Has enough
time passed so that Timothy Dalton’s brief stint as James Bond can be
re-evaluated? I have to admit that I was not taken with his debut outing, The Living Daylights (1987), with its
ties to the Roger Moore era (it was written while he was still Bond), it felt a
little too milquetoast, but the leaner, meaner follow-up Licence to Kill (1989) was a big improvement. Essentially a revenge
movie, it saw Bond go rogue to avenge a friend that made things more personal
for 007 – something that we hadn’t seen since On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969). At the time, Licence to Kill was criticized for being
too brutal in its depiction of violence and not as humorous as previous efforts.
Interestingly, it is this grittier approach that anticipated Daniel Craig’s
current run as Bond.
The film
opens up with Bond (Timothy Dalton) en route to the wedding of his DEA buddy
Felix Leiter (David Hedison) in Key West, Florida. However, Felix is informed
(via a passing Coast Guard helicopter no less) that notorious drug lord Franz
Sanchez (Robert Davi) has been spotted in the Bahamas. Obviously, the DEA agent
has been after this guy for some time and can’t pass up an opportunity to get
him, so he takes off with Bond along for the ride as only an “observer” (yeah,
right). Sanchez is as nasty as they come, traveling to the Bahamas to retrieve
his estranged girlfriend Lupe Lamora (Talisa Soto) from a man she ran off with.
While he “disciplines” the beautiful young woman by whipping her lower back,
his psychotic enforcer Dario (Benicio del Toro) kills her lover.
With Bond’s
help, Felix captures Sanchez and they both manage to parachute and land out in
front of the church just in time for the wedding. So far this seems like
business as usual for a Bond film with the trademark exciting prologue, but
after the typically stylish opening credits with the theme song belted out with
gusto by Gladys Knight, Licence to Kill
takes a decidedly darker turn as Sanchez not only escapes protective custody,
with the help of a double-crossing DEA official (Everett McGill), but exacts
some nasty revenge on Felix. First, Sanchez has Dario rape and kill Felix’s
wife (Priscilla Barnes) and then feeds the DEA agent to a hungry shark.
On his way
home, Bond hears about Sanchez’s escape and heads back to Felix’s house to find
what’s left of the bride and groom (incredibly, Felix is still alive, just
barely). Bond makes it his personal mission in life to track down Sanchez and
destroy him and his operation even if it means disobeying a director order from
M (Robert Brown), his superior, and having his license to kill revoked.
Timothy
Dalton does an excellent job in Licence
to Kill, building on the foundation he established with his first outing
and one wonders how much better he could have been if he had returned to the
role. Sadly, it was the last time he got to play the iconic character. The
actor is quite convincing as the normally objective secret agent who is driven
to extremes when a close friend is almost killed. Much like Sanchez, loyalty is
important to Bond and both men are willing to kill when it is put to the test.
Early on, Dalton shows a fun-loving Bond enjoying a rare lull between
globetrotting adventures, and when things get deadly he is all business. This
time, though, when he’s efficiently dispatching bad guys, it’s personal, each
one killed for Felix and his wife.
For all of
his ruthlessness, Sanchez does live by his own code, valuing loyalty over
everything else, which, of course, is the Achilles’ heel that Bond uses as
leverage to infiltrate the drug lord’s organization. Robert Davi is excellent
as Sanchez, giving the brutal baddie his own unique spin, like the sly smile he
gives when the DEA loads him into an armored truck bound for prison. In several
scenes there is a mischievous glint in Davi’s eyes as if to suggest that
Sanchez gets off on the brutality he inflicts on others. He even has a
whimsical affectation in the form of a pet iguana that sports a diamond-encrusted
collar.
The lovely
Carey Lowell plays CIA informant Pam Bouvier, one of Felix’s contacts, and whom
Bond first meets at a scuzzy bar where she brandishes a shotgun when Dario and
his buddies show up, so you know she can handle herself. It’s a pretty amusing
introduction as Pam and Bond meet and start a bar room brawl. She’s smart,
beautiful, tough, and a crackerjack pilot, but even she can’t resist Bond’s
charms. Lowell’s appearance takes on a decidedly sexier turn when Pam
transforms herself into Bond’s “executive secretary,” complete with a
no-nonsense short hairdo and shimmering evening dress when they crash Sanchez’s
swanky casino.
Las Vegas
entertainer Wayne Newton has a comical turn as a cheesy television evangelist
and Sanchez middleman, aptly named Professor Joe Butcher complete with faux
sincere catch phrase, “Bless your heart.” Newton displays an oily charm that is
pretty funny, especially when Professor Joe tries to get Pam alone for a
personal “meditation” session and manages to keep his cool even when she turns
the tables on him. Talisa Soto is the requisite eye candy and set up as the
obvious stunning beauty of the film, but I always found Lowell much more
attractive. Benicio del Toro brings a certain psychotic reptilian charm to his
role, but gets little to do other than glower menacingly and failure to kill
Bond on several occasions.
There’s
certainly no shortage of exciting action sequences in Licence to Kill, like when Bond waterskies behind a drug-running
plane with his feet and attached via a harpoon gun! Even the final showdown
between Bond and Sanchez is much more savage and visceral than one usually
finds in these films, but it had to be that way because of what Sanchez did
earlier on. This is definitely a harder edged Bond film that gets bloody
frequently, between shark attacks, human combustion and crushing, which may
have also turned off fans used to the relatively bloodless Roger Moore era. Ironically,
the more intense violence was an attempt to appeal the U.S. market. Even the
cheesy one-liners Dalton spouts are few and far between, coming across as
grimmer than usual.
That being
said, Licence to Kill has all the
requisite elements of a Bond film: beautiful women, a rich and powerful villain
and plenty of thrilling action set pieces – it’s just that the tone is
considerably darker and there is much more at stake for Bond this time out,
which I found refreshing at the time. This was a rare Bond film that saw 007
get his hands dirty, both literally and figuratively. Unfortunately, the
producers didn’t explore the ramifications of this until Skyfall (2012), which took a fascinating look at a Bond burnt out
from the two previous films.
Like many
Bond films, its villain reflects contemporary ills that plague the world and in
this case drug smuggling with Sanchez representing the thriving South American
drug cartels. Alas, it seems that fans weren’t crazy about a Bond revenge movie
and Licence to Kill was regarded as
another Dalton misfire with disappointing box office returns in North America (it
was the lowest grossing of the series in the U.S.) and mixed critical reaction.
By the time the next installment was made, the actor had moved on and was
replaced by Pierce Brosnan. Rather interestingly, the next time the Bond
franchise tried to make a revenge tale with Quantum
of Solace (2008) it too was met with a critical backlash and derided by
fans. As a result, Licence
to Kill remains an intriguing change of pace in the Bond canon, an oddity
where the filmmakers pushed the tone of the film to one extreme, almost is if
compensating for the one in The Living
Daylights. Perhaps if Dalton had appeared in another Bond film the powers
that be would have made some adjustments to create a film with a better
balance. Sadly, we will never know.
Further reading: check out John Kenneth Muir's excellent look at the film.
