Licence to Kill

Timothy Dalton only got two goes at playing Bond, but for his last shot at the role, it feels like he more or less gets to play the character as he intended: a furious, brutish spy, on a bloody path of vengeance after the maiming and murder of his loved ones (Daniel Craig takes notes in the corner).

If Licence to Kill was released today, it would have probably been box office smash, but released 1989 the film did fine, with audiences  turned off by its darker take. A surprising reaction, considering that in that same year, we were also gifted with the supposedly dark vision of Batman, courtesy of Tim Burton (FYI, the Burton films are dark only stylistically, rather than in tone - I mean, his two films have scenes involving the Joker smashing an art museum backed by Prince, and another with the Penguin leading an army of penguins with missiles strapped to their backs).

But perhaps, Licence to Kill was one step too far in terms of what Bond fans were prepared to put up with at that time. Its predecessor, The Living Daylights, was certainly more grounded than the comic escapades of Moore and to a lesser extent Connery, but it certainly did not indulge in graphic violence like Licence to Kill does. In this movie, we get murder and implied rape, gory explosions, and most infamously (lifted from the pages of Live and Let Die), the maiming of longtime ally, Felix Leiter when he is fed to a shark. Compare this to the Craig films and there isn't anything in those films as graphic as this. Craig's tenure strives for relative realism over true darkness, whereas Licence instead takes realism and darkens it with blood and drugs.

The film open ins media res with Felix Leiter's journey to be married being interrupted by the chance to capture infamous drug lord, Franz Sanchez. Best man Bond can't leave Leiter too it and so the pair manage to capture the brute in a spectacular aerial stunt (which would be lifted by Christopher Nolan his opening for The Dark Knight Rises).

Bond and Leiter save the day, and Leiter gets to marry his beloved Stella. In a nice touch, Stella hits a nerve with Bond when she suggests he will be wed next, and a mournful Dalton replies no, the memory the wife of a past Bond haunting the present. Of course, as is tradition in this series, with wedding comes death, and in this case, Sanchez is broken out in transit to prison, and exacts brutal vengeance on Leiter and Stella, ably helped by a youthful, but dead-eyed Benicio Del Toro as henchman number one, Dario. Leiter is partially fed to sharks, and when Bond finds Stella with a bullet through her heart, and Leiter on edge of life and death, his panicked cries down the phone for medical help show Bond in a rare position of weakness.

Bringing David Hedison back as Felix Leiter is a handy shortcut in establishing the relationship between Bond and him, having first appeared as the character in Live and Let Die. The brief time that Dalton and he share on screen before the plot kicks off only adds further colour to a backstory that you can fill in, involving numerous missions together. You absolutely believe it when Bond disobeys M's order to drop the case and leave it to the Americans. That's right, before Craig made it his mission to constantly work without his superiors support, Dalton was getting his licence to kill revoked, in a nice scene that subverts expectations built into the series - here the meeting with M is not to get his mission, but to have it taken away as well as his licence (interestingly, the title was originally called Licence Revoked but American audiences thought this was more to do with a car licence than to kill...).

With his licence to kill taken from him, Bond makes it his personal vendetta to extract revenge on drug lord Franz Sanchez. And the way that he goes about this is interesting. Sanchez, menacingly played by Robert Davi (one of the FBI Special Agent Johnsons in Die Hard), is given an unusual amount of character for a Bond film, with his most significant trait being the value he places on loyalty. It is worth more than money and power for him. And so, Bond, unknown by face to Sanchez, manages to get his foot in the door in Sanchez's cartel, and starts to set up his cohorts as the real traitors, to weaken and drive Sanchez mad.

Yes, Sanchez has an evil grand plot - he has hit upon a way to dissolve cocaine into petrol but is able to reconstitute it upon reaching its destination - but Bond stopping that is purely collateral. As such, Sanchez has a significant narrative weight that Davi has to carry. And carry he does - Sanchez may not be one of the most iconic villains of the series (he does have an evil pet - a bejewelled iguana) and yet he should be. He oozes gritty villainy, but you can completely believe him as the charismatic leader of his drug empire. His spiral into paranoia and mania in the final act allows Davi to unhinge for a bloody and brutal brawl with Bond, capping off a third act action set piece that rivals that best of the series, with it including the eye-popping tanker truck wheelie.

Craig's movies crib a lot from Licence to Kill, including upping the roles of characters that have otherwise stood on the fringes of the film series. For Licence to Kill, Q gets his meatiest role, sneaking out to help Bond with a plethora of gadgets. Whilst the humorous asides between he and Bond really stick out in this film (as does an ill-advised segue in ninjas), the bond (no pun intended) between the two is great. Much like Sanchez, it is believable that Bond is able to inspire those around him to come together in a crisis. As much of a straight arrow that Q is, you again believe that he would go against orders to help Bond on this personal mission.

Sounds like an all-round classic Bond then, right? Unfortunately, the romantic angle completely fails here. In The Living Daylights, Dalton didn't really sell the romance of the character, and in Licence to Kill, considering the subject matter, the film would've been better served if the traditional Bond sex drive was completely switched off. Instead, we get a competent CIA agent, Pam Bouvier (Carey Lowell), and Sanchez's mistress Lupe Lamora (Talisa Soto). Both actresses play the roles well, although Lupe is a character that we have seen in many a Bond film. Bouvier is more interesting, at least on paper. A brawling, shotgun totting, CIA agent, and ex-army pilot sounds like Bond's match and more, and she even proves it on a few occasions, and bemoans his outdated attitudes to women. It is just a shame that the film constantly acts like the Bond of the past by sidelining her. Worse still is her sudden development of envy when she sees Bond and Lupe together at the epilogue. You don't buy Bond's relationship with Lupe, and to see a tough character like Bouvier reduced to such a cliche is disappointing (maybe even more so when Bond quickly ditches Lupe to chase after Pam when he sees she is upset).

So Dalton can't hack the Bond as a lover character. It really doesn't matter much, as it was clear that that was not the rich seam in the character that he wanted to mine. He wanted to pull out the darkness, and bloodthirstiness, that presumably the many missions from M keep in check. But when it gets personal, Bond is unshackled and anyone who gets in his way is not long for this world. Often cruelly forgotten, Timothy Dalton is the Bond that every Daniel Craig Bond fan should thank, for without Dalton there wouldn't be Casino Royale.