Without a doubt, Licence to Kill is the darkest Bond movie thus far. It is deadly serious in almost every respect, as it should be. Timothy Dalton firmly establishes his Bond with this outing and I have to admit it's one of my favorites of the entire series.
James Bond (played by Timothy Dalton) is in Florida attending the wedding of his good friend and CIA counterpart Felix Leiter (played by David Hedison). En route to the wedding, Bond and Leiter are flagged down by some of Leiter's DEA buddies he had been working with. They inform him they have a chance to apprehend drug kingpin Franz Sanchez (played by Robert Davi). So, off the two go in pursuit decked out in their wedding tuxes. The apprehend Sanchez by attaching a cable to his airborne plane with a coast guard helicopter and pulling it out of the air. Bond and Leiter then leave Sanchez to the DEA agents and parachute into Leiter's wedding. However, Sanchez is able to break free almost immediately with the aid of crooked DEA agent Ed Killifer (played by Everett McGill). Sanchez sends his personal henchman Dario (played by a young Benicio Del Toro) to go retrieve Leiter. Dario and his crew ambush Leiter and his new wife Della (played by Priscilla Barnes). Leiter is brought to an aquarium owned by one of Sanchez's accomplices, Milton Krest (played by Anthony Zerbe), and is tortured and maimed by one of Krest's sharks. When Bond hears that Sanchez escaped custody, he races to Leiter's home where he finds Della has been murdered and Felix is seriously injured. Determined to get revenege, Bond ignores M's orders to return to England and is subsequently stripped of his Double-O status and his license to kill. Bond escapes from M (played by Robert Brown) and meets up with Leiter's friend Sharkey (played by Frank McRae) and Leiter's fellow CIA agent Pam Bouvier (played by Carey Lowell) to infiltrate Sanchez's operation, with some assistance from Q (played by Desmond Llewellyn), and bring the whole thing down once and for all.
Timothy Dalton got a lot of criticism for a long time for how serious he played the role of Bond, but after 12 years of silliness, some good and some not so good, from Roger Moore, Dalton's approach is a refreshing change of pace. There is more dramatic weight to Dalton's films, especially this one, and that makes for a more overall fulfilling film in my opinion. Carey Lowell as Pam Bouvier ranks among my favorite Bond girls. She's resourceful, strong and fiercely independent. She wants Sanchez just as badly as Bond and refuses to be sidelined. I really liked her character a lot. Robert Davi's Sanchez ranks up there as one of the nastiest villains in the entire Bond series, with his henchman Dario right alongside him.
The film has some great action sequences, with the opening capture of Sanchez and climactic chase between Bond and Sanchez's gang being stand outs. In particular, the stunts Bond pulls off in the tanker truck he drives are quite impressive, keeping in mind that they were all done for real. John Glen once again returns to the director's chair, for the last time as it would turn out, and gives the film some real flair in it's direction. One of my favorite composers Michael Kamen steps in for John Barry for this outing and gives the film a cool score that's a bit different than what Barry usually gave. The film was written by series producer Michael G. Wilson and Richard Maibaum, drawing inspiration from several plot elements from Ian Fleming's original stories as well as from real word events, especially the Medellin cartel and Pablo Escobar for their villain Franz Sanchez. They also do a good job exploring the darker side of Bond, giving him plenty of motivation to go after Sanchez directly. Having Leiter's tragedy mirror his own, losing his wife on their wedding day, was a good touch and only served to fuel Bond's rage more. It was also a nice touch by them folding in some of the themes of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo, with Bond working from inside Sanchez's operation and playing everyone against each other and sowing doubts and fears into Sanchez, letting him destroy himself.
Overall, Licence to Kill is a darker entry in the Bond series with a sharper edge to it than usual. It fits Dalton's incarnation of Bond quite well and it's nice to see that opinion on it has softened as time has gone by. I feel it's one of the best of the series, as is Dalton's other Bond film The Living Daylights. It makes me wish he had gotten a chance to play the role one or two more times, but sadly legal issues over the rights to the Bond series would cause the series to remain off cinema screens for five years, leading Dalton to retire from the role. Still, both his entries in the Bond series are top notch and highly recommended.
No comments:
Post a Comment