Licence To Kill (1989)

Hot on the heels of the generally fine but flawed The Living Daylights, comes Timothy Dalton’s second and sadly last outing as secret agent James Bond (that said, some hardcore Bond fans may have some cause to consider Dalton as never truly being Bond, particularly in this vengeance-themed story- he’s hardly doing his duty for his country here, its all strictly personal and contrary to orders).

Licence To Kill is a film about revenge and its consequences. The film greatly benefits from having the one thing Dalton’s previous entry sorely lacked- a really great villain, and with drug baron Franz Sanchez (Robert Davi) the film has one of Bond’s very best. Captured in the film’s first action sequence by Bond’s  CIA buddy Felix Leiter (David Hedison), Sanchez breaks out of police custody and gets his bloody revenge on Felix.  Felix’s wife is murdered (and possibly raped/tortured in the process but that’s not really elaborated) and Felix himself nearly tortured to death by being fed to a shark.  Bond goes after Sanchez, seeking revenge of his own and defying MI6 orders. Bond is working outside of British Intelligence, ignoring the fact that he has been stripped of his licence to kill. Its a cold, ruthless Bond here, one far removed from that of Roger Moore’s outings, a Bond that plays to Dalton’s strengths and reduces the weaknesses shown in his previous Bond entry (his awkward romancing for instance- Dalton’s Bond is a colder hero, far from the ‘smooth-operator’ of Moore).

Continuing the films huge improvements over The Living Daylights, we get two great Bond girls- Pam Bouvier (Carey Lowell), an associate of Felix who assists Bond in his pursuit of Sanchez, and Lupe Lamora (Taliso Soto), Sanchez’s reluctant girlfriend. Both women are excellent, more than just beautiful eye-candy, they both move the plot forward, something that can’t always be said of Bond films before or since. The physicality of the film is something that wouldn’t return until the Daniel Craig editions. Bond is beaten and bleeding as a result of his many fights and stunts here, certainly shaken and stirred if you will forgive the pun. Yes its violent but its a violence with consequences as opposed to the cartoon-like escapades of, say, the Roger Moore films.

I thoroughly enjoyed the film and will go so far as to say that its one of my favourite Bond films. It’s just such a shame that outside forces would give the franchise severe problems that resulted in Dalton’s tenure as Bond being over. What might that third Dalton film have been? We’ll sadly never know. In a way its OHMSS all over again. The Bond series breaking bounds only to fall back into the ‘comfort-zone’ of past entries.

The Living Daylights (1987)

Progressing through the Bond 50 set, I’ve finally, at long last, reached the two films that I’ve never seen but have been curious about for many years- the two entries starring Timothy Dalton as James Bond. Curiously, producer ‘Cubby’ Broccoli had actually considered Dalton for the part years before, back in 1968 for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, after Sean Connery first departed the franchise. Dalton was supposedly even offered the part but he declined it as he felt he was too young at the time. I’m not sure that was a wise move myself, as OHMSS, even with the much-maligned George Lazenby in the role of Bond, is in my eyes the best film in the series- with Dalton in  the part who could say what would have happened? Would the franchise have soared and Connery’s subsequent return proven unnecessary? I guess it is one of those great ‘what-if’s ‘of movie history, and one can only imagine how things may have turned out in that parallel universe. My own suspicion is that had Dalton taken the role, OHMSS may have been even more successful with audiences, he would have stuck with the franchise  and we would have had a great follow-up to OHMSS,as originally intended, with Dalton’s Bond seeking revenge after the murder of his wife, pushing the franchise into a serious direction not taken until decades later.

Alas, it was not to be- Dalton would not get another bite at the cherry until nearly two decades later, when Connery’s eventual long-term replacement Roger Moore finally left the series with the frankly shocking A View to a Kill. After considering Pierce Brosnan and, bizarrely, Sam Neil, eventually Broccoli returned to his earlier candidate and this time Dalton accepted the offer.

It is clear that with a new Bond -one much younger and more physically intimidating than Roger Moore- the film-makers intended to revitalise the franchise with a new direction. By the time A View to a Kill was released Bond had become a victim of its own excess and had descended into self-parody somewhat. In a similar way to how the later Daniel Craig Bond would attempt to differentiate itself from the Brosnan films before, here the creators of The Living Daylights would attempt to make their Bond wholly different to the tongue-in-cheek, fantastical yarns of Moore’s period.  In this it largely succeeded- indeed, perhaps actually going too far. In trying to become edgier and more real-world, it also lost the one thing every good Bond film needs- a really good villain threatening the world. Instead he gets two and neither measures up- a double-crossing KGB agent and his crazy American arms dealer cohort.

Because for all the good Dalton does in presenting a new, darker Bond perhaps truer to the Fleming character of the books (I can’t really say, as I’ve never read any of them), he is undermined by the truly lacklustre and appalling villains of The Living Daylights.  Jeroen Krabbé plays defecting KGB officer Georgi Koskov; from the start  Krabbé is miscast- he looks too soft and comical and when his true intentions are made clear, he fails to turn his earlier appearance around, failing to engender any menace at all. He just seems a bumbling bureaucrat trying to be a military mastermind and is hardly in Bond’s league. Indeed, Koskov’s partner-in-crime, American arms dealer Brad Whitaker is such a deliriously harmless nutter it only further exemplifies Koskov’s misjudgement and amateurish stab at Bond villainy. Koskov and Whitaker are a joke, basically, and its something the film never recovers from.  It’s a shame, as Dalton’s Bond struggles gamely to foster some drama from the proceedings and even attempts many of his own stunts in order to further the realism, but its all for nothing. I was very surprised at his physical presence in the film – indeed in action sequences he reminded often of Harrison Ford, someone I thought was beyond equal as an actor in physical roles and fight sequences.

There is one element of the Bond persona that Dalton does clearly struggle with though- and that’s as the romantic, womanising rogue/cad that Bond is.  Every Bond film has a Bond girl -well, usually more than one, but here its kept to just one perhaps as a sign of the times- and The Living Daylights features the beautiful Maryam d’Abo as Koskov’s cellist girlfriend, Kara Milovy. Unfortunately she is a rather vapid character, hardly anything more than set-dressing, proof perhaps that not all lessons were learned from A View to a Kill, as its Bond girl (played by the vacant-eyed Tanya Roberts) was one of the worst of all-time.  Dalton looks ill at ease whenever Bond gets into romantic moments with d’Abo, an odd awkwardness that is a first for the Bond series. It just feels forced and unconvincing and it derails any romance.

Also, while many of the stunts are impressive- particularly some aerial sequences at the climax- some betray the silliness of the previous Moore outings, such as one stunt where Bond and Milovy ride a cello during a snow pursuit across the border. Indeed, while its no doubt grittier and sincere in its real-world attempts, the whole film feels like it struggles to really shake off the Moore Bond-era persona; its clearly a franchise in transition, and it leaves the film something of a promising failure, a half-way house if you will to what would follow.  All part of the learning curve no doubt. Because to be sure, everything would click (and the ghost of Moore be dispelled at last) with the next entry, the triumphant Licence to Kill…

A View to a Kill (1985)

So we finally come to A View to a Kill as I work my way through the Bond 50 boxset. I would like to say it was a neglected entry in the Bond series, a flawed film with surprising redeeming features. But that wouldn’t really be true. The only thing I can really say about it is that it means I can finally say adieu to the Roger Moore incarnation [1] and at long last now see Timothy Dalton’s Bond for the first time, something I have looked forward to since buying this set last year. There really isn’t much positive that can be said of A View to a Kill though.  You know you are in for a rough ride as soon as the Beach Boys boom out of the speakers during the familiar pre-credit snow-boarding sequence.

Moore himself is clearly just too old for the part, and was honest enough to say so, announcing his retirement from the film series having being talked into doing two too many. His Bond was always rather fun and self-deprecating, but his age here (he was 57 I believe) is damaging to the film. Christopher Walken’s psychotic Zorin (clearly evil, clearly a threat in every scene)  is a good Bond villain, but alas he is utterly wasted in a rather vapid plot about horse-doping (in a Bond movie?!). There is a missed opportunity sub-plot regards genetic manipulation/experimentation of super-humans that should have really been brought to the fore.  Instead the main plot, involving Zorn’s plan  to create an earthquake that destroys Silicon Valley ensuring the global domination of his own chip-manufacturing company  seems more a scheme of Superman‘s Lex Luthor than a Bond villain. But that’s not the film’s weakest link. Nor is the rather typically odd performance of the slightly crazy-looking Grace Jones (does she ever act?) as Zorn’s madcap henchwoman Mayday.

No, the proverbial nail in the coffin for A View to a Kill, that likely confirms its title of worst Bond movie ever, is Tanya Roberts woeful turn as Bond girl Stacy Sutton, clearly the worst Bond girl to ever ‘grace’ the screen (and that’s taking into account Denise Richard’s infamous nuclear scientist Christmas Jones years later). “James, don’t leave me!” she cries in the burning elevator shaft as Bond clearly searches for an exit for them. “Oh James!” she wails in further jeopardies. She is utterly irritating and without any redeeming features. Clearly just a one-dimensional damsel-in-distress, it’s true she isn’t helped by the vapid character written for her but dear oh dear, her performance is truly awful. I sniggered as she escaped the inferno without even a mark on her white dress or on her pretty face, even still wearing her high heel shoes, and soon ended up driving a fire truck through San Francisco’s streets whilst pursued by cops, still in those damn high heels.  It was just so bizarre. The whole film is  like a compendium of the Worst Bond Girl Moments.

Still, this film, like Octopussy before it, is clearly the best reason for the Bond 50 boxset. I cannot fathom why anybody would wish to buy this film individually or even own up to owning it except as a necessary part of a packaged set.  But still, it’s done, and I can at last move on…

1) In truth, Roger Moore’s tenure as Bond actually surprised me, as before I always felt his was the weakest of them, and yet I have quite enjoyed his take on Bond- as a whole I feel the films are possibly equal to those of Sean Connery. Individual films featuring Connery are no doubt superior- but on the whole, just as Connery’s films slipped in quality and Connery’s ego and contempt of the character increasingly filtered through into the films, Moore’s work-ethic and sincerity for the part and the films themselves, weak as some of them are, is clearly evident. Daft as they are, they somehow feel more honest.