Review of Licence to Kill (1989) by Caspar R — 13 Dec 2009

Licence to Kill is a generic, throw-away 80s revenge flick without a trace of the Bond we know and love to be found in its story.

Here, Timothy Dalton steps in as the title character for the last time, and it's hard to believe, but he's actually worse at it than in his one other outing. Dalton's Bond has more of a love for parachutes than women, can't keep his tuxedo on for the life of him, and fails on every level to seem intelligent. This movie's plot is put together in a jumble (Licence to Kill has a truly confounding intro teaser), the story is dimwitted, and the entire movie's style is so coarse and clunky it's stressful to watch.

Towards the beginning, Licence to Kill has a good chase in the water and then up onto a seaplane, it has an important and shocking event with Bond's American CIA counterpart Felix Leiter, a barfight, and an exciting tanker truck chase to finish up. But still the movie's no good. It's not fun. It feels grimy. In watching, I always wonder how cool it would have been if Bond's revoked killing licence actually forced him to behave differently, finding interesting solutions without allowing himself to kill the sidekicks. But that would take way more imagination and thought than this movie could muster.

If it's a License to Kill you want, undergoing rigorous training and years of dangerous experience will be far easier than sitting through this flick.