Review of The Living Daylights (1987) by Vidyabum — 22 Oct 2021

Having watched 25 Bonds from Dr.No to Skyfall, I place this one at 10/25.

I believe Timothy Dalton was a complete blessing on this franchise. Almost 20 years after Connery did the last Bond that he actually wanted to make, and after lots of lead actor problems and a Moore era that completely melted Bond down into a giant joke, Dalton managed to swoop in and rake in exactly what Connery had left: a serious character, in an unrealistic world, that wins through wit, skill, and enjoys life as a womaniser and dangerous games player.

Dalton imprinted so quickly and so well on the role that I believe he's one of the best Bonds, and perhaps the best.

And in his first movie, after the endless string of Moore's half-comedy movies, we finally got something serious. We got a spy movie. We got a GOOD spy movie, with real backstabbing, lying, cheating, plotting, searching and thinking. We got instinct and skill, we got brilliance and great moments, we got a decent romantic interest.

My love for this movie was soaring and I was enjoying it through and through.

Until the last 3rd.

You see, everything I said applies to The Living Daylights, but clearly EON didn't have enough of all that goodness to last a whole two hours. So for the last 3rd of the movie, we get a visit to Afghanistan, to see our friends the Taliban.

And I'm not being sarcastic. We meet Talibans in this movie, and they are of course, highly courageous "freedom fighters" that studied English in Oxford. I'm still not being sarcastic.

Our Friends The Taliban, in the middle of the 1980-1988 Soviet-Afghan war, are our Friends for completely political reasons (1987 movie), and not only is this part of the movie absurd in hindsight, but it's also like everything bad from Moore's time was just reinstated for it.

Picture, if you will, Bond, a girl, and 7 taliban on horseback with old carbines attacking a Soviet army base of 500 or so soldiers armed with AK-74s. Now picture, if you can, that Bond and his 7 Taliban Friends run around on horseback for 5 whole minutes and the entirety of the soviet base also runs around, and doesn't manage to shoot a single one of them down, or even to aim at them at all. Just, 7 Taliban rode in, started shooting, and 500 armed men did nothing but run around for 5 whole minutes of movie, before Bond + girl hitch a ride on a plane, and the Taliban just ride the base down.

That's one example, but the entirety of the latter third of the movie is riddled with that. The Living Daylights had a great lead, a great tone, and some impressive plot, lines, and decisions. It could have been an excellent Bond. But Moore's movies weren't bad just because of Moore, they were so because of EON all the same, and here, the renewal is both brilliant and totally insufficient.

I still love Dalton and the first half of this movie, but I can't recommend it past the halfway mark.