The Living Daylights

With Roger Moore bowing out after A View to a Kill at the grand old age of 59, it was up to the film makers to pick up the unenviable task of casting Bond again.  Various names were tossed around, including Sam Neill (cannot see it at all), and Mel Gibson (thankfully that didn't pan out). Eventually the role was first given to, not the Welshman who would go on to lead The Living Daylights but an Irishman, Pierce Brosnan. This also didn't quite work out, as the reason he was chosen was for his starring role in Bond-esque Remington Steele. At the time of casting him, Steele had been cancelled but the sneaky people at NBC immediately picked up the show for a further series when Brosnan was picked. This irked the Bond big-wigs who ditched Brosnan, not wanting a star caught between two roles, leading head honcho's daughter, Dana Brocoli to suggest Timothy Dalton.

Much like Daniel Craig would go on to do himself, Dalton brought with him the history of the books, bringing a more sombre, sober, and less shagging version of Bond to screen. In fact, films like Batman Begins and Casino Royale can probably draw a line back to Dalton's tenure as Bond as the template for reinventing big pop culture icons through a darker lens.

So with The Living Daylights, out are SPECTRE and plots to destroy the world - in is Cold War espionage, closer in tone to From Russia with Love. No longer is Bond finding a new woman to bed at every turn, instead his bedroom shenanigans are thin on the ground or non-existent (this was the height of the AIDS crisis and Bond's Lothario disposition was probably seen in bad taste). Unfortunately, stripping out some of the more outlandish aspects of Bond does take a bit of the fun out of it, but The Living Daylights ("TLD"), and Dalton in general, is probably the unsung hero of the series.

Getting only two films under his belt, it is unsurprising that Dalton tends to pass under the radar compared with the rest of the Bonds. However, if Connery is cool, Lazenby the heart, Moore the fool, Brosnan the gent, and Craig the brute, then Dalton is the true gentleman assassin. He just looks dangerous. It doesn't matter if he is simply sitting at a desk, shrouded in cigarette smoke, listening to his superiors, or brawling with a bad guy in a jeep careening out of control, whilst he is decked out in obsidian black technical gear. The man looks like a true spy in a way that no one else in the series really looks like it. In the first act, when he assembles what appears to be the world's largest sniper and takes up a vantage point, you believe he is a 007 who has lived in that role for a long, long time. 

The plot of TLD works with Dalton's strengths and focus on what he wants Bond to be like. What opens with a seemingly clear cut defection of a Russian asset to the West, quickly spins out into betrayal, open warfare on spies, and finally drug smuggling. Interspersed with this more grounded plot are certainly the heightened Bondian affectations in the action scenes. He still has a tricked out car, and he makes do with a cello case as a rudimentary toboggan when needed. The film includes one of the series' action highlights, a spectacular tussle on the dangling cargo net of a gigantic plane (which clearly inspired one set piece in Uncharted 3). The action, for the most part, contains a fair bit more punch than Moore's tenure, although unlike Moore, Dalton falters a little when he is called on to quip out a funny one liner (the guy clearly has comedic chops, go watch Hot Fuzz where he more or less steals the whole film). Having said that, the look of comedic doom on his face when after besting a villain he realises he still has to find the a ticking time bomb in a situation which may as where it may as well be a needle in a haystack. 

It is often said that Dalton was also uncomfortable in the romantic department, considered necessarey for a true Bond film. It is true, that his Bond certainly seems distant from the central love interest of TLD, however it is in keeping with this version of Bond. Here, Bond sees all those around him as either tools to be used to achieve his goal, or obstacles in his way. In TLD, Bond appears to fall for Russian cellist, Kara Milovy by the end of the film. This end point is not sufficiently setup, as for a significant part of the film, Bond simply appears to be feigning interest in her as she is a key piece in the puzzle of the plot. With the epilogue showing that Bond has developed true feelings for her, it doesn't quite sing true, in the same way that Bond and Vesper Lynd develop over the course of Casino Royale.

It also doesn't particularly help that Kara, pleasant as she is, appears to be fairly passive, or at worst actively incompetent at times. Bond leaves her at the controls of a huge military plane (okay, probably a poor choice from Bond, who knows how to fly one of these things, let alone a cellist?!), and she nearly manages to crash it twice. The initial relationship she has with Bond is more interesting, as she is really the girlfriend of the Russian defector that kicks off the entire plot. It turns out that she, like Bond, have been manipulated by the defector, and Bond simply inveigles himself into her life to find out more about this. In doing so, they effectively start dating, and perhaps to the film's strength, it is ambiguous enough throughout these scenes as to whether Bond is showing any real affection towards her or if it is just a means to an end. Again, the epilogue would suggest it was real but I don't think the film really does the legwork to get to that conclusion.

Speaking of Kara's boyfriend, it turns out he is the primary villain of the piece, General Georgi Koskov. Played a little too broadly at the start of the film, perhaps intentionally in order to deceive the audience into thinking he is nothing more than a doddering idiot, this doesn't help when he has to turn heel and reveal himself as a villain. Even then, he is played with wild eyes and grasping hands. He only ever convinces as a high ranking Russian general on a few occasions.

His plan is two-fold - his false defection allows him to point Bond's cross-hairs to a rival Russian general he wants wiped out, and he is also in cahoots with a more Bondian villain - American arms-dealer and military historian enthusiast Brad Whitaker. Played by Joe Don Baker (who would again turn up in Goldeneye, playing a new character and ally of Bond), Whitaker is black market arms dealer, with whom Koskov has used embezzled Russian funds to buy heroin from the Mujaheddin, to sell on the marker in America for a killing. He's a certainly more Bondian villain, with a lair of sorts, tricked out with historic and high-tech military hardware. And Bond's showdown with him is very classic Bond but here, in this film, it just doesn't work. It is odd but where the rest of the film is gracefully toned down for the series, with the villains they've gone for the old cartoonish style and as such painfully stand out.

However, what Koskov and Whitaker do have, is a henchman named Necros, who perversely saves the day in terms of the quality of the villains. Slicked back blonde hair, a man of few words, and all action. When Necros is on screen, you know he means business. His introduction, the "rescuing" of Koskov from a MI6 safehouse is another highlight of the film and series. Necros plays it like he is Agent 47 from the Hitman games, donning disguises to breach the complex. The assassin has a brutal kitchen brawl before bringing along his secret weapon to go with his milkman disguise - exploding milk bottles.

I don't think I had watched The Living Daylight since I was about 16, and I'm ashamed I hadn't returned to it since. It is a little rough around the edges, and it hasn't fully committed to bringing the reality and gravity that Dalton clearly wants to give it, but for its sequel, they really doubled down on the darkness, giving us a Daniel Craig Bond film 17 years before its time.