Movie review – Bond#16 - “Licence to Kill” (1989) ***1/2

A film whose flat box office performance partly explains why the Bond films went into hibernation for six years. It doesn’t have much of a reputation but I’ve always liked it – I do recognise that it seems to take a while to get going, and never reaches top-flight Bond (it doesn't feel like a Bond movie so much as a Sly/Arnie revenge flick a lot of the time), but once it gets into gear its very enjoyable.

Various reasons have been floated for the film’s underwhelming reception by the American public – lots of competition at the time (eg Die Hard 2), a harder edged ‘darker’ Bond, Bond being a bit more PC. I don’t think the harder edged Bond matters – he’s not that hard edged anyway (one villain does get minced up another one explodes, but both things had happened before in previous Bonds), and it’s a good think he avenges Felix Leiter, particularly as they re-use Leiter’s injury from the book Live and Let Die (I’m surprised they waited that long to use it – not as surprised, though, as waiting until Die Another Day to use the brilliant opening from the Man with the Golden Gun book. I like how the also re-use some stuff from the short story The Hildebrand Rarity). Casino Royale showed that audiences could take a darker Bond.

Bond isn’t particularly PC here, either – he smokes, and sleeps with girls very quickly after meeting them. I think the main reason was the story – going undercover to bust a drug lord simply didn’t sound very exciting or exotic, and had been done to death throughout the 80s on TV shows like Miami Vice and Wiseguy. We expect Bond villains to be a bit more unusual. (Robert Davi gives an excellent performance by the way, and has a neat way with a funny line, but his character feels a bit too straight to video – you know he could pop up easily in too many other films). I also think Americans didn’t particularly like Timothy Dalton.

Some of the things I really liked about this one were: the scene where Bond attacks a boat full of enemies (a piece of business involving a spear gun and water skiing is a genuine classic), Benito del Torro’s henchman (his acting is a bit rough but the charisma is there, particularly with that tooth), the set up of the drug country based on Panama with the drug lord pretty much running everything, the use of a religious organisation as a front, Wayne Newton as a reverend who keeps a smile on his face even after he loses, the Alex P Keaton type character who is Davi’s financial adviser (not needed plot wise but an interesting twist), the fact that Q joins in the fun and becomes a field operative (presumably one of the reasons why Desmond Llewellyn said Dalton was his fave Bond – although Bond tells him to get back on a plane one too many times). They could have used the "rogue agent" stuff a bit more - the subplot of Bond having his licence revoked and the British secret service actually shooting at him had real potential but isn't used.

I remember at school the consensus was that Talia Soto should have been the proper Bond girl instead of Carey Lowell; watching it again, Soto seems to belong in the Bond universe more and has the right look, but she’s a pretty awful actress and a weak character whereas Lowell grows on you – she’s quite pretty and her character is a fighter. I still think they could have cast this with someone better, or at least not American (Americans seem to make the least effective Bond girls – Pussy Galore was good in Goldfinger but she was played by a Pom playing American; think of Lois Chiles in Moonraker, Tanya Roberts in View to a Kill, Denise Richards in The World is Not Enough, Halle Berry in Die Another Day).

NB this was the last Bond written by Richard Maibaum, who worked on scripts for pretty much all the Bonds up until then – he was very much an unsung hero of the series.