Review of The Living Daylights (1987) by D S — 10 Feb 2008

The non-Bond films - a little term I have - refers to all Bond films between Connery and Brosnan. The films are generally very average, with Moore and Dalton not particularly good Bonds. Having said that, [i]The Living Daylights[/i] is not bad at all, but is however let down by 2 rather major things.

The first is the Bond girl - Kara Milovy, played by Maryam d'Abo. She is quite simply the worst Bond girl ever, an indisuputable fact in my eyes. While the majority of Bond girls are intelligent, strong and attractive (both physically and mentally), she is the complete opposite, although she is physically attractive to be fair.

The character she portrays should really have been in Blonde and Blonder alongside Pamela Anderson and Denise Richards. She's that stupid and ditsy. She whinges, she whines, she takes 5 minutes to understand the obvious, doesn't look at what she's doing and acts like a woman who doesn't know what sex is. She is painful beyond belief, and it really distracts from what is going on.

But having said [i]that[/i], the other thing that is really off-putting is the plot. It's extremely hard to follow. Having seen it now probably half a dozen times, I still need to consult Wikipedia to refresh my mind. Up until this point, there was never anything as complex, and there wasn't again until Casino Royale.

Bond (Timothy Dalton) is after General Leonid Pushkin, after General Koshkov, a Soviet defector, reveals that Pushkin is behind the revival '[i]Smert' Shpionam' [/i](literally meaning 'Death to Spies'), which led to the assassination of another Double 0 agent in Gibraltar, a scene which opens the film. Koshkov reveals that Pushkin has become a psychotic, and Bond sets off to find and kill Pushkin.

It must be said that I think a lot of this film's mediocrity is down to director John Glen. Just by looking at his other films - For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, A View To A Kill and License to Kill - you can see an obvious pattern emerging.

It's a decent enough film, certainly a lot better than the follow-up 'License to Kill', and it's extremely watchable. Despite it not being as good as something like 'You Only Live Twice', I'd still rather watch this, simply because it's so watchable. You don't really [i]need[/i] to know the plot to follow, and that'll always offer bonus points to any film's score.