Timothy Dalton's two James Bond movies, "The Living Daylights" (1987) and "Licence to Kill" (1989), are among the most derided in the series, hovering somewhere around "The World is Not Enough" and "Moonraker" with most fans. In the latest Entertainment Weekly rankings, "The Living Daylights" comes in at number sixteen and "Licence to Kill," nineteen—out of twenty. The former mostly justifies the hostility, while the latter is defensible and even borderline excellent at times.
At this point, every Bond movie is compared to an aggregate ideal of the Perfect Bond Movie. Aggregate because no one Bond movie contains every perfect element—although "Goldfinger" is generally considered the closest. Too many modulations from the center are seen as deteriorations of the integrity of the series. Taking this kind of thinking too seriously has led to some of the series pitfalls, like the straightforwardly presented gimmickry of some of Pierce Brosnan's Bond films. An extreme example of this is the magical invisible car in "Die Another Day." "Licence to Kill" is the Timothy Dalton Bond movie that succeeds by willfully turning its back on the moldy conventions. As a result, the series is expanded and shows how unexpectedly deep it can be. (The new "Casino Royale" blows "Licence to Kill" away in this department, but it doesn't diminish its impact.)
Both films are typical relics of the eighties: "Daylights" clings to the Cold War dream of perfect, Godless Soviet villainy and "Licence" features speedboat chases in the Florida Keys.
The biggest failure of "The Living Daylights" is the poor definition of the bad guys. General Koskov (Jeroem Krabbe) defects from the Soviet Union but then returns because of plot mechanics too convoluted for me to remember. So he's the bad guy, right? If so, that means that James Bond is fighting for the Taliban against a general who is just trying to buy weapons for his army. However, the movie doesn't seem to think Koskov is the bad guy. Bond doesn't have a showdown with him and he survives past the end of the movie. It turns out that the villain is actually Brad Whitaker (Joe Don Baker), an American military dude seen in only two previous scenes, who is selling the weapons to the Soviets so they can fight the heroic Afghanis.* Whitaker's secret hideout is, um, a wax museum of warlords throughout history.
The main thing that "Licence to Kill" (yes, it's really spelled like that) has going for it is a credible bad guy. The other Fratelli brother from "The Goonies" plays Sanchez, a Colombian drug lord. Obviously, just dealing drugs is not enough to get James Bond's attention. What does is the fact that he feeds Bond's friend Felix to a shark and then turns his thugs on Felix's wife. He may be little more than a stock MacGyver villain, but at least he's got a massive hideout and a plan to take over the world with Nancy Reagan's inexorable threat of hard drugs.
The two most damning things a character in a James Bond movie can do are to declare close friendship with or love for 007. These characters' subsequent proximity to death is up there with counselors who have sex at Camp Crystal Lake.
Seemingly acknowledging the deficiencies of Timothy Dalton as Bond, "Licence to Kill" is a great movie because it does things differently. At times it's not necessarily a great Bond movie, but rather a great eighties action movie. Among other divergences, Bond has to violently break away from MI6 and beats up M in the process; Q works with Bond throughout the movie; and the stunt work and violence are ramped up and portrayed more seriously. The stunts in the film are outstanding—perhaps the best in the series—because we know they are not aided by computers.
Timothy Dalton never feels comfortable as James Bond. In "The Living Daylights," he looks either pissed off or in the clouds for most of the runtime. He's kind of the same in "Licence to Kill," but at least the film gives him more to do, and more of a reason to do it.
*To further confuse matters, Joe Don "Mitchell!" Baker plays an American ally of James Bond in two of the Brosnan outings.
Maryam D'Abo, Bond Girl from "The Living Daylights."
No comments:
Post a Comment