Review of Licence to Kill (1989) by Jonathan B — 11 Apr 2016

Timothy Dalton gives a more assured performance as Bond in his second movie in the leading role. He also has a better plot which, despite one or two slips, gives 007 plenty to do. Unusually for a Bond movie, the plot concerns a personal issue for the super spy where he seeks to avenge his old friend Felix Leiter after a South American drug baron kills Leiter's new wife and feeds him to his pet shark.

There are the usual Bond staples of spectacular hanging out of aeroplane stunts, car chases, casinos, and 5 star hotels in glamorous locations but there are noticeably fewer bikini-clad ladies lounging by the villain's pool.

In such big budget movies, it's often the details that let things down and there are some clumsy effects, even allowing for the age of the film. A draw full of obviously rubber maggots and a few plastic fish seem needlessly crude and there's a cringe-worthy winking fountain at the end of the film.

There's also a bizarre role for crooner Wayne Newton as a kind of TV evangelist who forms part of the villain's operations, a character that only really fulfils the need to get some kind of over-sized base into the movie.

However, this is an assured, if unchallenging movie and I think it is a shame that Dalton moved on from the part following its release. Licence To Kill could have been better and hasn't aged terribly well, however it could have been much, much worse and it did mark a bit of an upward turn for a patchy franchise something that Dalton himself can take much of the credit for.