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\u00a9 Eon Productions<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Another unwelcome reminder that I\u2019m now old and decrepit\u2026\u00a0 I\u2019ve just discovered that 35 years ago today, on June 13th<\/sup> 1989, Licence to Kill<\/strong> opened at the Leicester Square Odeon in London.\u00a0 Time, I think, for a 35th<\/sup>-anniversary tribute to one of my favourite Bond movies<\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Few events depress me more than when a film critic like Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian or Pete Travers in Rolling Stone, who knows nothing about James Bond and whose general opinions I don\u2019t think much of either, decide it\u2019s time to pen a feature ranking the Bond films from \u2018best\u2019 to \u2018worst\u2019.\u00a0 That invariably means that the 1989 movie Licence to Kill<\/em> with Timothy Dalton playing Bond ends up near the bottom, held off the \u2018worst\u2019 spot only by 1985\u2019s A View to a Kill<\/em>.\u00a0 Bradshaw, Travers or whoever the no-nothing critic is will invariably damn Licence to Kill<\/em> with such adjectives as \u2018humourless\u2019, \u2018dour\u2019, \u2018violent\u2019 and \u2018misjudged\u2019.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This was the film where Timothy Dalton and the Bond production team decided it was time to shake up the tried-and-tested formula of fantasy plots, over-the-top villains and unlikely action set-pieces and incorporate something more authentic.\u00a0 In fact, Licence to Kill<\/em> is a trailblazer for the Bond films of the 21st<\/sup> century, when the series was rebooted into a darker, grittier and critically acclaimed form with Daniel Craig.\u00a0 But it rarely gets any credit for that.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Well, today, 35 years on, it\u2019s time to stand up and be counted.\u00a0 I think Licence<\/em> to<\/em> Kill<\/em> is a great Bond movie.\u00a0 When it appeared, I believed it was the best instalment in the series since the 1960s and I still regard it as being among the best half-dozen in the series\u2019 60-year history.\u00a0 That its critical reputation is tarnished is down to bad luck.\u00a0 It was unlucky in the reaction it got from fickle film critics who\u2019d spent the previous two decades complaining that the Bond movies, during the tenure of Roger Moore, had become \u2018too silly\u2019 and had lost the \u2018serious\u2019 tone of the Ian Fleming books on which they were based.\u00a0 But the moment that Licence<\/em> to<\/em> Kill<\/em> appeared, they wailed that it was \u2018too serious\u2019 and lamented the loss of the glorious silliness of good old Roger Moore.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Licence<\/em> to<\/em> Kill<\/em> was unlucky too because, although it made a respectable profit outside the USA, the American takings were the lowest ever for a Bond movie.\u00a0 Despite what many think, this wasn\u2019t a reflection of its quality, but the result of it being released at an inopportune time when cinemas were already crowded with Lethal Weapon 2<\/em>, Batman<\/em> and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade<\/em> (a film that coincidentally was choc-a-bloc with Bond alumni like John Rhys-Davies, Alison Doody, Julian Glover and the original 007 himself Sean Connery).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a9 Eon Productions<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n And it was unlucky to be the last movie before the great Bond hiatus of 1989 to 1995, during which no new Bond films were made due to a legal dispute between Danjaq, the franchise\u2019s holding company, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer \/ United Artists.\u00a0 This gave people the false impression that Licence to Kill<\/em>, and Timothy Dalton, had crocked the series for half-a-dozen years.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When I saw Licence to Kill<\/em> 35 years ago, what impressed me first was that it had a plot.\u00a0 Not a tangle of subplots and diversions created because producer Cubby Broccoli and his writers wanted to fit in copious action and special-effects set-pieces involving, say, gondolas that turn into speedboats, and speedboats that turn into hang-gliders, and crashing cable cars, and Bond falling out of a plane without a parachute, and laser-gun shootouts in outer space, but a plot that moves smoothly from A to B and to C.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Licence to Kill<\/em> begins with Bond being best man at the wedding of his CIA buddy Felix Leiter (David Hedison, who\u2019d already played Leiter in 1974\u2019s Live and Let Die<\/em>).\u00a0 Leiter\u2019s big day proves even more eventful than expected because he has to interrupt his nuptials to seize Latin American drug baron Franz Sanchez (Robert Davi).\u00a0 Sanchez has suddenly turned up on American soil in pursuit of his errant mistress Lupe (Talisa Soto) and her boyfriend \u2013 whose heart Sanchez cuts out before Leiter and the Feds clamp the cuffs on him.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a9 Eon Productions<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Felix gets married as planned, but things take a dark turn when Sanchez escapes from captivity, with the aid of crooked DEA agent Ed Killifer (Everett McGill).\u00a0 He and his henchmen turn up at the Leiters\u2019 home on their wedding night to get revenge.\u00a0 Leiter\u2019s new wife Della (Priscilla Barnes) is murdered \u2013 Sanchez\u2019s number-one scumbag minion Dario, played by a very young Benicio Del Toro, crows at Leiter, \u201cDon\u2019t worry, we gave her a nice honeymoo-oon!\u201d \u00a0Leiter himself is dunked in a shark tank in a marine research centre in Key West, which is one of the fronts for Sanchez\u2019s US drugs-smuggling operation.\u00a0 Later, Bond discovers Della\u2019s dead body and Leiter\u2019s just-about-alive one, minus a couple of limbs, and vows revenge.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Bond starts by investigating the marine-research lab and then Sanchez\u2019s research vessel the Wavekrest \u2013 by this time Sanchez himself has returned to base, a fictional Latin American country called Isthmus.\u00a0 He tangles violently with Dario and Sanchez\u2019s sleazy American lieutenant Milton Krest (Anthony Zerbe) and, gratifyingly, he drops Killifer and his suitcase of blood money into the shark tank that Leiter was maimed in.\u00a0 (\u201cYou earned it!\u00a0 You keep it!\u201d)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Along the way, he finds an unexpected ally in the form of Pam Bouvier (Carey Lowell), an airplane pilot who\u2019s been working for Leiter in some mysterious capacity, and incurs the wrath of his boss M (Robert Brown), who thinks he\u2019s getting involved in matters that don\u2019t concern him (\u201cWe\u2019re not a country club, 007!\u201d) and revokes his licence to kill.\u00a0 This was why the film had provisionally been titled Licence<\/em> Revoked<\/em> until, the story goes, research in the USA suggested that many Americans didn\u2019t know what the word \u2018revoked\u2019 meant.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Now rogue, Bond steals a fortune in drugs money from the Wavekrest and uses it to fund a trip to Isthmus for him and Bouvier.\u00a0 There, he tries to assassinate Sanchez but fails and, in the process, unwittingly exposes a secret operation being run against Sanchez by agents from Hong Kong.\u00a0 This leaves Sanchez with the impression that the agents were the ones trying to assassinate him and Bond, by exposing them, is actually on his side.\u00a0 An unlikely bromance ensues and Sanchez, enamoured with Bond, tries to recruit him into his organisation.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a9 Eon Productions<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Aware that Sanchez is obsessed with loyalty, Bond starts planting doubts in Sanchez\u2019s mind about the fidelity of his many henchmen who, in addition to those already mentioned, include his head of security Heller (Don Stroud) and his whizz-kid accountant Truman-Lodge (Anthony Starke).\u00a0 Time, though, is running short for Bond because the two members of Sanchez\u2019s organisation who know his true identity are returning to Isthmus: Krest, on board the Wavekrest, and Dario, who\u2019s coming by way of El Salvador, where he\u2019s managed to procure some stinger missiles.\u00a0 Sanchez intends to use these to shoot down American aircraft in revenge for his recent incarceration.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What follows involves much mayhem and gruesome death \u2013 death by being doused in gasoline and set alight, by being blown apart in a decompression chamber, by being impaled on forklift-truck blades, by being fed into a cocaine-grinding machine.\u00a0 A lot of this is inflicted by a now-paranoid Sanchez on the people who work for him.\u00a0 Yes, Licence to Kill<\/em> seems a million miles removed from the Roger Moore Bonds, where the most gruesome things were the inuendo-laden jokes cracked while Moore got intimate with ladies about half his age. \u00a0But while the brutality here may shock someone accustomed to the escapist fantasises of the 1970s and 1980s Bond movies, I loved it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This was the sort of Bond imagined by Ian Fleming, most of whose books I\u2019d read before I saw any of the films.\u00a0 Not that Fleming ever wrote about 1980s Latin American drug dealers \u2013 his gangsters were of the James Cagney variety, with names like \u2018Jack Spang\u2019, \u2018Sluggsy Morant\u2019, \u2018Sol Horowitz\u2019, \u2018Sam Binion\u2019 and \u2018Louie Paradise\u2019.\u00a0 But Dalton nails it as the screen Bond who was closest to the character described by Fleming.\u00a0 Smooth and confident on the surface, but subtly troubled underneath, he does some bad stuff in the line of duty and hates having to do it.\u00a0 But even more, he hates the evil deeds \u2013 like the murderous violation of his best friend\u2019s wedding \u2013 that compel him to do it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a9 Eon Productions<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Not that the film is unremittingly dark.\u00a0 It has some amusing lines and likeable performances.\u00a0 One thing that brings a smile to the face is the entry into the plot, halfway through, of Bond\u2019s secret-service armourer Q, played by the venerable Desmond Llewellyn.\u00a0 Q takes some leave and nips over to Isthmus to help Bond and Bouvier out, bringing with him a cache of his famous gadgets.\u00a0 (\u201cEverything for a man on holiday.\u00a0 Explosive alarm clock\u2026 \u00a0Guaranteed never to wake up anyone who uses it.\u00a0 Dentonite toothpaste\u2026\u00a0 To be used sparingly.\u00a0 The latest in plastic explosive.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cI could do with some plastic,\u201d Bond notes.) \u00a0After the Moore films, where Q\u2019s main function was to be the butt of Bond\u2019s jokes, it\u2019s nice to see him with an expanded role and in a different dynamic with Bond.\u00a0 In Licence to<\/em> Kill<\/em>, the two men actually like, respect and care about each other.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Llewellyn, though, is just one player in a generally delightful cast.\u00a0 A 1980s \/ 1990s action-movie character actor, and nowadays a Sinatra-esque crooner, Robert Davi is excellent as Sanchez.\u00a0 He tempers sufficient quantities of rottenness with some unexpected integrity \u2013 for instance, he insists on honouring the deal he\u2019s made with Killifer, even though his sidekicks urge him to take the easier option of whacking the guy.\u00a0 Some similarly distinguished character actors play the other villains: Zerbe, Stroud, McGill and, of course, Del Toro.\u00a0 Plus you get some familiar and welcome faces \u00a0in smaller roles, including Frank McRae from 48<\/em> Hrs<\/em> (1982) and The Last Action Hero<\/em> (1993) and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa from the Mortal<\/em> Combat<\/em> franchise.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Also deserving praise is Carey Lowell.\u00a0 Just as Davi is the great overlooked Bond villain, Lowell is the great overlooked Bond girl.\u00a0 From the very beginning, when she shuts up the odious Dario by shoving a pump-action shotgun into his crotch, her Pam Bouvier character means business.\u00a0 Her gutsiness is immensely refreshing after so many Bond actresses in the 1970s and 1980s had been given roles that were wooden (Carole Bouquet), insipid (Jane Seymour) or just plain dumb (Jill St John, Britt Ekland, Tanya Roberts).\u00a0 It\u2019s good too that she doesn\u2019t just exist to follow Bond but has her own agenda.\u00a0 She plans to retrieve the stinger missiles before Sanchez does serious damage with them, a scheme for which she\u2019s enlisted the help of the duplicitous Heller.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a9 Eon Productions<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n What else do I like about Licence<\/em> to<\/em> Kill<\/em>?\u00a0 I like its references to Ian Fleming\u2019s fiction.\u00a0 Milton Krest, the Wavekrest and Sanchez\u2019s fondness for whipping Lupe with a stingray\u2019s tail come from the 1960 short story The Hildebrand Rarity<\/em>, while Leiter\u2019s encounter with the shark is lifted from the 1954 novel Live and Let Die.<\/em>\u00a0 I like how the secondary Bond girl, Talisa Soto\u2019s Lupe, survives the film.\u00a0 The secondary Bond girl in many films, from Lana Wood\u2019s Plenty O\u2019Toole in Diamonds<\/em> are<\/em> Forever<\/em> (1971) to Berenice Marlohe\u2019s Severine in Skyfall<\/em> (2012), ends up as a sacrificial lamb, killed to show how beastly the villains are.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And I like how the film is a spiritual sequel to perhaps the best-ever Bond movie, 1969\u2019s On Her Majesty\u2019s Secret Service<\/em>, which ends with Bond getting married and then seeing his new wife Tracy murdered by his nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld.\u00a0 This is referenced in Licence<\/em> to<\/em> Kill<\/em> by a moment when Bond becomes melancholic during Leiter\u2019s wedding.\u00a0 \u201cHe was married once,\u201d Leiter tells Della, \u201cbut that was a long time ago.\u201d\u00a0 (When I saw the film in 1989 in a cinema in Aberdeen, someone in the row behind me declared: \u201cAye, an\u2019 he looked like George Lazenby at the time!\u201d)\u00a0 This suggests that later in the film Bond isn\u2019t just avenging Leiter and Della, but Tracy too.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Licence<\/em> to<\/em> Kill<\/em> isn\u2019t perfect, though.\u00a0 There are a couple of longueurs.\u00a0 For a man who\u2019s recently lost\u00a0 wife and limbs, David Hedison\u2019s Leiter seems unfathomably cheerful when he reappears at the end.\u00a0 Maybe it\u2019s the drugs they were feeding him at the hospital.\u00a0 And Carey Lowell\u2019s Bouvier is ill-served by a scene where she encounters Lupe, finds out that she\u2019s spent the night with Bond and reacts like a sulky, jealous schoolgirl.\u00a0 When Q diplomatically suggests that Bond only did it for the sake of the mission, she retorts: \u201cBullshit<\/em>!\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Licence<\/em> to<\/em> Kill<\/em> was, alas, Timothy Dalton\u2019s final showing as Bond.\u00a0 When the franchise finally got going again with 1995\u2019s Goldeneye<\/em>, it was with the cuddlier Pierce Brosnan in the role.\u00a0 I like Brosnan, but always found his attempts to combine the physicality of Sean Connery with the smoothness of Roger Moore a little unconvincing.\u00a0 As I\u2019ve said, Dalton strikes me as the actor who came closest to portraying Bond in the way Fleming had imagined him and, for me, there\u2019s no higher accolade.\u00a0 He\u2019s the connoisseur\u2019s Bond.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a9 Eon Productions<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a9 Eon Productions Another unwelcome reminder that I\u2019m now old and decrepit\u2026\u00a0 I\u2019ve just discovered that 35 years ago today, on June 13th 1989, Licence to Kill opened at the Leicester Square Odeon in London.\u00a0 Time, I think, for a 35th-anniversary tribute to one of my favourite Bond movies. 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