Review of Licence to Kill (1989) by Adam T — 22 May 2017

Licence To Kill has proven to be one of the more controversial Bond films and people who applauded Dalton's debut as the secret service agent usually don't like this film. Conversely, people who like Licence To Kill usually don't like The Living Daylights.

The film represents more direct involvement from Dalton and the silly humour is gone as are the ludicrous villains. The villain in this movie is a nasty drug lord Franz Sanchez (Robert Davi) who has just been captured by Bond and his CIA buddy Felix Leiter (Played by David Hedison, in a reprise of his role from Live And Let Die).

In spectacular fashion, Bond and Felix parachute down to the latter's wedding before the opening titles. What follows is a grisly story of drugs, crime and revenge. When Sanchez escapes, he murders Leiter's new bride and has him maimed in a shark tank.

Upon finding the bride and Leiter with the bloodied note "He disagreed with something that ate him", Dalton's acting chops come to the fore in one of the film's most emotive scenes. The plot is very straight forward this time.

Revenge is the key motivation for Bond and he will do anything in his power (including leaving the secret service, posing as an ally of Sanchez and disrupting his organisation by setting up his circle of friends).

Among these friends are Anthony Zerbe as Milton Crest, a character taken from the Fleming short story The Hildebrand Rarity, and Benicio Del Toro as Sanchez's right hand man Dario. Although some of the characters and situations in this film resemble those from Scarface, this movie doesn't have the same slickness and style to it.

The action is fantastic, the truck chases in particular and Cary Lowell is a smart, sexy and empowered Bond girl but the movie doesn't have the razzle dazzle one expects from the franchise. It is dark and gritty with a suitable Latin-flavoured score from Michael Kamen but the violence makes it almost indistinguishable from other action movies of the day.

So what essentially has happened here is that Timothy Dalton and director John Glenn have made Bond more 'realistic' and 'believable' but it has been at the expense of the style, charm and humour that set the films apart in the first place.

This was the end of the line for Bond in many ways and another rethink was required. By 1994, this reviewer made a point of renting this movie simply because it looked like it was probably the last. I was pleasantly surprised by the accent on story and championed it for quite some time.

In hindsight and especially against the return of slicker, stylish Bond films, it does seem like a timely experiment but the approach was divisive.