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Licence to Kill (1989) Bond: Timothy Dalton The Villian: Robert Davi as Franz Sanchez The Henchman: Benicio Del Toro as Dario The Bond Girl: Carey Lowell as Pam Bouvier Director: John Glen IMBD: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097742/ Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeribRODx_g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeribRODx_g WARNING: this review contains some minor spoilers -> Now with SpoilerVision ® Have you ever wondered what would happen if James Bond took on Scarface? Well, that is what this movie basically is, and it's about as hard and bloody as we are likely to see in a Bond film. This movie was originally going to get a "R" rating before it was cut, which gives you an idea of the tone of the film. Previously in "The Living Daylights", I was discussing how Dalton may have really been the real first reboot of Bond before Craig, and in this movie, that sentiment is crystalized. The main difference between "The Living Daylights" and "Licence to Kill" was that the former movie had a script written for Moore, or presumably someone in the same vein, and this script is written with Dalton in mind. Furthermore, Dalton has settled in fairly well, and knows what he wants to do with the character. The script is written with the idea in mind of having a possible real-world villian, who has a realistic goals that are not too heavy handed. The story tends towards being more courageous than the average Bond script which basically stays with a limited formula that is well established. It's clear there was a concept of exploring a new definition of what Bond was, reforging him into a hardened killer that looks much more like what Craig is doing with Bond now. Almost all of the humor that was such a part of Moore's Bond is gone, no one-liners here, but the script does tend to wander off into the rediculous on occasion, with stunts that looked at home in a movie like "Moonraker" or "Tomorrow never Dies".There is humor though, and the best example in the film is Wayne Newton as a TV evangelist that is supremely cheesy, and yet doesn't take away from the seriousness of the story.  Pencil?? gently caress that, I can make an entire man disappear! We also get a villian who fits the theme, and is played effortlessly by Robert Davi. Sanchez is an ultimate prick, and just exudes vileness whenever onscreen. The average Bond villian is far to obsessed with their own grandiose to really be manancing, but Sanchez is just a mean motherfucker. He can't kill someone unless it is in the most exquisitely painfull possible manner, and when people annoy him, they tend to end up dead. When he kills off one of the major characters about 2/3 of the way through the movie, it's the kind of scene that leaves you with mixed feelings of awe of why it happens and cringing at the results. On the other hand, Bond is also an ultimate prick himself. It's not enough to kill everyone associated with Sanchez's empire, he has to go the distance and ruin them through double-crossing and setting them up to take the fall. There's also another element in this movie that reminds you of Craig's Bond, a human side that can make mistakes, such as when he accidently blows a British Secret Service operation that has taken years to set up, although if it had succeeded the movie would have been consideribily shorter. In this movie Bond is just about as mean as he's ever going to get, almost mimicking Sanchez in the ferocity of his actions. You almost feel sorry for some of his victims as Bond leads them to their doom much like leading Roman Polanski to a 13 year old girl.  Tired of a steady diet of only women? It's time to think outside the buns. The story has its own quirks, though. One of the strangest elements of the plot is the sequence in which Bond quits the Secret Service to proceed on his quest for personal vengance. You would think that an agent going rogue would be something of great concern to the British secret service, and as such, there would be assassination plot against Bond by his own agency, where all of their best agents are activated to eliminate Bond before the organization was comprimised. This is the one area in which the script could have been more interesting - Just imagine a fanboy's wet dream come to life with James Bond vs. "00" everyone. It's possible that either M is smarter than that, or, as in other Bond films, it's just ok to let Bond to do some shady operations that even M can't sanction. Even weirder still, Q seeks him out to check on him, and then acts like Bond is on a normal mission, and even gives him a some gadgets as if everything was normal. It was nice though to see Q get some screentime doing something than being a foil for Bond's quips about his dodgy gear, but Bond telling Q to go home every 15 minutes starts to get old after a while. The other Strange element of the film is the ease with which Bond gets close to Sanchez. Dario seems to be Sanchez's right hand man for wet-work, so it seems inconceivable that Sanchez and Dario would have never discussed Bond since Dario knew his face well, and knew that he was a danger to Sanchez. On the other hand Lupe (Soto), Sanchez's girl is interesting because she knows about Bond for some time, and yet lets Bond get closer to Sanchez just for the enjoyment of seeing what happens next. It's only a shame that Soto is not too much of an actress, but she may be one of the most atractive Bond girls ever.  It's called a "Felix....wait for it! In the end, the story and acting by Dalton are stronger than any of the weak points of this movie. It's fair to say though that it's not really a Bond movie, since most of the required elemets are absent, and the feel of it is completely different. This is not the type of Bond film that was going to please the same crowd that made previous Bond movies big hits, and as such, this movie really tanked at the box office, netting less then 1/2 of what "Moonraker" had made, making sure that this was the last of this type of Bond we would see for some time. After all, Bond is about fantasy, and this story may have been a little too real for the audience of the time. An interesting piece of trivia: The original title of the movie was going to be "Licence Revoked" as it was named in other countries like Japan, but when it was discovered that less than 50% of Americans knew what the word "revoked" meant, the name was changed (along with some other reasons). I'd hate to draw a parallel between that, and the box office figures for this movie, but this film might have been too smart for its own good. Final Score   (as a crime drama/ spy movie) (as a Bond movie)Edit:adding some spoiler tag action. Yabanjin fucked around with this message at 03:37 on Oct 17, 2009 |
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Sep 30, 2009 16:15
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