The second and last picture to have Timothy Dalton as a cold as ice James Bond is 1989's LICENCE TO KILL. If you like your 007s as dry as a dry martini, this may be the Bond for you. Otherwise, you may feel Dalton belongs with George Lazenby (ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE) as one of the actors who disgraced the Bond name.
LICENCE TO KILL features Robert Davi as a drug smuggler named Franz Sanchez, a sadomasochist who likes to whip his women when they don't obey. Sanchez's band of drug runners use maggots to camouflage their stash and sharks to munch on any drug enforcement officers who get too close. CIA agent Felix Leiter (David Hedison) reappears from 1973's LIVE AND LET DIE, and promptly gets severely munched. Bond, who wants to go after the mutilators of his old friend Leiter, gets his "licence to kill" revoked by M when he refuses to give up the hunt.
Although set on Key West and on a Caribbean island, the cinematography by Alec Mills and the sets by Peter Lamont have none of the usual lovely travelogue aspect of Bond pictures. The mundane visuals fit right in with the bland storyline.
Where are the signature chase scenes, the sexual humor and the romantic trysts that we come to Bond films for in the first place? Here the chase scenes are mainly saved until the end.
In the perfect Bond setup, he runs out of gas in a speedboat on a romantic evening with a beautiful woman, Pam Bouvier (Carey Lowell). Dalton's reaction? He is miffed about the delay. Although his Bond finally agrees to a sexual encounter with her, it is only because she pressures him. The old James sought out such opportunities without being coerced. The only genuinely erotic scene occurs later when Bond sticks his hand up Pam's skirt, but he's just going for her hidden gun. Dalton is dead serious, having little time to waste on women or humor.
(LICENCE TO KILL is the first Bond film to be rated PG-13 - they since have all had this rating - which is partly because of the addition in the early 1980s of the PG-13 rating and partly because of the increased amount of blood and profanity in LICENCE TO KILL.)
A white-suited Wayne Newton, providing some much needed humor, appears in a cameo as a televangelist on the prowl for donations. His real purpose is to convey the wholesale price of drugs and negotiate drug deals on the air in secret.
After a languid and completely formulaic movie, the pace finally picks up at the end in a long chase scene using large gasoline trucks. When the only memorable visual is a semi doing a wheelie, you know the picture is in trouble.
By : Steve Rhodes
Source: rec.art.movies.reviews newsgroup
Rating: 0
No, that's not a typo, that's how they spell the word "license" in England. Leave it to the British to be snobby enough to reject the letter "s" in all its forms. It doesn't make sense, but neither do any of the movies in the James Bond series. How can one man have sex with three beautiful women and defuse an atomic bomb in every movie? Even the most suave amongst us would have sex with an atomic bomb and defuse three beautiful women by mistake every once in awhile.
This was Timothy Dalton's second and final appearance as 007 and good riddance to him, I say. Sure, he's not a bad Bond, but he's got a certain sliminess about him I just don't like. Dalton outstayed his welcome after only two movies, whereas I didn't start to get sick of Roger Moore until the OCTOPUSSY period. Let's face it, though. Any rugged-looking white guy with dark hair could do a decent James Bond. Hell, people would even pay to see Regis Philbin in the role. And Kathie Lee could play Octocody. Just a thought...
Even with Dalton at the helm, LICENCE TO KILL is still a good Bond outing, for the fact that it so drastically departs from the tried-and-true 007 formula used in the seventeen movies before it. Here, Bond is on a personal mission to avenge the murder of a CIA friend and his wife. Bond is all alone this time, his "licence" to kill having been revoked by the British secret service, and must track down the Mexican drug lord who ordered the double execution.
Locating the villain in a Bond movie is never hard. Just look for the biggest exotic mansion around. Bond finds the place and, as usual, is held captive for a considerable percentage of the movie (something like 22.7%, but don't quote me on that). He also invites the drug lord's girlfriend to a fiesta in his pantalones. That's one of Dalton's two conquests in LICENCE TO KILL... See, that right there is how you know he wasn't meant to play James Bond. The other Bonds get at least a trio of ladies per movie, even George Lazenby in ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE.
LICENCE TO KILL clocks in as one of the better entries in the series, with a visually-stimulating-yet-down-to-earth climax, a more gritty feel to it and an entirely new direction for the Bond series. Bond is self-motivated and independent, with a little help from his friend Q. (who actually joins Bond in the mission toward the end) and his unusually competent girlfriend Pam (who also functions as a low- calorie cooking spray). It also reminds us what the 80's were all about by throwing in cocaine and Wayne Newton. You have to have the cocaine to tolerate Newton.
