This would make a total of 8 movies if it actually comes to pass, and that would break Roger Moore's record of seven.

I admire their confidence and optimism.

Just a reminder, as my next review, if we follow the schedule, would occur on Christmas Eve, I'm putting my review of The Living Daylights off until January 7th. Happy Holidays, everyone!

Happy Holidays, Patrick.

[Patrick]

Listverse has compiled a list (what else) of The 15 Best Deaths in the Bond movies.

What do you think, agree or no?

[Patrick]

According to THIS ARTICLE, Daniel Craig is in negotiations to play James Bond for a further five movies after "Skyfall." This would make a total of 8 movies if it actually comes to pass, and that would break Roger Moore's record of seven.

I'd be amazed if that happened.

I'd be inclined to agree. At a rate of one movie every other year, six new Bond movies starting next year would mean a re-casting of the role in 2024. Craig would be in his mid 50s by then. Setting aside age, 12 years is an eon in film-making, which makes me inclined to agree with you, C=O.

But then I came across this IMDB.com Article. Note the comments from Michael G. Wilson (stepson of Cubby Broccoli). There is a contract being negotiated, apparently, and a contract is a rather binding document on both parties. I'm still inclined to think that if a potential future Bond film bombs at the box office, Craig would be the first casualty. But I have to admit, Michael Wilson seems to know what he's doing carrying on from Broccoli.

[The Co=Ordinator]

Listverse has compiled a list (what else) of The 15 Best Deaths in the Bond movies.

What do you think, agree or no?

Jill Masterson is, perhaps, the most iconic death IMO. Wint & Kidd and Boris are personal favourites. "I am invincible!"

[Patrick]

Jill Masterson is, perhaps, the most iconic death IMO. Wint & Kidd and Boris are personal favourites. "I am invincible!"

Her death was so iconic they copied it for Quantum of Solace, as Fields got dipped in oil.

Trevelyan's death in Goldeneye is one I was disappointed wasn't on this list. First he falls off an dish-antenna array, then the array falls on him.

[The Co=Ordinator]

Having (seemingly) had his brains blown out earlier IIRC.

Fekkesh's death in The Spy Who Loved Me has always stuck in my mind. The sheer contrast of size between him and Jaws, together with excellent editing, helped contribute to a genuinely chilling demise.

[Patrick]

As I mentioned in my review at the time, I think Fekesh's death was easily the most cinematic death of the franchise, and structured very like something Alfred Hitchcock would have done.

[Patrick]

The year is 1986, and seven film Bond veteran Roger Moore has officially bowed out of the part. So, as the Bond franchise is wont to do, it re-invents itself with a new actor and that new actor’s interpretation of the part. And so the screen tests commenced to find the new MI-6 Agent. Some of the actors tested are names you’ll recognize: James Brolin and Sam Neill, for example. The actor who seemed to have the odds-on chance of winning the role was Pierce Brosnan, but a last minute submission of four scripted episodes of his NBC television series, Remington Steele, and his contact with Universal Studios, made him unavailable. So Cubby Broccoli turned to an actor he had originally considered for the part in 1969, and fortuitously, that actor’s schedule had just cleared up following his appearance in “Brenda Starr.”

Bear in mind that this is still the 1980s, and it’s still the second age of Bond, which means that while the man driving the Aston Martin and sipping the vodka martinis might have changed, the villains are still the Soviets. Or are they? You see, this is the last Bond film in which veteran screenwriter Richard Maibaum would contribute a story, and you get the sense that in the era of Gorbechev and “glasnost,” the writers were trying to find a new way to characterize the changing relationship the Soviets.

The Living Daylights
UK Release: June 30, 1987
US Release: July 31, 1987



“You didn’t think I’d miss this performance, did you?”

As we were with Sean Connery in Dr. No, and George Lazenby in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, we’re teased initially with the introduction of new James Bond, Timothy Dalton. In the pre-credit sequence, we see the backs of three MI-6 Double-O agents as M addresses them about their war games exercise at Gibraltar. The back of the plane they are in opens, and they jump. One by one, the faces of these three agents are revealed as they parachute onto the rock, and into a trap meant to make the Russians look responsible. Finally, after a guard shooting paint balls is killed, and the rope holding a rock-climbing Double-O agent is cut, we get our first look at this new Bond.

Timothy Dalton, aged 43 during the filming of The Living Daylights, was a departure from Roger Moore of truly dramatic proportions. First, not only was his age right in line with how Fleming described Bond, but he looked as athletic and physical as you’d want a cold-war spy to look. That physicality actually presented a directoral challenge, as Mr. Dalton was highly keen to do his own stunts, and had to be pulled back on occasion from doing some of the more dangerous ones called for in the script. But what this eager athleticism did was give the film crews a chance to do close ups of Mr. Dalton during these stunts, which added a layer of realism to the presentation that I’m not sure we’ve seen since Mr. Connery’s last turn in the role in 1971.



But there’s another quality to Timothy Dalton’s performance that bears some scrutiny as well. Timothy Dalton, the actor, based upon all the evidence I could glean in viewing the DVD extras and listening to the audio commentary, is an “I.” For those who’ve never heard of the Meyers-Briggs Personality Assessment, allow me a brief moment to explain. Originally based upon strategies for helping women cope in the workplace during World War II, when many men were off fighting, it was formalized into a personality assessment test in the early 1960s. It measures personality in four dimensions. The first of these is in response to the basic question: which world am I more comfortable living in? And the continuum it measures is from “E,” or extrovert, to “I”, or introvert. But the definitions given those terms in a Meyers-Briggs context are slightly different to the dictionary definition: an “E” is at home when he or she is at the noisy center of attention, being the life of the party of the master of ceremonies at some stage event. An “I” prefers more quiet, intimate settings like a dinner party with a few close friends or spending some time quietly reading. For both, these kinds of settings are what recharges their batteries.

That’s not to say that “I” can’t play the role of being the person everyone is watching and listening to. After all, Timothy Dalton is an actor known for having a successful career on the stage, in television and in movies. Clearly, an “I” can successfully be the center of attention. Being an “I” just means they find such situations taxing.



I bring this bit of pop-psychology up for this reason: in Timothy “I” Dalton’s hands, we get a James Bond who is also very much an “I.” He is more inwardly drawn, with the reference being that he’s in a job that routinely requires him to kill people, and that’s an aspect of his job he doesn’t like. We get a Bond who is truly, this time around, a one-woman man. He’s even bordering on brooding at points, such as in the scene in the car where Saunders has lectured him about deliberately missing Kara, and Bond tells Saunders to file his report, and if M fires him, he’ll thank M for it. Not only does this ground the character of Bond as a human being, as opposed to the sort of super-hero he verged on being in Roger Moore’s hands, it gives the audience something of a starting point to understand what makes Bond tick. You can identify with someone who occasionally broods. But identifying with a vapid playboy who walks across the backs of crocodiles is a serious challenge.

Make no mistake, though: Timothy Dalton’s Bond is no pansy for having this human frailty. He is at least as masculine and edgy as Sean Connery, with a bit of tenaciousness thrown in for good measure. He is a creative problem solver- working with Gen. Pushkin to fake the Russian’s death. His leadership skills with Kamran Shaw are on display, as is his romantic side with Kara Milovy. This James Bond is the real deal.

“You were fantastic! We’re free.”
“Kara, we’re inside a Russian airbase in the middle of Afghanistan."

If you discount Linda, the woman on the yacht in the pre-credits sequence, the only woman Bond has eyes for in this movie is Kara Milovy, a Czech Cellist who’s been seduced by Georgi Koskov into attempting to shoot him. Played with a sort of naïve charm by Maryam D’Abo, she is slightly against type for a traditional Bond girl. While she’s cute and perky, she’s not a stunning sexpot bombshell. She’s petite, rather than buxom. She lives in a world of conservatory performances and her prize cello, The Lady Rose, and from this, she’s drawn into Bond’s world of international espionage, danger and high stakes adventure.

Kara is only drawn to Bond because of the incident Koskov put her up to: feigning an assassination attempt in order to make his defection look real. Bond, realizing that Kara was no expert with a gun, fired to injure her, rather than kill. Which put her in the position of being the only contact Bond had to find Koskov.

What you get from that, is a sympathetic Bond who likely feels some guilt at having shot her, and even more guilt that he can’t just tell her it was he who shot her. And his feelings for her develop into a genuine romance. Watch closely the scenes in the amusement park in Vienna, or the bedroom scene at the mujahedeen fortress for evidence of this. And remember, until Koskov betrays Kara once they land in Afghanistan, she has every reason to believe Koskov is still her lover. Which makes Bond’s growing feelings for her a problem.



A true romance between Bond and his leading lady, when it works, is generally a formula for success in a 007 movie (see: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and For Your Eyes Only.) In such situations, you need a plausible reason for Bond to fall in love, and with The Living Daylights, that reason is Bond’s protectiveness of Kara as a result of having to shoot her. In this story, Kara is a true innocent, being used by two sides. The difference is that while Bond regrets not only shooting Kara, but having to use her as a pawn to get to Koskov, Koskov has no regrets, and seems perfectly willing to rid himself of her, twice.

Ms. D’Abo certainly did a credible job as Kara Milovy, and her affection for Bond was clearly displayed. My only (rather minor) quibble about her performance was that her Eastern European accent could get a bit tedious at times.

“I’m sorry James, for you I have great affection. But we have an old saying: duty knows no sweethearts.”
“We have an old saying, too, Georgi. And you’re full of it.”

Gen. Georgi Koskov is not what you could call a committed Soviet citizen the cause of world socialism. He appears to crave the decadent trappings of the west he’s had a chance to experience, thanks to his association with arms runner Brad Whitaker. Enough of a craving, in fact, that he’s willing to play an elaborate game of defector, and kidnap victim to fool both the Russians and the British. And he’s not about to take some vestige of his prior life with him, which is why he set Kara up in Bond’s crosshairs.

Jeroen Krabbe, as Koskov, certainly plays the part with a quality of élan and style. He’s not exactly a villain set on world domination, cackling madly as he rubs his hands together. He’s playing what he thinks is a brilliantly coordinated game of misdirection intent to get the British and the Russians shooting at one another, while in fact scoring a big opium sale and netting the profits when it hits the streets of New York. What we get, then, is a character who is extraordinarily self-absorbed. Possibly the most selfish villain Bond has had to go up against. He is duplicitous, slightly lazy and quite snobbish- witness how he describes the food at the British safe house as “peasant food.” All that, and yet he comes across outwardly as such a gregarious nice guy who’s trying to do the right thing in warning the British about Smert Spionem.



But as ruse after ruse fails, we learn something else about Koskov: he is ultimately a coward. No scene better typifies this than Koskov’s greeting of Gen. Pushkin after Whitaker is killed. When the chips are down, he’s all about saving his own skin. Nice that Dalton got to use a Roger Moore line from The Man With The Golden Gun against him.


“You’ve had your eight. Now I’ll have my eighty!”

In Joe Don Baker’s first appearance in the Bond franchise, he certainly wasn’t playing an ally. And his line quoted above is a reference to line Sean Connery delivered in Dr. No. His character, Brad Whitaker, is arms dealer, a specialist in providing arsenals for armies at the right price. From the evidence provided in the film, we know that he was expelled from West Point for cheating, became a soldier of fortune fighting other people’s wars all over the world, and eventually came to meet a Soviet General (Koskov) with whom he found he could do business. As if that’s not enough, he has a massive ego- all the statues in his main hall, from Julius Caesar to Genghis Khan to Hitler, all have his face. He loves war, as evidenced by the toy soldier battlefields he keeps under glass, and his curious habit of dressing in a uniform all the time.



What we also come to see are two other traits he possesses. Whether it’s because of the business he’s in, or because of his love of warfare, Whitaker has taken the old phrase “might makes right” to heart. He is obsessed with power, specifically the power that comes from the point of a gun. And if the size of his lobster from the scene where he angrily tells Koskov that Pushkin wants to cancel the arms order is an indication, he’s a bit of glutton, too. Between Koskov and Whitaker, we seem to have most of the seven deadly sins covered.

“Thank you both for your help. My name is Kamran Shaw. Please forgive the theatrics, it’s a hangover from my Oxford days."

Bond, of course, has a tradition of partnering with amiable rogues. In this film, that role is filled by Art Malik’s Kamran Shaw, the English-educated leader of the Afghan resistance against the Soviets. His partnership with Bond is still about the trade of opium for diamonds, but in gratitude for how Bond helped him escape the Russian airbase, he agrees to provide Bond with some assistance in dealing Koskov a real blow. What is more interesting, however, is his reaction to Kara suddenly going into Xena, Warrior Princess mode to help Bond. He’s not the usual sort of rogue Bond pairs up with, but he’s quite capable in an “enemy of my enemy is a my friend” sort of way. And Mr. Malik’s performance is certainly serviceable to the plot.


“We’ve nothing to declare.”
“Except the cello.”

The Living Daylights is certainly the first Bond film of the 1980s to embroil itself in a plot that took full advantage of the events of the day: illegal arms transactions, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, even the Soviet natural gas pipeline to western Europe. No highly suspect “double earthquakes” here. Indeed, this story is probably the closest to a cold war spy yarn we’ve gotten since For Your Eyes Only, but it’s presented in a less than straight-forward way.

The pre-credits sequence introduces us to a killer who, we are meant to believe, is Russian, and who introduces two words to one of the Double-O’s during the war games exercise in Gibraltar: “Smiert Sponiem,” or death to spies. Is this a new Soviet gambit against western intelligence agencies? One man may have an answer to that: Russian General Georgi Koskov, and he’s willing to defect to the British on the condition that they send James Bond to help pull his defection off. The defection, of course, was a ruse. Koskov has used his cellist girlfriend to help with the illusion by having her point a gun at him from a window high up in the building where she’s been playing a concert- with the obvious hope that Bond will kill her and he’ll be rid of one embarrassing witness who could expose him.



The defection is successfully pulled off- Bond injures, rather than kills, Kara, because he sees she’s completely inexperienced at using a rifle. Koskov is sent, via the natural gas pipeline, into Austria, where a waiting military fighter jet speeds him to Britain. Kept at a safe house in the British country, Koskov explains during his de-briefing that Smiert Spionem is a new operation, the brain child of his Russian rival, Gen. Pushkin, that can only lead to retaliations and reprisals. Bond, M, and the Minister of Defense depart to consider this information. And almost as soon as they’ve left, a one man wrecking crew named Necros, disguised as a milk delivery man with exploding bottles of pasteurized 2% shows up and succeeds in kidnapping Koskov.



Up until this point, we’re lead to believe that this plot is all about stopping Pushkin from his Smiert Spionem operation. It isn’t until we’re well into the story that we learn Smiert Spionem was an operation used in Stalin’s time, and was de-activated twenty years previously. The real reason for this elaborate show of a defection and kidnapping is to misdirect everyone into looking the other while Koskov and his American arms dealer, Brad Whitaker, engage in a diamonds for opium trade in Afghanistan. The mujahedeen get diamonds, with which they can finance an arms purchase, Whitaker and Koskov get to sell the opium around the world at a huge profit and still provide the Russians with their order for weapons, and all it takes to set the ball in motion is an investment by the Soviet government for an arms purchase that Whitaker uses to purchase the diamonds.



All told, a massive game of subterfuge is going on. And that reflects itself in the theme of the movie. Misdirection is taking place everywhere. Bond lies to Kara, posing as Koskov’s friend, sent to bring her to Vienna. Kara fools Bond into drinking a poisoned martini. Koskov fools Kara twice- first in Bratislava, by getting her to point a gun at him, and second in Tangiers, where he convinces her to deliver knock-out drops to Bond’s cocktail. A guard at the Moroccan airport is fooled into thinking a heart is being transport for transplant into a patient, when in fact, the heart is not a human heart, and the ice in the container is masking diamonds. Kamran Shaw is introduced to us a miserable prisoner of the Russians, until he’s revealed to not only be Oxford educated, but a leader of the Afghan resistance. Brad Whitaker stands at the end of a long line of some of history’s most notorious war-making figures, and blends right in because he’s used his face on all the statues. Eventually, even the Russians have to get into the game, as Bond cooperates with Pushkin to fake Pushkin’s death.



But the character who most personifies this theme of misdirection is Whitaker’s henchman, Necros. During Koskov’s kidnap scene, he first shows up as an American, out jogging, before killing the milkman. He then adopts a cockney accent to pose as the milkman, and gain entrance to the safe house. He then adopts a Russian accent, calling Koskov “comrade”, before using another little trick of misdirection, milk bottles that explode, while making everyone at the safe house think there’s a gas leak inside the building. Indeed, even actor Andreas Wisniewski was something of a misdirection in this movie- he’s a cold-blooded killing machine, but looks to all intents and purposes like a ballet dancer.



“What happened?”
“He got the boot.”

If there are two film makers in the Bond franchise who embody how to give Bond films an iconic look, those two are Guy Hamilton and John Glen. In this film, Glen again uses his penchant for allowing the camera to very clearly follow the action so that the audience can keep up, and yet give you visual clues to impart critical information. His style is marvelous in both its simplicity and its visual quality- that scene of the fighter jet lifting off against a clear blue evening sky is marvelous, for example. That’s undoubtedly why Mr. Glen holds the record of having directed the most Bond films with five.




In terms of locations, this film really only features two- Vienna, which poses as not only itself, but also Bratislava. The crew found a section of the city with a cable car that runs through it, and convinced the Vienna city government to allow them to reschedule the cable cars for a couple of days to make (their term) the “Soviet quarter” of Vienna pass itself off as Czechoslovakia. The other location is Morocco, which included Tangiers and a brief trip over to Gibraltar, but also some portions out in the Moroccan desert, which doubled as Afghanistan. And as you’d come to expect in a Bond film, the sequences were stunning to behold.



By far, the stunt that was the most breath-taking to behold was the fight between Bond and Necros hanging out from the back of a cargo plane, holding onto a rope net. That was done primarily by the second unit over the Mojave desert in California, but what should be noted is that the stunt men were wearing parachutes the whole time. If one of them fell off the net during filming, another member of the aerial team would quickly jump out of the plane and catch up to them, to make sure their parachute opened safely. And that bumpy ride Bond appeared to have following Necros’ “get the boot” moment? That was quite real, once the bags weighing it down where released. There was real fear during the filming of that scene that the stuntman doubling for Mr. Dalton was going to hit his head on the underside of the plane.

Rarely do we get to mention the world of the model-making unit, but in this film, they did a marvelous job of building that bridge Bond had to blow up to halt the Soviet advance on the mujahedeen. That model was no more than five feet tall, and to simulate the appearance of water in the ravine beneath it, they used blue-tinted clear plastic. It’s an extremely effective shot, and to this day, still looks marvelously convincing as sections of the bridge collapse from the bomb blast.

“Whoever she was, I must have scared the living daylights out of her.”
80’s pop band A-ha, a Norwegian export, performed the main title song during the opening credits. Has anyone heard from them recently? I think they had two hit songs off their first album in 1986, and then sort of fell off the radar.



This review would be remiss if it didn’t at least mention Caroline Bliss as the new Miss Moneypenny. Lois Maxwell, an actress for whose work I have the utmost respect and appreciation, also decided to depart the franchise after A View To A Kill, and although I think it may have shocked audiences not to see her playing Moneypenny, the change was necessary. You see, Moneypenny has to be seen as a contemporary of Bond, if not a bit younger. Ms. Maxwell had been playing the part since 1962, and while she was a contemporary of Messrs. Connery and Moore, she would not have worked as well paired with Timothy Dalton. Unfortunately, with her exit, we got someone not quite up to the challenge of holding their own against Bond.



So, new James Bond in place, in a film that gave us both romance and misdirection. A story that succeeded in being both relevant to the times, well scripted, and marvelously acted. I can actually find very little fault in this movie. The chemistry between Mr. Dalton and Ms. D’Abo was convincing, Jeroen Krabbe and Joe Don Baker did a great job of chewing through dialogue to give us some charismatic villains, and even the humor was more restrained this time. And we finally got the Aston Martin back, too. That’s why I’m giving this film five fast-moving cello cases out of a possible five.

With the success of The Living Daylights, the Bond franchise was to have one last party in the 1980s, before its second age would end.

James Bond will return in “License To Kill.”

[Nick Barlow]

Definitely agree with that review - I think Dalton was an excellent Bond and Living Daylights was great as it kept you guessing and not just delivering it.

Of course, the one thing that really dates it is Kamran Shah. Back then, it wasn't odd to see Bond teaming up with a Western-educated mujaheddin leader. Now it starts to look uncomfortably like he's working with Osama Bin Laden...

[The Co=Ordinator]

The Living Daylights has never struck such a chord with me. There's nowt wrong with it, but I find things a bit sterile at times. 3/5 from C=O Towers.

[The Co=Ordinator]

Just seen that TLD is on ITV4 right now!

[Rich Flair]

Yes, I watched it yesterday while laying on the couch being ill. I then quickly downloaded the next one and watched that.

Always refreshing to see a film where the Taliban are the good guys!

[barnaby morbius]

Yes, I watched it yesterday while laying on the couch being ill. I then quickly downloaded the next one and watched that.

Always refreshing to see a film where the Taliban are the good guys!

the taliban are also the heroes in "rambo 3" when they team up with stallone to fight the commies,

living daylights is alright but dalton lacks something as bond,

[Zoltar]

It's not a favorite of mine, but I liked The Living Daylights and Dalton as Bond.

[Patrick]

living daylights is alright but dalton lacks something as bond,

Dalton's presentation of Bond is definately unique. No other actor, with the possible exception of Daniel Craig, has played Bond as this inwardly drawn. That's down to his Meyers-Briggs 'introvert' assessment- Roger Moore was too much of a show off to be considered an "I," George Lazenby was to outwardly genial and gregarious to be considered an "I," and no one would ever call Sean Connery introverted. So it is actually a big change in the character to interpret him that way, and I fully understand why some won't come to like it. I think it works, because it grounds the character realistically, but that's just a subjective assessment.

[Patrick]

The Living Daylights has never struck such a chord with me. There's nowt wrong with it, but I find things a bit sterile at times. 3/5 from C=O Towers.

What The Living Daylights lacked, that was on full display in "The End of Time," was flying spittle. If Dalton's Bond had had to wipe off his chin after saying "he got the boot," would that have improved the movie for you, C=O?

[The Co=Ordinator]

Sarcasm isn't your strong point Col. Pickering!

[Patrick]

Oh, I dunno, C=O, I thought that bit of sarcasm was pretty good.

[Johnstone McGuckian]

Again I find myself completely agreeing with Patrick (I think the only real disagreements have been the previous two films). For me Dalton is the best Bond, he's the Bond from the books, or at least by far the closest. TLD is the only Bond film that has ever kept me guessing. It's also only one of four Bond films that I think has had a properly convincing romance (the others being OHMSS, LTK and CR). I can't include FYEO in that because even by that stage, Rog is far too old to be Bond.

As always Patrick your reviews make fantastic reading and I'm looking forward to the next one, as for me LTK is one of the most underrated films in cinema history.

[The Co=Ordinator]

As always Patrick your reviews make fantastic reading

They're superb, regardless of whether or not I agree with them!

for me LTK is one of the most underrated films in cinema history.

I hugely disagree .

[Patrick]

We’ve established that during the Second Age of Bond, the popular culture of time became a heavy influence on story lines- early in Roger Moore’s tenure, the producers of the franchise did their versions of Blaxploitation and Martial Arts films, popular in the early 1970s. By the late 1970s, science fiction was riding a wave of popularity, and that led (unfortunately) to the making of Moonraker. When the cold war heated up a bit in the 1980s, we had a succession of four Bond films in which the Soviets featured prominently in the plot, mainly as enemies until 1987’s The Living Daylights, when the Soviets became partners, after a fashion, in the plot. And that reflected the fact that by 1987, we’d entered a new era of “glasnost” and “perestroika.” So now we come to the end of the 1980s, and in a search for topicality in a story to interest Bond fans, the producers turned their attention to a television program that was hugely popular, a heavy stylistic influence on clothing, music and cars, and certainly reflective of the drug war news of the time: Miami Vice.

This decision had the effect of making the Bond franchise’s 1989 entry something of a stand-alone element: for the first time in a decade, the Russians were not featured at all, and that was rather curious when you consider the dramatic events which would change the world over the two years that followed the film’s release. Having noted that, it also needs to be said that the tone and content of the film were also a bit different for those used to a Bond formula.

License To Kill
UK Release: June 13, 1989
US Release: July 14, 1989



“Why don’t you wait until you’re asked?”
“Why don’t you ask me?”{/i}

For his second turn in the role of James Bond, Timothy Dalton, he of the Meyers-Briggs “I-Introvert” dimension, takes his inwardly drawn character and ratchets it up a fair bit. What this has the effect of doing is rendering Bond, more often than not, as a brooding loner. How many times did he tell Pam and Q to leave, only to change his mind? The Bondian one-liners he delivers in this film were more often than not delivered through clenched teeth, and he doesn’t even get the best one-liners in this script. In short, this is a much darker Bond this time around, motivated entirely by revenge for the near fatal injuries to his best friend, CIA Agent Felix Leiter, and the death of Leiter’s bride, Della, on the first night of their marriage.



A darker Bond is something we’ve never really experienced before. Even Mr. Connery, in seeking revenge on Blofeld in [i]Diamonds Are Forever, certainly never went to these kinds of extremes to avenge his own wife, Traci. And we do get an oblique reference to Traci, as Della asks Felix if she offended Bond in some way by throwing her garter to him over James’ objections. Felix’s line is a cryptic: “he was married once, but that was a long time ago.” So motivated is Bond to avenge Felix and Della that he sidesteps the DEA- which gets him into trouble- but he also vents his frustration to M over the fact that the Americans aren’t going to do anything because they have no jurisdiction to go after Sanchez once he’s back in Central America. Bond, unwilling to back down, resigns as a Double-O agent. Resigns- yes, you read that correctly. And he gets his license to kill revoked.

For this story, Bond becomes his own espionage force, a rogue agent who now knows he’s cut off from London for help. (Put a bookmark on that thought, we’ll come back to it in a bit.) He’s got limited gadgetry and resources, virtually no knowledge of Sanchez or his Isthmus City stronghold, and an irritating CIA agent of Felix’s as a partner. In fact, about the only advantage Bond has is that Sanchez has never seen his face.



This is not to say that Bond isn’t physical in this story. He does a fair amount of scuba-diving. He water-skis on bare feet. Forces his way into a sea-plane in mid-flight and throws out both the henchmen on board. He repels from a Coast Guard helicopter to put a line around the tail of Sanchez’ plane before parachuting to attend Felix’s wedding. He survives a true bar-room brawl at the Barrellhead. He dangles from a metal post above an industrial pulverizing grinder with his legs tied as Dario attempts to knock him off his post. And he engages in some of the most incredible driving with an 18-wheel rig this reviewer has ever seen. And as he does each of these, you almost get the sense that he relishes each and every moment- in Timothy Dalton’s hands, we have a Bond who definitely doesn’t mind getting dirty if it gets the job done. Someone make a note of that for Roger Moore.

But while Mr. Dalton gets full marks for his sheer physicality and tenaciousness, where his character this time around gets bogged down is in his own brooding. When you mix the Meyers-Briggs introversion with a quest for single-minded revenge, you get a character who becomes exasperatingly focused on his own personal goal, ignoring the bigger picture around him for large chunks of the story. This is not a trait Bond has heretofore exhibited, and it’s not a particularly good quality for anyone in the espionage game, especially if they’ve just gone rogue in a country run by a drug lord.

“Pam, this is Q, my ‘uncle.’ Q, this is ‘Miss Kennedy,’ my ‘cousin.’”
“Ah! We must be related.”

If Bond was a one-woman man in The Living Daylights, you could be forgiven for thinking that he was a no woman man in LTK. He’s partnered with a CIA operative of Felix’s, and right from the beginning, they rub each other the wrong way. In an unspoken competition, each vies for control of the situation. Bond brings a Walther PPK to the fight at the Barrellhead Bar, Pam brings a double-barreled shot gun. Bond has Sanchez lined up for a bullet, only to find out Pam is running an Op with Heller, Sanchez’s head of security. They argue over how much Bond is going to pay Pam to fly him to Isthmus City, they argue over the cover she’s going to play once they get there, they even argue over bedrooms in their hotel suite.



Now all of this is fine from a character standpoint- Bond always does well when paired with a strong female character. And it has to be said that model turned actress Cary Lowell, playing in only her second on-screen performance, did a reasonably good job in the role. The issue here is an over-dose of political correctness that crept into her character. Let’s start with her name: Pam Bouvier. No double entrendre in the name at all. And the cover name she adopts? Pam Kennedy. Bouvier/Kennedy. Tell me someone wasn’t making a statement with that choice.

Then consider this- that severe haircut she got upon arrival in Isthmus City. She donned a truly unflattering pair of overalls to pose as a harbor pilot in order to sabotage the WaveCrest (not to mention a truly bizarre, and not very convincing, eastern European accent.) She consigns Bond to sharing a bedroom with Q when he arrives. She even shouts “bullsh…” (you know what) at Q when he attempts to defend Bond. At every turn, her character was made to be a tomboy. And on the strength of that, we’re really expected to believe a romance is developing between them simply because Lupe shows up and professes her love for Bond? Until the film’s conclusion, when Bond jumps into a swimming pool and pulls Pam into the pool with him, we’re given no evidence of Bond having even the slightest romantic feeling for Pam. Indeed, the only sex Bond has in this movie is a few stolen moments with Lupe in Sanchez’s villa, and of the two, Lupe is certainly the more attractive woman (even if she is a bit of a stereotype.)

Bottom line, the character of Pam Bouvier was simply not convincing as a romantic foil, and was a bit annoying in her attempts to upstage Bond.

“You were very quiet when I was arrested. Remember, you’re only President… for life.”



Robert Davi, as our main villain Franz Sanchez, embodies many of the characteristics you’d actually like to see in Bond. He is charismatic and charming, witty and quick with the bon mot. He seems to rule his drug empire by spreading money around in order to allow greed to become a type of loyalty, and by being innovative in methods of smuggling cocaine. (I don’t believe a single Columbian drug lord on Miami Vice ever thought of the idea of hiding cocaine in gasoline.) There was even a deliberate attempt to give him all the best one-liners in this movie, and he delivered them with a certain joie de vivre. In another circumstance, it’s quite possible that Sanchez could have become one of those amiable rogues Bond was frequently partnered with.

Any chance of that happening, however, was torpedoed when his henchmen broke into Leiter’s bungalow on his wedding night, killed Della and brought Leiter, himself, to Sanchez to be fed to a shark. And the fact that he did that after he’d already made good his escape and finalized his deal with Killifer was simply an expression of his ruthlessness: he did it because he could.



So what we have in Franz Sanchez, then, is a confident man who is king of his particular empire. He perceives himself to be completely untouchable, surrounded by people whose loyalty he’s bought with staggering sums of money, runs an entire country on the back of his cocaine operation, and revels in the knowledge that while he cannot be touched, his reach can extend just about anywhere. Cross him, and there’s not many places on Earth you can go where his retribution can’t find you, as Lupe found out in the pre-credits sequence.

In any Bond villain, the important characteristic is the comparison and contrast between that villain and Bond himself. And in License to Kill, we have a villain who is very much like the Bond we are used to seeing, refined, well spoken, edgy and masculine. We also have a Bond whose single minded obsession makes him behave much more like a villain in his brooding, reflexive loneliness and his ruthless desire to exact revenge unsanctioned by Her Majesty’s government. Remember the analysis of Grant in From Russia With Love? Grant was Bond’s psychological shadow, and revealed to us just how close Bond is, himself, to becoming a cold-blooded sociopathic killer. In License to Kill, we have Sanchez and Bond, who occupy either end of the good-guy/bad-guy dynamic, (and not the positions we’d tend to think of each one occupying, initially) and each transitions to become the other by the end of the film. The psychological term for this is enantiodromia, ‘conversion into the opposite.’

How Bond does this is interesting: by taking advantage of the fact that Sanchez has never seen his face, he worms his way into Sanchez’s organization, and systematically capitalizes on the one flaw in Sanchez’s character he allows us to see. Despite Sanchez’s outward confidence, he’s secretly mistrustful of everyone around him because he knows they’re only there as a result of Sanchez buying them. While things are relatively problem free, and the biggest issue Sanchez has to deal with is a runaway lover, all is fine and well. But as soon as Bond begins chipping away at that confidence, no one is safe from Sanchez’s suspicions, not even Bond himself. Eventually, Sanchez hits a tipping point, and is prepared to see his own organization destroyed to kill Bond.

Full marks to Mr. Davi for pulling off that transition.

“Don’t you men know any other way?”
“It’s Sanchez’s way. You seem to like it.”



Lupe Lamora, Sanchez’s runaway bride, as I’ve already stated, wins my vote the best looking Bond woman in LTK. She’s a bit more classically beautiful than Carey Lowell, and certainly has no pretense about being a tomboy. She has a vulnerability to her character that harkens back to Maud Adams’ Miss Anders in The Man With The Golden Gun, in that both women have belatedly come to realize they are in over their heads in relationships with dangerous men and have no easy exit. The difference is that while Miss Anders was directly responsible for the chain of events that lead to her death by sending one of Scaramanga’s bullets to MI-6, Lupe had no idea that her escapade to the Florida keys with her lover would result in Sanchez, himself, coming to retrieve her. It was Sanchez, therefore, who set events in motion, rather than Lupe. She was just a bit naïve in thinking that south Florida, as a place to shack up with her lover, would be a destination Sanchez wouldn’t dare to visit, himself.

Although Talisa Soto did a serviceable job in the part, my objection to the character of Lupe was that she was drawn as entirely two dimensional. She existed to be Sanchez’s arm candy, made one futile attempt to escape him, and spent the rest of the movie telling Bond not to do whatever it was he was about to do because it wouldn’t work. She apparently had the pluck to flee Sanchez, and then completely lost it. Even in showing up to warn Q and Pam that Sanchez had taken Bond to his mountain retreat, the subtext of that scene was that she was confessing she wanted Bond to be her next affair. She had to the potential to be much more at odds with Sanchez, and never really went there.

“That’s not my money! I swear!"
“That’s right, amigo. It’s mine!”

Veteran actor Anthony Zerbe has a well established reputation for playing untrustworthy, even unhinged types. That’s probably down to his quirky narrow stare. As Milton Krest, Sanchez’s point person for making exchanges of cocaine for money out in international waters, he exudes sleaze with aplomb. Although Sanchez’s money has made him completely loyal to the drug lord, you can see that his greed isn’t satiated merely by the millions he’s making in facilitating the cocaine transfers. He wants what Sanchez has- everything right down to Lupe. And he’s only barely able to keep a lid on those ambitions.



He’s also not a convincing liar. Bond sees through this immediately, when he shows up at the docks posing as a Universal Exports expeditor, seeking to acquire a Great White Shark. That meeting starts the beginning of Krest’s downward spiral. Twice, he was completely unprepared for how to handle Bond, and the outcome of that meeting put him in a bad position when going to face Sanchez about the loss of his cocaine. Even when he’s attempting to tell the truth, he comes across as an unconvincing liar. But he makes a nice target for Sanchez’s paranoia, and has one of the most gruesome deaths in a Bond movie. Indeed, two of the deaths in this movie rank as the most gruesome in the franchise’s history.



“When it gets up to your ankles, you’re gonna beg to tell me everything. When it gets up to your knees, you’ll kiss my ass to kill you.”

If The Living Daylights was the first Bond film of the 1980s to embroil itself in the events of the time, License To Kill was the first to do that, and latch onto a television series for some inspiration. The only problem with that was that as the decade of the 1980s, with all its color and flashy spectacle, was coming to an end, so was the five year run of Miami Vice. Add to this that although Richard Maibaum- a veteran Bond writer for approaching three decades now- was listed in the credits of this film, his contributions were interrupted by a prolonged Screenwriters Guild strike in 1989, which left Michael Wilson to shoulder the work for the script revisions. So how well did the final product hold up, plot wise?



Overall, the plot is actually rather tightly structured. But it does have some plot holes. These have to do, in large part, with the sudden popping up of characters unexpectedly. For example, Bond shoots at the Jeep Lupe and Dario are riding in the pre-credits sequence. The Jeep hits a pile of debris, and everyone but Lupe scatters. Bond goes up to her, she refuses his help, and the action continues. So, what happened to Lupe? Was she arrested or detained by the DEA? Apparently not, because just before Sanchez feeds Leiter to the shark, Krest makes a comment that Lupe is locked up, and will follow Sanchez back to Isthmus City on Krest’s ship. Really? The moll of a drug lord is left behind by said drug lord’s henchmen, and no one in law enforcement thinks to at least take her into custody to question her about Sanchez?

Another plot hole features Bond. Lupe begs him to do what Sanchez has asked, and just stay at his villa, because it’s so hard to break out of or into with all the armed security. Bond is adamant, and stages an elaborate escape holding onto the side of Lupe’s boat as she speeds across the bay into town. So now Bond, with the help of Q and Pam, have set Krest up to take the fall with Sanchez’s own money. Bond hangs around long enough to watch Krest go to pieces in the atmosphere chamber, and leaves Q and Pam on the pier as he turns away, driving the Harbor Pilot’s boat. Hardly a boat that’s small and easy to miss. Yet, somehow, Bond makes it back into Sanchez’s villa before Sanchez, with time enough to spare to get out of his shirt and throw the covers of his bed over him to feign being asleep. How, exactly, did he have such an easy time breaking back into Sanchez’s place when breaking out required such a stunt?

Ultimately, they aren’t deal breakers in the story, but it’s odd they happened at all, because the rest of the tale is rather well plotted.



You could forgiven for thinking the LTK is nothing more than a story about a drug epidemic very popular in the 1980s, and dismissing it as being part of a genre that included movies like Scarface. In fact, that the film had a drug lord as the main villain of the piece only meant you were bound to get a reference to the cocaine trade. The film itself was all about revenge, and what it makes you do.

Sanchez started the ball rolling by taking revenge on Lupe’s lover, offering to give her a little valentine in the form of her lover’s heart, cut out of his chest. He then takes revenge by whipping Lupe (and I’ve always wondered if he used the tail from a sting ray when he did that. That was an element in one of Ian Fleming’s short stories.) Having made his deal with Killifer, Sanchez then decided to exact revenge on the person responsible for him having been arrested in the first place: Felix Leiter.



It’s in killing Della, and leaving Leiter to “disagree with something that ate him” (a reference to a note left behind on Felix in the novel “Live And Let Die,”) that Sanchez kick-starts Bond’s need for revenge. When M refuses to sanction Bond’s vendetta, Bond resigns and goes rogue. That’s no small thing, because without the resources of MI-6 to back him up, Bond has essentially just cast himself as the villain.

From that point in the movie forward, up until Bond is captured by agents of the Hong Kong Police, just about everything Bond does is motivated by revenge, and is officially criminal because its unsanctioned. He kills Killifer after discovering the CIA agent was the one who sprang Sanchez. In an act of piracy, he boards the Wavekrest, kills one of Krest’s henchmen in retaliation for Sharkey’s death, sabotages the cocaine exchange and hijacks the getaway plane along with $5 Million of Sanchez’s money. He then returns to the Florida keys (something I’ve always wondered about- if the Coast Guard and DEA could track Sanchez’s plane, why couldn’t they track Bond’s unanticipated flight?) and breaks into Leiter’s house to read his friend’s confidential files. You see the pattern emerging? If this had been an actual mission, Bond would have been protected by virtue of these being official acts done on behalf of, and under orders from, MI-6. In going rogue, he had no such protection, making his actions criminal, those of a villain. You might argue that because he committed all these crimes against people who were, themselves, not altogether clean under the law, and that should ameliorate his status as a criminal. My response: no. It simply makes him a vigilante.



But there’s another aspect to Bond’s going rogue that bears some scrutiny. It seems that a darker, obsessed Bond becomes so focused on the goal of killing Sanchez that he forgets to pay attention to the other clues that are stacked up around him of other games in play. Sanchez is entertaining a group of Asian drug dealers, and two of them seem to be quite keen on observing Bond. Pam is attempting to run an Op involving the return of two Stinger missiles, stolen with the aim of potentially shooting down an American airliner. Even Q’s arrival in Isthmus City is an indication that at someone (or perhaps several someones) are attempting to observe what Bond is up to on his unsanctioned folly. All of this seems to be completely lost on Bond, as plot twist after plot twist reveals them to him. It also strangely puts him in a position to become of interest to Sanchez- which just means Bond well of luck hasn’t run out yet.

And it’s at this point where the role reversals in Bond and Sanchez begin to happen. By being quicker to the mark in telling Sanchez that he’s a former British agent than Sanchez’s own security agent, he’s become credible. That he survived a capture by the Hong Kong agents, and an attempt to send him back to London, and Sanchez’s assault on their hideout, he’s shown he’s tough and capable. And by delivering a carefully constructed lie buried within at least a portion of truth to Sanchez about an attempt on Sanchez’s life, he’s convinced the drug lord he can be trusted. Bond finally returns to form as the resourceful, always aware spy we’ve come to see him as. And he stages events to take full advantage of the mistrustful nature of Sanchez, he begins to push Sanchez into being a more traditional villain.



But it isn’t until the return of Dario in the film’s final act that the transition becomes complete. Once Dario has recognized Bond, and Bond realizes he has to act quickly, Bond’s sabotage of the “factory” strips away the last vestige of Sanchez’s veneer of geniality and charisma. What we see then is a naked, ugly dose of suspicion and ruthlessness. Suddenly, Sanchez is the one not seeing the bigger picture. He leaves Bond to die in the industrial pulverizer with only Dario watching- a decision which leads to the other truly gruesome death in this movie. He kills his own head of security when he catches him at the helicopter with his Stingers. He even kills his own accountant, just because he finds him annoying. He goes after Bond with a machete, and succeeds in slicing the brake lines on the 18 wheeler. That he keeps up his attempts to dice Bond, even after he’s turned the semi into a brake-less multi-ton battering ram, just goes to prove how single minded he’s become. And when the inevitable happens, and the trucks rolls over off the mountain road, leaving Sanchez soaked with gasoline, we again see that single minded determination. All it takes is the gift of the lighter given to Bond by Felix and Della to finish Sanchez off- something of an ironic end.



The larger question, which most likely would have been explored in the next movie, would have been is that kind of quest for vengeance worth it? This film never explores that. Once Sanchez is dispatched, it never really examines the consequences of Bond’s choices.

“Sweet dreams, Mr. Bond.”
“I hope you don’t snore, Q.”

LTK was John Glen’s fifth and final Bond movie as director. And once again, his ability to visually lay out for the audience all the vital items needed to allow an action sequence make sense were on display. From Bond’s rather complicated escape from the Wavekrest, to choreographing the bar fight at the Barrellhead, to the final showdown involving multiple 18 wheel semis, at no point do you feel lost in the action. Shot for shot, he is a very talented director of action pieces.



I mentioned at the start of this review that LTK was something of a stand-alone entry for Bond in the 1980s. In addition to the lack of the Soviet menace in this story, another item that makes it distinctive is that fact that it was shot almost entirely in either the Florida keys, or in Mexico. Even the studio work, save for one scene filmed at Pinewood studios involving M having to criticize Moneypenny for all the typos on his memo, were done at studios in Mexico City.



The pre-credit sequence of the film, and a few select scenes involving the harbor pilot’s boat, were filmed on location in the Florida Keys, where many of the crew complained about the tropical heat in August, and the fact that you could set your watch by torrential rains every afternoon at 4:00 PM. While the Florida keys, as a location, looked balmy and sleepy, the location shooting in Mexico was filled with color and scale. Sanchez’s villa is, in fact, an actual home in Acapulco called Villa Arabesque, complete with the infinity pool we saw in the movie. The monastery where we see Wayne Newton’s Reverend Joe Butcher conducting his “fundraising” efforts on behalf of his “ministry” was actually a monument build to the native peoples of Central America, called the Otomi Ceremonial Center, by a former Mexican president. Strangely, after it was built, it was more or less gated off and no one used it.

The studios in Mexico City where much of the interior scenes were filmed (Sanchez’s Office, the lab and factory, the casino, Bond’s hotel room, the bank director’s office, etc.) were characterized in the DVD extras, with typical British understatement, as “surprising.” As a result of many years of disuse, they were over-run with vermin and the roof would leak whenever it rained. The cast and crew also commented on the state of building construction south of the border- it seems that given how Mexico City is prone to earthquakes, it seems many of the tall buildings in the city have a distinct lean to them.

“Hey, observer! Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
“If I don’t get you back in time for the wedding, I’m a dead man for sure.”

The previous two Bond offerings featured title music by pop music groups enjoying chart success at the time, specifically Duran Duran and A-Ha. Perhaps that played a role in the decision to have music in this film which went in a more Rhythm & Blues direction. The Opening Credits title song, “License To Kill,” was performed by Gladys Knight, and the closing credits song, “If You Asked Me To” was performed by Patti LaBelle. While the music is okay, they don’t rate as among my favorites in Bond cannon of music. And it has to be said, for a movie that wanted to latch onto the popularity of Miami Vice, not using the sort of high energy pop music frequently featured on the television show seems a curious creative choice.

A couple of incidents from the production bear mentioning here: first, as stated earlier, much of the studio work was done in Mexico City. While it certainly helped lend to a distinctive visual quality on film, it seems Mexico City is one of the most polluted cities on Earth. Couple that with the fact that it’s actually a city at a relatively high altitude, and it had a pronounced effect on Cubby Broccoli’s health, so much so that he was forced to return to the UK to recover. He would not return to the production while it was on location. In a way, that was something of an ominous circumstance. License To Kill would be the last Bond film on which Mr. Broccoli would serve as Executive Producer.

The second incident involves the road chase that climaxed the film. Much of this location work was done on a closed mountain road in northern Mexico, near Mexicali, called La Rumorosa. The reason it was closed was that several years before, a newer, more direct road, had been constructed to replace it. The closed mountain road was also reputed to be haunted- a claim the production came close to validating in the DVD commentary and extras. Strange incidents would happen: the trucks they used developed unexpected mechanical problems. Equipment would go missing. Occasionally, for no apparently reason, one of the semis would simply start up on its own. One of the Stinger missiles Sanchez fired at Pam’s plane (not really a Stinger missile, obviously, but something capable of being launched) managed to fly off and injure a utility worker on a telephone pole some five miles away. These incidents combined to create a sense of unease in the film crew. But the haunted road location would have one final surprise for everyone. During the filming of the scene where Sanchez is lit on fire, and Bond flees just as the tanker explodes, a still image was caught by one of the crew taking pictures. It showed what appeared to be a giant hand, made out of fire, reaching out sideways from the conflagration of the truck. The image was disturbing to look at, so much so that when presented with a copy of it, John Glen’s wife refused to let him keep it in the house. But when John Glen and Alec Mills (the director of photography) took a look at the frame by frame breakdown of that scene, the fiery hand simply wasn’t there. Make of that what you will.




Finally, although this movie made its production costs back and a tidy profit as well, this film never really found a huge audience during its theatrical run in America. I don’t know that I can put that down to the film itself, so much as I can what else was in the theaters at the time. The summer of 1989 offered the following cinematic releases:
- Her Alibi
- Ghostbusters II
- Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure
- Field of Dreams
- Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade
- Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
- Batman
- When Harry Met Sally
- Honey, I Shrunk The Kids
- Lethal Weapon II
- Weekend at Bernie’s
- The Abyss
- Uncle Buck
- Parenthood
- Sex, Lies & Videotape
- Black Rain
- Look Who’s Talking

Clearly, movie audiences were spoiled for choice. In no previous year did the four month summer movie season, from mid-May to mid-September, see such a collection of blockbusters.



In the final analysis, License To Kill was an interesting experiment in transitioning both Bond and the main villain into the opposite of what they were once the story really got going. The script was straightforward and reasonably well structured. My only niggles are in Bond’s frequent, inwardly drawn brooding, and in the politically correct way the character of Pam Bouvier was handled. I don’t think the finished product came off on screen quite as well as The Living Daylights, which is why I’m giving License to Kill four exploding alarm clocks, guaranteed never to wake up anyone using them, out of a possible five.

What no one could appreciate at the time was that with Bond’s last hurrah in the 1980s, the franchise was about to head into a buzz-saw of legal issues. And while those got sorted out, the world, as it’s prone to do from time to time, changed around us. Three months after the release of License To Kill, the Berlin Wall came down. And like stacked dominos, the countries of Eastern Europe would throw off the yoke of their Eastern Block status, one by one. Finally, two years later, the Soviet Union itself would collapse, concluding 70 years of the cold war. The Second Age of Bond had come to an end.

James Bond will return, as the Third Age of Bond begins, in “GoldenEye.”

[Aspadistra]

Enjoyed your very thoughtful analysis. Istr that when the film came out the studio claimed they'd cut down on the sex scenes in order to be more responsible, given the heightened awareness of AIDS at the time. (At least that was the claim of the Scottish press.)

[The Co=Ordinator]

Great tosee your reviews back Patrick.

I'm not a fan of License To Kill. Fundamentally, it's a mean spirited film IMO and rates no better than 2/5.

[Patrick]

Great tosee your reviews back Patrick.

Thanks, C=O. I'm being pressed by an Eocene of our mutual acquantaince to finish the remaining six movie reviews. He has an idea for submitting this as an e-book, and time it come out just before the release of Skyfall.

I'm not a fan of License To Kill. Fundamentally, it's a mean spirited film IMO and rates no better than 2/5.

Mean spirited? That's a description I didn't see coming. I think that may stem from the fact that it is ultimately about revenge, which can make one do mean, ugly things. For me, where it works is in the transition taking place between Bond and Sanchez.

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