For 25 years, the James Bond films
had been well known for their light tones, but that standard had been abandoned
in favor of a more serious tone in 1987’s The Living Daylights. The film was a
success, and took James Bond down routes he should have gone down much sooner.
Naturally, the studio wanted its star, Timothy Dalton, to come back for the
next film. This time, they were gonna blow preconceptions of what Bond should
be out of the water. The last film may have been gritty, but this next one was
going to up that grit, take on a weighty tone, and give Bond the depth he
hadn’t been given since On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. This was Licence to
Kill, a film which proved divisive among its audiences.
The film begins with Bond and his
CIA friend Felix Leiter taking a drug lord into custody, but the criminal
escapes, kidnapping and injuring Leiter, and murdering Leiter’s wife. Thinking
Bond to be emotionally compromised, M revokes his license to kill and suspends
him from MI6. Bond, however, goes rogue to pursue the criminal, Franz Sanchez,
who plans to sell numerous shipments of his products disguised as fuel. Bond is
aided along the way by an ex-Army pilot, and by his old weapons technician Q.
The thing that’s immediately
striking about Licence to Kill is its tone, which is incredibly dark compared
to anything that the other films had ever done, a lot of which is highlighted
by the violence. I know that the other films had their fair share of heavy
violence, but this film is downright aggressive. While it is true that there
are some truly absurd elements worthy of the Roger Moore era, most of the time,
everything is much more grounded, usually taking a back seat to Bond,
occasionally taking a look into his emotional state. In fact, this is what the
follow up to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service SHOULD have been.
The action in this movie is much
heavier and unlike the lighter action of the Connery and Moore films. The
aesthetic style is considerably harsher. Even the music took a more serious
turn. The living Daylights marked John Barry’s last time composing for the 007
series, and I think that was a good choice. You gotta love John Barry, but
after a while, all his scores started to sound the same. The music was handled
this time by Michael Kamen, and much like Marvin Hamlisch, Kamen knew how to
write great music, and, of course, the opening title song performed by Gladys
Knight is a great song.
As for the cast, they’re all quite
great. Dalton, like I’ve said before, may not have quite the same sense of
charisma that early Connery or early Moore had, but he makes this incarnation
of the character his own. I’ve said before that the character needs to take
himself seriously for the movie to be taken seriously, and while many people
may not like this more darker form of Bond, I think this is the best way to handle
him. It’s a kind of Bond we wouldn’t get again until years later, but we’ll get
to that in due time. The Bond girl in this movie is great. The villain here is
downright wicked. There are also some nice supporting roles that provide some
of the more welcome comic relief.
But, was everybody ready for this
Bond? It depends on who you ask. Some thought it was a refreshing change of
pace, but others thought it got too grim, too quickly, and they even thought
that the cast and the story felt downright lifeless, which is not a totally
unfair assessment. A lot of viewers were really turned off by the sudden
intensity this entry brought. In comparison to previous Bond films, it didn’t
do that well at the box office either. Needless to say, I don’t think it was
what the studio had hoped for. This was the last film made before the series
went into a six year hiatus, a hiatus where Dalton decided not to return as
Bond.
Not only was it the end of the
Dalton era, it was practically the end of the old-school Bond era. On top of it
being the last Bond movie many of the old cast would ever work on, it also
marked the last film for screenwriter Richard Maibaum, title designer Maurice
Binder, editor John Grover, director and former editor John Glen, and it was
even the last time Albert R. Broccoli would serve as one of the film’s
producers. However, Broccoli would stay on as a consulting producer for the
next Bond film, which was just the right restart the studio needed, and would
arguably be considered the most popular of ANY of the James Bond films. Why?
For that answer, join me next time…
****1/2 / *****
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