Review of The Living Daylights (1987) by Stefan G — 12 Dec 2014

The absence of Roger Moore was more than welcome in The Living Daylights, in which the producers seem to have been doing everything they could to make Bond seem much less stale. For instance, the story, though it's stretched across one of the longer Bond flicks, is more directly focused on action, rather than an attempt to completely rehash the same suave yarn that has been perpetuated for over two decades by the time this film was made.

The acting is much more enjoyable than in the previous Bond film, and in some other subtler ways, it felt like a different Bond film. However, it was presented in much the same way as the previous Bond films were, making it painfully obvious that the producers still wanted to play it safe.

For me, that's ultimately the biggest problem, because this film had the potential to overturn the traditional Bond formula, even if it was only a glimmer of potential, but apparently audiences weren't ready yet, so we have a harder-edged Bond that only has hints of ambition, but ultimately settles for a kind of middle ground that is nearly impossible to negotiate.